Student Experience of Online Lectures amidst COVID-19

Abstract:

Amid Covid-19 With nationwide lockdown from 24th march, 2020 all the educational institutions were closed which disrupted the academic year, canceled classes and examinations, students across India are using every technological tool available to pursue studies and online teaching mode was adopted by most of the institutions. Higher education is the crucial step regarding the future of young graduates.

Some of the popular tech tools, enabling online learning through audio and video links, include Zoom, Skype, Whatsapp, Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams.

This paper describes the student’s perception of online lectures, difficulties they faced, and awareness of different applications among them. It also describes that whether there is a need for personalization of the education system.

Introduction:

With schools being locked down due to COVID-19, educators across the country are moving to virtual classes using different online teaching software platforms to ensure learning never stops. So that it enables teachers and students to connect over video-enabled remote classrooms and also provides a host of interactive and collaborative tools on a single platform.

Previously to conduct online courses contents preparation and use of modern teaching technology like Video, audio and mixed, to connect the content with students was used and institutions like IIT’s have such educational technology infrastructure to run online courses like e.g., NPTEL, the technical version of SWAYAM. Teachers are also preparing their teaching lessons by using online platforms. Extra efforts are required for converting offline courses to make it online in the current situation. Thus, it is seen that, teachers have started teaching and delivering online lectures making use of this opportunity and taking advantage of the online course.

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Transfer of knowledge through online classes

The main reason for the success of online courses is the student’s engagement. The knowledge component is more natural to deliver in online mode. The transfer of skills through online mode must be dependent on the content to be taught. In case while conducting a scientific testing practical in a lab, an online mode could be very challenging. Conducting a lab-based experiment may not be feasible, but skill-based courses also can be addressed.

Some of the main aspects for learning and teaching are:

1. Concern for learning
2.  Communication with students
3.  Consideration of being flexible
4.  Consistency and follow up

This shows that communication plays important role in the teaching-learning process. Multiple communication modes are used for creating email groups, informing students . Social media like WhatsApp, Telegram app, and using other web-based live video conferencing platforms like Zoom, WebEx and teaching webs like Moodle, Google Classrooms are also used.

Recording lectures in front of the camera and on a  mobile phone camera, at home and sharing it among students is also done. The future of online teaching should be well structured and accessible. There is a great potential for an  online teaching model for a resource-crunched country like India and a personal tool for the  self-development of teachers. Thus teachers have to develop and be upgraded to use technological advancements in teaching.

Literature Review:

The studies do show that, the situation is a concern for higher education students who are more vulnerable on account of their more unstable condition. A disruption of their time has been  brought on by this crisis, can intensify their vulnerable condition and force them to drop out, and perpetuate a situation of segregation as a result of the discrimination which is characteristic of the higher education system in the regions of India. This inequity can thus result in  high dropout and incompletion rates in higher education students. It is studied that in Latin America, on average, only half of the people between 25 and 29 years who were enrolled for studies did not complete their studies, either due to leaving or because they are still studying. Of those who drop out, half do so in the first year of their career (Ferreyra, Avitabile, Botero Álvarez, Haimovich Paz, & Urzúa, 2017).

Due to the loss of social contact and class studying routines that are part of the daily experience of a higher education student will significantly change. The isolation due to infection, that is inevitably associated with confinement will have effects in terms of socioemotional balance which will have an impact, particularly on those students with pre-existing problems. The more vulnerable students participating in qualifying and remedial programs will be barely hit by isolation. A survey conducted during the last week of March among higher education students in the United States shows, that 75% have said that they have experienced anxiety and depression as a result of the crisis.

Currently, only delays have been announced because the long period of suspension of face-to-face classes is not yet anticipated, so it will be necessary to closely monitor the development of this situation, which is, for now, extremely unpredictable. Finally, it is important to anticipate the situation in which the groups of students who will graduate in 2020 or even 2021 will find themselves having to face difficulty in payment of their loans and university credits, in this depressed market because of the crisis. Studies also anticipate a considerable decrease in the income of fresh graduates due to the crisis (Sanz, Sáinz, & Capilla, 2020).

The old-style formulas of distance education, where the teacher continues to teach a regular class that is broadcast live and can be retrieved on a delayed basis, seem to be the most appreciated by students as they can best reproduce the dynamics to which they are used. Due to the radical changes in operating rules the students are required to come out of their comfort zone without any prior training are less cherished because, for quite different reasons, undergraduates tend to be more conservative than might be thought or be less prepared to change modes (Watts, 2016). But the postgraduate students are more adaptable , in this sense, open to participatory methodologies which require a greater degree of interaction between themselves and the faculty. Thus assuming continuity of teaching activities, students will have to achieve the learning objectives designed for the course. The existing research leaves no room for doubt in this regard and confirms that, in principle, the results should be even, particularly if the duration is short (Yen, Lo, Lee, & Enriquez, 2018); but the variables involved are many and the contexts are very different to assume the situation in the current scenario.

Research Objective:

1. To understand the perception of students regarding online lectures conducted by teachers.
2. To understand the effectiveness of online lectures conducted during the pandemic.
3. To test the awareness of online platforms available for learning.

Research methodology:

In this situation of the pandemic, the teaching methodology has transformed from the conventional, chalk and talk teaching model to the model of using online teaching technology. This change in the delivery of education has created great concern among the policymakers about how to create engagement of mass student community, while creating acceptable inclusive e-learning solutions by tackling the digital gap.

This research paper studies the awareness, perception and effectiveness of online teaching. The data collected for this study is from Surat, Mumbai & Pune regions. A primary survey was done by circulating the goggle form. The questionnaire had a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions with a target sample size of 300 respondents but only 207 respondents were received. The analysis of the response of the respondents is taken into consideration,

Analysis & Interpretation:

Part 1- Descriptive Analysis

• 66.7% of respondents were male, 32.9% respondents were female and o.4% preferred not to say.
• 26.1% – age group 16-20 years, 66.2% – age group 21-25 years, 7.7% above 25 years.
• About 84.5% of respondents agreed that their institution has started conducting online lectures.
• 15.5% of respondents said disagreed that their institution has not started conducting online lectures.
• 96.6% of respondents were aware of various applications where online lectures can be conducted.
• 70.5% of respondents were in Post Graduation, 27.5% of respondents were completing them Under Graduation & 2% respondents were in diploma, Government exam preparation.

Part 2 – Inferential Analysis

Interpretation: Most of the respondents were aware of the Zoom platform, though it was not a safe platform declared by the Ministry Of Home Affairs. The Cisco Webex was seen popular after zoom. Most of these platforms have a limit of up to 100 participants and are almost free till September, 2020.

Interpretation: 181 participants were seen to be using smartphones while attending their online lectures with laptops used by some of them.

Interpretation: With Artificial intelligence increasing and most of the reading materials, books available online, maximum numbers of respondents were not comfortable with reading online.

Interpretation: With Edtech companies increasing in the world, most of the respondents of the Millennials agree with classroom lectures to be more effective than online lectures. The classroom teaching consists of personal touch for students.

Interpretation: Most of the respondents were found neutral regarding  any distractions they face but 98 respondents out of 207 agreed that they faced distractions during online lectures.

Interpretation: Most of the respondents faced network issues during online lectures as we know that the  internet bandwidth of our country is relatively low compared to others nations and some of the respondents were in rural areas during this pandemic situation. External noise and Concentration were also seen as distractions for the students. As we saw in the  above figure that most of the respondents preferred  smartphones for attending lectures, notifications from different applications were also causing distractions.

Interpretation: The disadvantage of online lectures is,the  mentor cannot monitor the students if the  video is off. In such situations most of the respondents said they attend the lecture for attendance purposes; even maybe sometimes. Only 29% of  respondents were attending lectures just not for attendance.

Interpretation: Respondents were neutral regarding the submission of assignments online in goggle classrooms and also on the  effectiveness of communication with their teachers.

Interpretation: Respondents agreed that their internship programs were highly affected and they fear  job opportunities during the phase of a pandemic. Many respondents agreed that the classroom teaching method seems to be driven by technology and neutral behavior of respondents with the comfortableness of online assessments.

Interpretation: The graph indicates the time spent on different activities during the Lockdown situation in the country. It shows most of them invested their time in learning new skills, following their passion & self learning.

Interpretation: 53.6% of respondents agreed that enabling technology is related to the personalization of education.

Interpretation: very few respondents preferred to attend lectures on study tables during the online mode of education.

Interpretation: Most of the respondents agreed that we need to form different strategies to manage the crisis in the long run and a need to build a resilient Indian education system.

Conclusion:

All countries globally to keep the education process going, have created various solutions during the pandemic. Like online study material, libraries, TV broadcasts, video lectures, online channels were also introduced in some countries. To increase the coverage of the school lessons to the population, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia, in cooperation with Georgian Public Broadcaster’s First Channel has launched the educational project titled – “Teleskola” a School on TV. In which a live transmission of lessons is broadcasted through the TV channel on different subjects nationwide. A platform supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sport which has hosted the thematic resources based on the national curriculum. (UNESCO 2020, National Learning Platforms and tools).

To estimate the quality and impact of online learning needs future study. Currently it cannot be estimated the details of quality assurance of the online teaching method, as the main goal is to save the education process and continue it in any possible format to complete the academic term of the courses. The statistics that are published are measured based on the first week of the online teaching process and are important to be compared to the other weeks and total semester. The information on grades to be given can be calculated by comparing to previous classes conducted face-to-face and next year classes conducted to get the comparative results. The teaching methodologies have to be explored and improved taking into consideration the situation, including the available tools and platforms used for teaching. When changing to online education, the country needs to estimate how successful are the processes used for the whole country or the world and the efficiency of teachers and adaptability of students to online teaching technology.

Bibliography:

1. Transition to Online Education in Schools during a SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic in Georgia Giorgi Basilaia 1 *, David Kvavadze 1 1Business and Technology University, Tbilisi, GEORGIA Corresponding Author: [email protected] Citation: Basilaia, G., & Kvavadze, D. (2020). Transition to Online Education in Schools during a SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic in Georgia. Pedagogical Research, 5(4), em0060. https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/7937
2. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/teaching-during-covid-19-lockdown-coping-up-with-online-classes-and-excelling-1675013-2020-05-06
3. http://www.iesalc.unesco.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID-19-EN-090420-2.pdf
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