Digital teaching benefits the environment: Stuti, GBPUAT

These are first-hand student accounts on how our young population is managing to keep their exam prep or college course work going from the confines of their homes. In case you want to share your lockdown study experience, write to us at publish@shiksha.com.

On March 15, the unprecedented pandemic compelled the concerned authorities of the university to suspend the classroom teaching and to close all the hostels as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 till 31 March. But due to an upsurge in the cases, the honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi announced nationwide lockdown till 15 April.

As the lockdown further extended the authorities certainly felt that the imposition of lockdown has resulted in an academic loss for the students. This issue was discussed in the meeting of Deans and to cope with the following situation it was decided that the faculty members would impart the instructions in online mode to the students through online platforms. The online lectures delivered during the lockdown period will be considered for the total lectures given in the semester.

The online class teaching in our college is conducted as follow:

• Students are notified in advance regarding the online teaching schedule.
• Regular online classes are conducted through online platforms like zoom, Google classroom, etc.
• Instructors are providing e-content of the lectures through WhatsApp/email to the students.
• Students who do not have access to the internet or have poor connections will be provided the reading material after reopening of the University.

Thus, faculty members are trying their best to cover the designated syllabus in the meantime. Students who face any difficulty regarding any topic are clearing it through WhatsApp/phone calls.

For maximum students and teachers, online classes were indeed a new experience. Since our childhood, maximum students have attended a brick and mortar class. Personally, l felt that brick and mortar class is more enjoyable because there we can interact with our college mates and friends in reality. Interaction among the students and teachers is much better in offline classes as compared to online classes. However, as it is always said that something is better than nothing so online classes are a worthy option in this situation.

Online classes expose us to the world of technology. Online teaching made me realize that knowledge can be gained anytime, anywhere. Through digital teaching, we are able to save lots of paper, wood, fuel, which is indirectly beneficial for our mother nature.

I believe in the future, with certain improvements and better strategies, online teaching model can be used to replace it with classroom teaching.

In this way, we will be able to save many assets directly as well as indirectly.

As we have to stay at home for 24×7 so we all have plenty of time to learn new skills. In my extra leisure time, l made most of it by learning something new. So, in the meantime l experimented with cooking and cooked various Indian and Chinese dishes. Apart from this l watched various documentaries and movies. So now, l can conclude that l acquired a new skill without compromising with my course curriculum during this quarantine.

About the Author:

 Stuti Lavania is pursuing B. Sc. Agriculture from Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar.