Payment Gateway

Impact of Covid-19 on Educational Environment

Impact of Covid-19 on Educational Environment

Introduction: 

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) first appeared in Wuhan city of China at the end of last year. Rapid worldwide spreading of COVID-19 prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it as ‘pandemic’ on 11 March 2020.Most of the governments around the world have initiated a common goal to curb the spread of this highly contagious disease by imposing lockdown, social/physical distancing, avoiding face-to-face teaching-learning, and restrictions on immigration. Around 600 million school-going learners are affected across the world due to the closing down of educational institutions. UNESCO (2020) has reported that around 320 million learners are affected in India, of which about 34 million belonged to the tertiary level of education. 

The first COVID-19 positive case has been reported in India (Kerala) on 30 January 2020. Currently, India has been experiencing sparkled growth in COVID-19 cases. As of 18 June 2020, India has reported 160,384 active cases, 194,324 recovered cases, and 12,237 death cases. The government of India along with various state governments have initiated several strategies to control the spread of the disease. Since 25 March, India has observed four phases of nationwide lockdown, which was extended up to 31 May 2020. The ongoing lockdown (fifth phase) is further extended till 30 June 2020 only in containment zones along with essential services are resuming in a planned manner starting from 8 June 2020.

The closures of the educational institution due to the outbreak of COVID-19 lead to an unprecedented impact on education. During the lockdown, teachers are instructed to teach through online learning platforms argued that there is a need to adopt innovative teaching for continuing education and to overcome mental stress and anxieties during the lockdown. The outbreak of COVID-19 results in the digital revolution in the higher education system through online lectures, teleconferencing, digital open books, online examination, and interaction at virtual environments. A significant positive impact of COVID-19 also reported learning efficiency and performances by adopting online learning strategies. The online mode of the teaching-learning process is often discriminatory to poor and marginalized students. It is identified that hearing-impaired students face challenges in online learning.

During this lockdown period, the closing of educational institutions hampered the education system and the teaching- learning process. Understanding the teaching-learning process in this crisis period is imperative to design effective interventions for the smooth running of teaching and learning. With this backdrop, the present study aims to identify the learning status, mode of learning, and problems related to study during this lockdown amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Platforms for online classes, materials sharing, and evaluation and positive impact of COVID-19 on education: 

The initiation or conducting digital teaching by teachers using various digital platforms during this lockdown period due to COVID-19 indicates the continuation of the teaching-learning process in this critical situation. University Grant Commission (UGC) and the Higher Education Department of West Bengal instructed to the academic institutions to continue the teaching-learning process through digital platforms.

 

In such a situation, teachers are informing their students to participate in digital classes. It is found that the students were using various platforms for e-lectures, study material sharing and learning evaluation, such as the Zoom app, Team link, YouTube live, Skype, Google meets/hangout, Google classroom, WhatsApp, etc. Indian education system got the opportunity for transformation from traditional system to a new era. The following points may be considered as the positive impacts.

 

 

1. Move towards Blended Learning:

Covid-19 has accelerated adoption of digital technologies to deliver education. Educational institutions moved towards blended mode of learning. It encouraged all teachers and students to become more technology savvy. New ways of delivery and assessments of learning opened immense opportunities for a major transformation in the area of curriculum development and pedagogy. It also gives access to large pools of learners at a time. 

 

 

2. Rise in use of Learning Management Systems: 

Use of learning management systems by educational institutions became a great demand. It opened a great opportunity for the companies those have been developing and strengthening learning management systems for use educational institutions. 

3. Enhance the use of soft copy of learning material: 

In lockdown situation students were not able to collect the hard copies of study materials and hence most of the students used of soft copies materials for reference.

 

4. Improvement in collaborative work:

There is a new opportunity where collaborative teaching and learning can take on new forms. Collaborations can also happen among faculty/teachers across the world to benefit from each other.

 

5. Rise in online meetings: 

The pandemic has created a massive rise in teleconferencing, virtual meetings, webinars and e conferencing opportunities.

 

6. Enhanced Digital Literacy: 

The pandemic situation induced people to learn and use digital technology and resulted in increasing the digital literacy. 

 

7. Improved the use of electronic media for sharing information: 

Learning materials are shared among the students easily and the related queries are resolved through e-mail, SMS, phone calls and using different social Medias like WhatsApp or Facebook. 

8. World wide exposure: 

Educators and learners are getting opportunities to interact with peers from around the world. Learners adapted to an international community.

 

9. Better time management: 

Students are able to manage their time more efficiently in online education during pandemics.

 

10. Demand for Open and Distance Learning (ODL): 

During the pandemic situation most of the students preferred ODL mode as it encourages self-learning providing opportunities to learn from diverse resources and customized learning as per their needs. 

Problems related to study during the lockdown and it's negative impact on education: 

In this lockdown period, it was reported that learners were mostly suffering from stress, depression, and anxiety. The students were also facing problems related to poor internet connectivity followed by the absence of a favorable environment to study at home. Students residing in rural and remote areas may face poor internet connectivity. Moreover, poor economic conditions might be a reason for the unfavorable environment and lack of separate room for their study. It should be mentioned that the online learning process is often discriminatory.

Our study also found that many students face enormous challenges in e-learning and a substantial proportion of students could not attend online classes. Students from remote areas and marginalized sections mainly denied online learning due to the lack of electricity and poor internet connectivity. Poverty further exacerbates the problem of the digital learning process in this unwanted crisis period. Education sector has suffered a lot due to the outbreak of COVID-19. It has created many negative impacts on education and some of them are as pointed below: 

 

 

1. Educational activity hampered: 

Classes have been suspended and exams at different levels postponed. Different boards have already postponed the annual examinations and entrance tests. Admission process got delayed. Due to continuity in lockdown, student suffered a loss of nearly 3 months of the full academic year of 2020-21 which is going to further deteriorate the situation of continuity in education and the as students would face much difficulty in resuming schooling again after a huge gap.

 

 

2. Impact on employment: 

Most of the recruitment got postponed due to COVID-19 Placements for students may also be affected with companies delaying the on board of students. Unemployment rate is expected to be increased due to this pandemic. In India, there is no recruitment in Govt. sector and fresh graduates fear withdrawal of their job offers from private sectors because of the current situation. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s estimates on unemployment shot up from 8.4% in mid-March to 23% in early April and the urban unemployment rate to 30.9%. When the unemployment increases then the education gradually decreases as people struggle for food rather than education.

 

 

3. Unprepared teachers/students for online education:

 Not all teachers/students are good at it or at least not all of them were ready for this sudden transition from face to face learning to online learning. Most of the teachers are just conducting lectures on video platforms such as Zoom, Google meet etc. which may not be real online learning without any dedicated online learning platform. 

Suggestions: 

India should develop creative strategies to ensure that all children must have sustainable access to learning during pandemic COVID-19. The Indian policies must include various individuals from diverse backgrounds including remote regions, marginalized and minority groups for effective delivery. Immediate measures are required to lessen the effects of the pandemic on job offers, internship programs, and research projects.

Many online learning platforms offer multiple programs on the same subjects with different levels of certifications, methodology and assessment parameters. So, the quality of programs may differ across different online learning platforms. Therefore, establishment of quality assurance mechanisms and quality benchmark for online learning programs must be developed and offered by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in India keeping in view of rapid growth of the online learning platforms.

Across the globe, Indian traditional knowledge is well known for its scientific innovations, values and benefits to develop sustainable technologies and medicines and this knowledge systems in different fields should be integrated with a present-day mainstream higher education system. Government and educational institutes should plan to continue the educational activities maintaining social distancing. 30-40% students and teachers may attend schools/colleges in two shifts per day to carry on educational activities by obeying guidelines for COVID-19.

At current times, access to technology and internet is an urgent requirement. So, the digital capabilities and the required infrastructure must reach to the remotest and poorest communities to facilitate the students to continue their education during the pandemics. There is a need to deploy public funds to fix the internet gap and ensure that students continue to learn digitally.

The state governments and private organizations should come up with ideas to address this issue of digital education. Some significant issues associated with distance learning strategies like the availability and access to digital devices with internet connectivity, the need for safe learning spaces, creating capabilities for teachers, families and students to operate and navigate digital devices, and engaging lesson plans for disabled students and other marginalized groups should be addressed by Government and the stakeholders. 

Conclusion: 

COVID-19 has impacted immensely to the education sector of India. Though it has created many challenges, various opportunities are also evolved. The Indian Govt. and different stakeholders of education have explored the possibility of Open and Distance learning (ODL) by adopting different digital technologies to cope up with the present crisis of COVID-19.

India is not fully equipped to make education reach all corners of the nation via digital platforms. The students who aren’t privileged like the others will suffer due to the present choice of digital platforms. But universities and the government of India are relentlessly trying to come up with a solution to resolve this problem. The priority should be to utilize digital technology to create an advantageous position for millions of young students in India. It is need of the hour for the educational institutions to strengthen their knowledge and Information Technology infrastructure to be ready for facing COVID-19 like situations. Even if the COVID-19 crisis stretches longer, there is an urgent need to take efforts on maximum utilization of online platforms so that students not only complete their degree in this academic year but also to get ready for the future digital oriented environment. The concept of “work from home” has greater relevance in such pandemic situation to reduce spread of COVID-19.

India should develop creative strategies to ensure that all children must have sustainable access to learning during pandemic COVID-19. The Indian policies must include various individuals from diverse backgrounds including remote regions, marginalized and minority groups for effective delivery of education. As online practice is benefitting the students immensely, it should be continued after the lockdown. Further detailed statistical study may be undertaken to explore the impact of COVID-19 on education system of India.