The struggle of students during the ongoing pandemic and e-learning

By Bishaldeep Kakati

The success rate of any nation is more often than not determined by taking into account many factors like its economy, employment rate, infrastructural progress, etc and also the number of literate people that reside in that nation. And when we talk of literacy that is where education has a key role to play in terms of the escalating development graph of a nation.

Nelson Mandela quoted, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Human civilization since its inception has always given due importance to the ideas of knowing and learning more and more crucial and pivotal things. The ever so curious human psyche has thus been successful in discovering a huge number of things travelling from the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age to the 21st-century era of speed and digitalization. In this entire period, living beings either gathered knowledge from the practical observations or happenings around them or at a later stage, via the recorded or scripted versions of the same information.

If we then carry our ambit of discussion to Hindu mythology, we can clearly remember how education was imparted to the people via “Gurukuls”, religious scriptures, Vedas or even via the folklores that traveled from one generation to another. According to Hindu Law, the sources of law or important information came in the form of Shruti (those things that were told to the saints by the almighty), Smriti (the things that were remembered by the Saints), Commentaries (the things that were told by the saints to the people after remembering what was told to them by the almighty) and Customs. But what remained constant from then till now, is the process of imparting education in the most convenient way possible realizing the importance of it in changing human lives. Hence it can be rightly said, “Education is the ray of light that mould and brighten our life span.”

Conventional methods of learning and teaching

Learning as we all know is a never-ending process and it can be either done by self-study or assessment or by the process of teaching in various places like schools, colleges, universities, etc. If we speak of India, its education process started way back in the 10th century, but modern universities as an official form started operating from the 20th century. Long back, India was the center point of education, where the nation attracted many students from all over the world to universities like Nalanda University, Takshshila University, etc. The Vedas and the Puranas too played a crucial role in the process of imparting education.

Pictures still float in our minds, where in earlier times education was imparted to the students in Gurukuls. People also clearly remember the scenes of a teacher teaching his students in a comfortable location, where the students are not required to face the consequences of tremendous heat or occasional rainfall. From there, the process of learning and teaching moved to the classrooms, with white blackboards and chalk pencil or whiteboard or marker. With the advancement of time, concepts like smart classes, e-classes, e-libraries also began to put their impact in the process of imparting education. But currently, in the Indian outlook, the conventional way of a teacher taking classes and imparting education via one-to-one interaction in a classroom is the most adaptable and suitable way irrespective of the many changes that have blessed the education sector.

Ongoing pandemic, e-learning, and the struggle of the students

The Coronavirus pandemic has indeed shaken the world to such an extent, that people initially had no clue how to carry forward their daily lives in a salubrious manner. Like the various sectors, the pandemic had a massive impact in the education sector as well. As soon as the pandemic touched the territory of India, schools and colleges in India were closed immediately for an indefinite period of time, with the students having no clue regarding their academic year or the various ways via which quality education would be imparted to them. Due to the pandemic, according to UNESCO, 1.53 billion learners out of school and 184 country-wide school closures impacted 87.6% of the world’s total enrolled learners. According to UNICEF monitoring, 134 countries implemented nationwide closures and 38 implemented local closures that impacted about 98.5 percent of the world’s student population. In fact, in India, the nationwide lockdown meant more than 300 million students (from school level to post-graduate level) to stay at their respective homes. Thus, in order to cope up with the devastating effect of coronavirus pandemic upon the students, in terms of education, countries around the globe including India started adopting the various online modes of imparting education, which can be broadly termed as ‘e-learning’

E-learning basically is a technique that uses Information Communication Technology to deliver information or conduct teaching or training from any place at any time. The process of e-learning though already existed amidst the conventional modes of imparting education, but became a household name, especially when the pandemic was at its peak. To ensure social distancing and also the flow of education in a balanced way, most of the educational institutions in the country started opting for doing online classes via various applications like zoom, google meet, etc. The government too did their part in ensuring that no student is bereft of proper online education and learning by ensuring the proper operation of various portals or applications like e-pathshala (developed by NCERT), Shagun portal, National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER), Swayam, Swayam Prabha, etc. In fact, the government of India even gave the citizens of India free access to the National Digital Library (which contains over 3,82,00,000 books and periodicals), so that they can utilize the lockdown period for reading. So, all in all, every effort was made by the government as well as the teachers to ensure that the students are not hampered in a major way in terms of their education amidst the pandemic.

However, the process of imparting education digitally or in short, the process of e-learning didn’t turn out to be hassle-free for the students. In reality, the students had to face many predicaments while dealing with the process of e-learning. Most of the students of India are acquainted with the process of classroom teaching, which meant that the online classes couldn’t meet their basic requirements of understanding topics or clearing doubts in a convenient way. In fact, the biggest barrier that the students had to face while doing the online classes was poor internet connectivity that existed in most parts of the country. Current estimates show that out of India’s 1.2 billion population only 600 million are connected to the Internet, mostly via smartphones. The poor internet connectivity, thus meant that most of the students could not gain the proper advantage of the online classes or the various portals and facilities that the government undertook. Added to this, most of the students of the country belonged to the financially weaker sections of the society, as a result of which most of them didn’t have a laptop or a smartphone to access the online classes. The failure to do the online classes also resulted in students from various states of the country like Kerala, Assam, etc to commit suicide. The situation got further worsened when a report from the Ministry of Home Affairs stated that the application “Zoom” was not safe to organize video conferencing. The same Zoom Application that was used by the teachers to conduct the online classes. So along with issues like lack of smartphones or computers, proper internet connectivity, the students also had to deal with issues like personal security. Most of the teachers were also found to share PDFs or notes with the students regarding important topics without proper explanation. This process no doubt reduced the burden of the teachers to complete the syllabus, but the plight of the students further increased, as they had to memorize things and concepts without knowing or understanding in depth the topics included in their syllabus. Therefore, the students undertaking the online classes or the process of e-learning had to face a lot of issues and troubles which is evident not only from the discussion done above but also from a survey that is given below.

Survey done in the state of Assam

For the present study, 259 Samples have been collected through a closed questionnaire method with an online mode of the survey. The survey reveals that 36.8% of the students’ community have opined that the online mode of teaching was helpful in the process of imparting education. On the other hand, the majority of the students i.e. 63.2% believe that online classes were simply not enough in the process of imparting formal education.

Suggestions

The coronavirus pandemic has indeed shown many loopholes in the online mode of imparting education or e-learning. The ground reality is that many people in India still do not have proper access to computers or smartphones in order to extract complete benefit out of the online classes or the online mode of imparting education. Unfortunately, the internet infrastructure in India is not satisfactory either, that students or teachers living in various parts of the country can carry forward the online education without experiencing any kind of predicament or dilemma. But if in the near future, a shift is required to be made from offline mode of imparting education to e-learning mode then the government must consider doing these vital activities at the earliest:

• The government should ensure that almost all the teachers and students involved in educational institutions must possess a smartphone at least, if not computers. For ensuring this, the government should try manufacturing smartphones at cheap rates which can be afforded by all.
• The government has continuously focused on the concept of ‘Digital India.’ In order to achieve that endeavour, and make e-learning a reality in the true sense, the government should focus on improving internet connectivity and infrastructure not only in the metropolitan areas but also in the most remote areas of the country.
• A considerable amount of India’s economy is allocated to the defense sector. But the government should now make a shift in the thought process, and make notable decisions to allocate a significant amount of the budget to the education sector as well, so as to make the education sector more flexible and robust.
• The government should make digital libraries, archives, information-based portals open and accessible to all the students and teachers so that it too can facilitate in the process of gathering of knowledge and imparting education in the most convenient way possible.
• For the greater benefit of both the students and the teachers, each institution should be enriched with Digital Subscriber Line, Cable Modem, Fiber, Wireless, Satellites, Broadband over Powerlines (BPL), etc whichever is easy and possible.

The sudden outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has made a catastrophic impact in all the sectors be it health, education, economy, etc, including the lives and livelihood of the common people. The adverse effects of this outbreak was significantly felt in the education sector as well, where teachers and students were compelled to shift to e-learning, going astray from the conventional mode i.e. offline mode of imparting education. Although the online mode of taking classes and imparting education or e-learning can be an option at times of adversity, however from the above discussion and findings it is clear that online classes can never be the best alternative for offline classes. The lack of proper digital infrastructure in most of the regions of India is the greatest barrier in the path of e-learning. Thus, this pandemic has made both the teachers and the student’s fraternities realize the fact that the age-old method of imparting education by taking classes in educational institutions is the best method of promulgating education.

(The author is a lawyer and a socio-political commentator)