Possibilities and Challenges of Online Education in India During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

Since the first COVID-19 case reported in India on 30^th Jan 2020, the country has seen 44,22,021 confirmed cases, 34,39,814 recovered cases, and 74,484 death cases (MoHFW (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, n.d.), as on 9^th Sep 2020). Starting from 25^th March 2020, the Government has imposed four consecutive lockdowns which spanned over 61 days and currently it is being withdrawn phase by phase. India operates mainly in semester education system for undergraduate and post graduate programs. At the time of starting lockdown, most of the programs were at the mid of the semester, thus the last semester was completed in a hurried unstructured way with mix of different online strategies, mostly using E-mail and WhatsApp. Now, the current semester has just begun and the teachers have got ample opportunity for planning and developing learning contents. Therefore, a suitable learning platform selection is currently the top priority for all the Colleges and Universities.

The selection of appropriate Learning platform must be driven by the fact that the pedagogy must be shifted from teacher-centric education to learner-centric education (Sathish et al., n.d.). It is evident from different studies that COVID-19 lockdowns have an adverse effects on the education sector and Indian students particularly from remote areas and marginalized sections are facing enormous challenges related to unavailability of smart-phone and computers, poor internet bandwidth, and unfavorable study environment at home(Kapasia et al., 2020)(Sintema, 2020). Therefore, there is always a need for Government intervention to set up a uniform academic plan for the universities and colleges regarding online education during this COVID-19 lockdown. A contingency plan is required to deal with any possible discrimination among aspiring students for online education (Bao, 2020). However, online education is not new in India. Some universities successfully run ‘dual mode’ programs using common MOOC implementations (Farrow, 2019).Many Universities have also brought in courses from SWAYAM online platform into the curriculum to enhancing outcome based learning(Indian National Commission for Cooperation With UNESCO Response to COVID 19, n.d.). On the other hand, some Universities provides e-Learning through LMS where focus is on assisting teachers in the management of their course, developing quality content, providing hands-on experience to strengthen skills, and arranging live and interactive sessions for question-answers and doubt clearance(Phutela & Dwivedi, 2020)(Ouadoud et al., 2016). With the reduced cost and enhanced quality of ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) based e-learning tools and virtual classrooms, more and more Institutions are now offering courses on online platform(Aberdour, 2011). The sudden compulsion due to COVID-19 lockdown has now triggered the search for selecting appropriate e-learning platforms for colleges and Universities many of whom are not even ready for online education. Institutes also need to be aware of their ability to continuously monitor the quality of the learning contents and students’ outcome (Crawford et al., 2020).

Considering the above scenario, this paper investigates the possibilities of starting online education in India using popular e-learning platforms. The author has considered only the free platforms for virtual classroom and online meetings. Though all of the products discussed here, have a commercial version which includes paid features, those are not included in this study. Only the essential features are discussed here which are the minimum requirements for starting online classes.

Figure 1.

A generic framework for e-Learning platform