ONLINE EDUCATION – An Advanced or Futile attempt during Covid-19 Lockdown?

A 13 year old student studying in class 8 lives in a rented single-room with his parents, only to pursue his school-class education in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh , originally hailing from a nearby village 'Dhankher'.

His father works as a mechanic in a car service center but after the imposition of lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus he was fired by his employer and had no option but to return to his village in order to get his family a two time meal.
Consequently after the imposition of lockdown, the teen was asked by the school teachers to join a WhatsApp group and also to attend the touted highly skill developing exciting "Online Education classes".
This left the boy with hardly any option but to deal with much agony and grief of not being able to attend his classes which he anyhow managed to attend pre-lockdown.
Why was he not able to attend the classes like his other friends on Zoom, Google meet or any other video conferencing and learning apps and software? What made him fell to agony and suffering?
This is where the pessimistic factors like grim inequalities of technological and socio-economic divide comes into play and hence made this boy be left out of the school, as his father did not own and was not in a position to afford a smartphone having exemplary space for any such applications to work.
Myriads of students are witnessing this problem or tragedy of inequality like this teenager boy but still, one needs to re-visit the question of proficiency of online education.

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The Emergence of a deadly pandemic, COVID-19 has adversely impacted every nation irrespective of its economic, social and political presence. Each sector of the economy is facing a depressing recession due to a complete or severe lockdown. Education sector is one aspect experiencing closure of schools and universities in response to the challenges and is trying well to come out with less devastation after this pandemic subsides.

In ,India, being a young nation with around 28% of total population in the age group of 0-14 years, it is necessary to provide and equip children in this age group with quality education. The focus of education is always based on three basic parameters; Accessibility, Equity and Quality. But, this pandemic has forced the educators to switch to the online teaching platforms devoid of these parameters in the current Indian educational scenario.

After analysing varied perspective towards online education what it seems is; over the years, education in India has changed its form. Right from Gurukul days, where theoretical knowledge was necessarily backed-up with practical experiences to modern cramming and exam centric approach. And off-late we have been witnessing the re-emergence of the need of practical application, of learning in order to make the process more comprehensive, exhaustive and meaningful.,, Then, comes the world of technology driven education and learning which is the ultimate outcome of the Covid-19 lockdown.

According to ,Educational Statistics at A Glance (ESAG) Report, 2018 the overall enrollment of students in Elementary classes, Secondary classes, Senior Secondary classes and Higher Education in 2015-16 are 196717, 39145, 24735, 34585 (in thousand) respectively. These figures say it all, and hence technology had to come into play. Online education and learning had to be put in place.

What do we mean by Online Education?

If I had to define Online or Digital Education I would say Online Education is an education backed up by technology, which provides us the facility to access any form of learning from anywhere, anytime through internet. 

It is a way forward to classroom education with a bevy of benefits. 

• It provide students with competency based learning to consequently allow them to attain transferrable skills.  
  
•  It provides a tenable platform for skill development and advancement which is a key to career build-up. 
  
•  More importantly, to be adaptive to the highly digitizing work environment of competitive economies, online learning would make students familiar for the same.
  
•  Research by scholars suggest that the retention capacity of  students improve over E-learning platforms.

On the same hand, If we look into deeper insights, though Internet has made life much easier and flexible but when we talk of Online Education, it has its own limitations and challenges.

•  For some affordability of a smartphone, for some internet accessibility and for some increase in screen time is an issue.
• According to key indicators of Household Social Consumption on Education in India reports, based on 2017-18 National Sample Survey, less than 15% of rural Indian households have internet ( as opposed to 42% in urban households) and mere 13% of male and 8.5% of female could use Internet. In a country like India, all of this leads to a pressing concern of Digital divide.
  
• Then, Courses like Agriculture, Dental, Pharmacy, Medicine, Engineering etc. are missed out due to inclusion of laboratory plus practical work.
• Other obstacle under online classes is faced by visually impaired and mentally challenged students who does not benefit even a %  due to unavailability of services of sign language experts and Braille study material.
• Classroom education has always offered solidarity in face of stage fears, social anxiety, discrimination and voluntary association that lie outside the purview of family, economy and state which is obviously out of the context of online education.
• Additionally, seriousness and sincerity for online classes amongst teachers and students has been severely lacking. People have always seen classroom as an essential laboratory.
  
• Even parents face serious problems like not being a tech-savvy, being uncomfortable with the technology. So, all this has led to criticism for a much awaited technological advancement in the field of education.

But overall, responding to this unprecedented crisis, online learning has emerged out to be a solution to continue with engaged learning process between educators, teachers and students. Also, when we talk of online classes and digital education we basically mean online in combination with offline education. Hence, Online Education can act as a supplement to the traditional education system and but not as a replacement. As, the current system is not only discriminatory to poor and rural households but also deviates attention of state from real motive behind education. In a nutshell, it leads to the dilution of the meaning of education.

 

It's the prime time to understand, India has just started with digital education and  it will take some time to adapt to it and with time, all these challenges listed above will turn into opportunities making online education accessible and affordable with improved quality. However, with the ever increasing global ed-tech investment even before CoVid-19 struck, online learning which came as a panacea for this crisis times is increasingly seen as a new paradigm in education.This online learning could be a catalyst to create a new and more effective method of educating students albeit supplemented with the concerted joint efforts of the whole community of NGO's, Government , Teachers and Students.