In the time of COVID 19 We have been witnessing so many changes and innovations and one of them is the forced realization of need of use of online teaching-learning process. Although it is present here for long time and many European and American institutions have been serving for a long here in India where it is also present for quite some time in form of NPTEL, IGNOU, SWAYAM, SWAYAMPRABHA, ePATHSHALA and so on it is only recently the Govt and private actors have started pushing this as an alternative source of education . In india the main actor is the Govt itself though there have been innumerable youtube videos and channels imparting online learning but no weightage has so far been given to them. So naturally the question arises what prompted the actors to be active suddenly.
First is the COVID, which forced the closure of institutes for a long time bringing class/institute study at complete halt. So latent media of virtual classes , online classes and pre recorded classes are being activated. Here we should not forget that thriving coaching business also became almost static and so this sector also became active in pushing this idea. But one thing must be remembered that all this is being done not as the first choice. Rather this medium is in begining being adopted as the alternative medium only. Compulsions of competing is compelling the education sector to compete . And this is true for both teaching side and learner side.
For the teaching side compulsin to complete the curriculum in time, compulsion of holding the students and compulsion of generating capital are steering factors and for the learner side compulsion to keep himself/herself in the race of academic success is the main driving force. In any case here in India it's the compulsion created by COVID generated environment that we all are hastly rushing for virtual/online education. This explanation gathers it's strength from the fact that though all these have been in India for a pretty long time indian stakeholders were of late not fascinated towards this.
Now come to the extent of availability. Besides governmental portals such as NPTEL, SWAYAM etc there are others also providing manily university level education. Besides these there are coaching institutes for different levels of preparation ranging from primary education to UPSC & IIT & IIM. Youtube channels are also there for so many things. But some major shortcomings of these are --
# Besides Govt institutes under umbrella of SWAYAM there are only a few which offer recognized degrees asked by the job givers and job seekers.
# In most of the cases teaching -learning elements are missing. Most are one way communication in form of pre recorded videos. Such videos are offered and discussion boxes/Q&A boxes are provided as a measure of doubt clearing plateform. Some sorts of Quiz and Assignments are also provided . Thus in this exercise direct online human interaction is missing, teachers or instructors are not available on spot to clear the doubts. In fact thses are not online classes from any standard. Missing human interface, even online makes these classes monotonous distracting the attention of learners.
Of course technology is available to overcome this shortcoming but this is still not in vogue here and whatever being offered is just old fashioned technology. Live classes with additioal availability of recorded version is the only solution which is technologically very much feasible.
# Compared to European and American standards we find the availability of courses is still not very innovative. Private players in India are still in a very small number. European and American sites can't cater our local needs. Most of Indian Universities are still missing from online plateforms.
# Online education system has also been marred by the lack of proper suitable infrastructure, which includes free availability of hardwares like laptops/printers to the students, free top quality universal presence of wifi etc.
#We still have not online education ecosystem and in this area a lot of work has to be done both from the govt side and from the private partners. Specially top universities and colleges have to come forward and if private sector fails to provide umbrella UGC, NCERT and like govt organizations must come forward to establish umbrella organization to integrate various courses. Industry and corporate if interested in modern and updated work force at genuine cost must strive in this direction.
#Our education policy has to be revamped to incorporate these new fronts as the policy at present is not strong enough on this front.
#Budgetary allocation is another for quick appraisal.
#Most of our schools have teachers devoid of the test for online and virtual education. Attitude orientation is missing.
# our most schools and colleges are in rural and small urban areas. They have very poor regular class facilities. Here I don't intend to enumerate their shortcomings but in nut shell it can be safely said that most of educational institutes and educators are poor in resources and attitude. Suffice is to say this for flagging this issue.
# Mass poverty ,mass ignorance, very little liking for innovative technology and other socio economic cultural issues are big stumbling blocks.
# Till now we have failed to integrate education with industry/agriculture/business etc and this makes a common aversion for education. If education is not a guarantee for good profession and other extraneous players are more important who will strive for online education or for that matter even for education.
These are a few factors putting blockades , besides them there are many others as well.
Now come to the most discussed facet of this virtual/Online education system and that is it's socio -psychological impact.
COVID has put us within the boundary of our houses and along with other activities educational activities have also ceased to operate. Isolation from neighbood.society has created a deep depressive impact which is another aspect to be discussed in separate essay but it also created a vacuum in the educational life of students as well as their caring parents. Online education was supposed to uplift their depressive mood along with substituting the classical educational system. But most probably it's not doing so. The so called online education system is as discussed in above paragraphs is really one way lecture series with no on spot virtual interaction with the teachers. This is creating another psychological problem with irritation and depression as when a student doesnt get actual solution in interactive partnership.with his teacher he or she tends to be depressed. Secondly absense of peer in the environment makes him/her insecure. Parents despite doing their best can't be a child's peer group. Along with this poor internet spoils the mood which in turn makes the students dull and sleepy with depressive impacts. This is reflected in their erratic behaviour pattern.
This psychological disaster is multiplied in rural areas with very low density of computer hardware availability and costly and poor net connection. In most parts of rural and sub urban areas and even in many parts of big urban centers net connectivity is too much poor. This deprives the students of whatever available online. And students in such areas feeling being neglected on internet map feel themselves alienated and consequently depressed and frustrated.
And poverty is also here to play it's devastating role. A big population because of poverty has no access to data network despite its availability. This is particularly severe in the time of COVID when so many people are losing their livelihood.
In this way a large population bereft of opportunity undergoes the sense of alienation at the front of education. Thus whereas online education is getting favour in the time of COVID , the disease itself is antithesis of this very idea of online/virtual education.
However future belongs to technology and actual online/virtual education is here to stay. So if we want to have a robust education system we will have to flag the issues and get them solved as soon as possible.