The educational system worldwide is going through a rough patch ever since Covid-19 was officially declared as a pandemic. Due to unknown levels of Coronavirus infectivity, the educational institutions started preferring online classes. India has started using every available virtual domain to promote this safest mode of education. However, blended methods are still in the developmental phases since the shift from traditional education to online modes was an overnight occurrence. Just like traditional education, online education focuses on creating opportunities for students with various aptitudes.

Introduction:

The pandemical crisis has adversely affected more than 1.6 billion learners sprawling across 190 countries. More than 90% of the student population is impacted due to the closures of educational setups. Millions of children and youth may drop out due to abysmal access to educational resources and sporadic availability of significant lectures. As the fiscal pressures rise, the developmental verticals come under strain with finances undermanaged due to lack of proper resources.

How beneficial is online education?

The pervasive influence of the internet and globalized access to the world wide web has generated a good scope for web-based education. The online pedagogy is swiftly infiltrating the educational sheaths replacing the bricks and mortar classes. Distance education involves the educational environment that bestows upon the users an ease of learning beyond the constraints of time and place. Web-based learning techniques may appear distinctly unique and agile specifically in the wake of pandemic and lockdowns. They involve centralized controls and encryptions with almost no need for manual interventions. And therefore, they can enormously benefit a country like India where village and town sprawls are considerably high.

How unique is the web-based pedagogy?

Online instructions are held in various ways based on the need of the hour and other criteria. Virtual education or its environments can be transformed into 3 main groups. They are namely fully web-based, blended or hybrid and traditional programs through web-based supplements.

Fully web-based courses are held completely on the internet with no frontal interactions. Hybrid programs may contain both web-based and classroom sessions with a modifiable degree of time dedicated to both environments. The instructional designers play a crucial role in allotting time to online and classroom session. Teachers and syllabus are the two factors influencing the hybrid programs. The last type of program involves virtual technology to present pedagogic material for classroom studies.

What are the advantages of online education in the pandemics and lockdowns?

We are familiarized with the lockdowns and how pandemics can generate gaps in our routines. Although it wasn’t easy for us to change our lifestyle under lockdowns, all of us became accustomed to managing our lives under the pandemical challenges. Every domain operating our lives changed with occupational and educational domains not being the exceptions.

Most students agree that they spend more time on the concepts that confuse them and less on those they find easy. Thanks to online education and globalized access to the internet. Learners who are readily adjusted through virtual education use cognitive strategies as they accomplish their learning goals. Those who are relatively new to the concept can learn dozens of new skills important in the modern-day scenarios. They may include time management, review of the learning toolkits, introspection and punctuality.

Why are both students and educators attracted more to online education?

Online education gives more time to reflect upon everything we learn apart from offloading our common constraints. We can neither overlook nor overstate the benefit of flexibility in online lectures. The students who prefer domestic or familial environment would love taking their familiarity with online education to a new level. The time wasted on miscellaneous activities like parking, unparking, traffic and roadblocks is effectively utilized with online classes.

Both lecturers and students can employ their unbiased judgments as they are faced with a curricular or pedagogical question. And the place of learning is convenient to both educators and learners thereby increasing the compatibility in all fronts. The ability to record the sessions is an added advantage which becomes readily and equally accessible to everyone involved. Online education bridges heaps of gaps including communicational and distance-related gaps.

Online education is also a way to streamline the course contents more readily than ever before. It’s through online modes that the lecturers get considerable time to standardize every bit of syllabus based on various factors. These factors may include the number of students, weightage of a topic, the scope of a portion, aptitude and skills of a student.

Is digital education the future of India?

It’s easy to interpret as to why digital education is a better choice. The backdrops like pandemics and lockdown make this point fairly evident. The magnitude of wasted time is enormously curtailed with online education due to its virtualized environment. Online education employs software and applications customized on various handheld devices. It regularizes the involvement of instructors, instructional designers, trainers and students. Online education is a way to curb all the possible barriers and replace them with fruitful schedules. Digital education will change the way the curriculums are backed and scheduled in various patterns.

Is India ready for the change? 

Although machine instructions don’t appear to replace the face-to-face lectures, they are speeding up the bilateral feedbacks and regular involvements. The challenges while maintaining the regularity of lectures have created dozens of evolutionary choices for students and lecturers. The activities including adjustment of the school calendar and implementation of a modified curriculum have taken the involvements to various new levels.

So far, we have seen the institutions that facilitate competitions and programs catering to the extracurricular needs. With digital education replacing the classroom lectures, the way we define the academical environment is also changing. The role of technology in allocating digital mediums and earmarking them for an errorfree experience is transforming continuously. The covid-19 has indeed given us a new way to live and transform with challenges of various dimensions and scopes.