2 Disruption of Online Education

Faculties Insight

Disruption of Online Education

Ms. Asha Binu Raj Assistant Professor-OB & HRM, IBS Hyderabad

0 0 0 0

COVID-19 has brought unprecedented changes in the almost all sectors, including education. The pandemic has resulted in closing down of educational institutions across the world. Across the globe, billions of children are now studying f rom home. Due to the impact of COVID-19, a dramatic change is experienced in education sector. As a result, the mode of education has disrupted signif icantly, with a new f ace of e-learning, which has given rise to remotely managed education program through digital platf orms. Though the beginning of year 2020 has witnessed many challenges during the adoption of online learning, and a gradual shif t f rom the traditional classroom learning to the online learning methodology, slowly teachers and students have extensively adapted themselves to the changed new normal situation within f ew months of the COVID-19 period. A sudden transition f rom the traditional learning and teaching to the online mode is still ambiguous under the given circumstances. It remains doubtful among many online educational platforms if it will continue to persist in the post-pandemic period, and if so, how this transition would impact the global education market. For many, it had been a struggle to establish a new system of education and learning management through online platf orms, and for many it had been an opportunity to develop new tools and digital modes of education. Apart f rom the educational institutions, the educational applications and digital platf orms identif ied this as an opportunity to provide services to other institutions in commercial way.

From an academic perspective, we need to equip ourselves with skills to smoothly transit through the present unwarranted situation, and students are also expected to adapt themselves to a greater degree of

online learning, self-learning and capacity building, which are extremely demanding f or the younger generation. From the educational institution’s perspective, replicating a physical classroom pedagogy in an online atmosphere is highly challenging in this context, hence online teaching and learning process need to f ocus on learning psychology among students, learners’/student’s behaviour and most importantly, the methodology adopted to assess the learning ef f ectiveness. In order to respond to the disruption in education, higher education institutions are expected to develop strategies by exploring greater possibilities of ef f ective teaching and learning mechanisms through customized digital learning platf orms, providing proper training if required through digital support to teachers and students, providing consistent e-learning by assessing learner’s interest, reactions and subsequent progress, and establishing a rapport with the learners to ensure student engagement in online environment. The technology mediated learning and digital pedagogy has been highly challenging to deliver results by understanding the learning dynamics. Though, many institutions have succeeded in integrating technology with learning, however, the signif icance of human f actor/personal interaction cannot be ignored or replaced by any digital pedagogy. For the success of virtual platf orms among educators during this pandemic period, a greater cohesiveness is essential among educators, learners/students and parents too. As there had been a growth in the education technology even before COVID-19 period, there has been a signif icant increase in its usage during the pandemic period. The question here is if the post pandemic f uture will witness a new hybrid education model with signif icant benefits, and will this disruption through integration of inf ormation technology in education f urther accelerate in an ef f ective way? Educators need to f ocus on the ef f ectiveness of online learning which depends on various age groups, academic content and the student engagement. Some universities and higher education institutions have been already f ocusing on personalized, f lexible and ef f ective learning through digital means. The pandemic has accelerated this process in dif f erent ways. Does that mean that students in near f uture might opt to choose their higher educational institutions based upon the universities’ existing digital capabilities and their online teaching perf ormance during the COVID-19 pandemic period? One may have to wait f or the post pandemic era also to observe the consequences of this digital disruption in our education system in the near f uture.