Is India Ready for Online Teaching?

The change was knocking on door since many years but we in education fraternity were behaving like an Owl-closing eyes to the reality of online education. When world came to a collective halt due to sweeping corona virus, education institutions were the first one to be closed and the way situations are unfolding, for next six months all education institution will probably stay under coronavirus forced closure.

India has the largest population in the world in the age bracket of 4-23 years and UNESCO estimates that about 32 crores students are affected in India, making it one of the worst hit sector by COVID-19 but it has not got the required attention from all quarters including media. The Indian government spends 4.6 percent of its GDP on education which is lower than in sub-Saharan countries like Kenya, Togo, and Zimbabwe. India's all-time blurred focus on education is again clearly visible from the following indicative facts, thereby indicating that despite lot of talk, education still has not got the importance it should have got from different stakeholders:

• Government in the COVID-19 relief package has announced lot of long term visonary plans for online education but has ignored education sector in term of immediate financial support and has left them alone to champion their own survival.
• Education regulators are reactive in their approach rather than being proactive. Rather than issuing clear guidelines are reacting to voices being raised by different staholders like parents, students and education institutions.
• Parents in this ambiguous environment are not willing to pay the fees (even who can afford) and have shown negative aggression towards institutions (specifically private).
• Students habitual of classroom teaching, in this uncertain situation demanding self-dicipline, rather than taking charge of their learning and thinking about the their career ahead are looking for excuses or benefits like promotion to next class without exams.

In April 2020, forced with harsh reality, faculty across the country abruptly transitioned their profession online and made an half-baked but fully motivated attempt using technology to reach out to the students wherever they were through never before used platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams etc. Online teaching became a popular buzzword and appreciation started pouring from all quarters. Education institutions and the Government started making tall claims that they has moved online wasting no time.

The sincere effort of teachers, ensured at least some engagement between faculty and students but can we really call it an online teaching? Is using a web conferencing app - online teaching? Is sitting in front of the laptop or in most cases in front of smart phone and talking to the cold muted microphones - online teaching? Is listing to words like - can you hear me? can you see me? can you see my screen? etc. etc. be termed as online education.

There are myriad challenges to overcome and there is hardly any time for preparation. Some of the challenges that we have closed eyes to are:

1. The educational inequalities between rich and poor learners due to unequal access to affordable internet services and gadgets is deepening. Govt through series of webinars is pushing the agenda of online but has been ignoring the issue of unequal access.
2. Learning new tools for online teaching is not a cakewalk but needs training of teachers on technology to use an optimum mix of synchronous & asynchronous teaching techniques. Institutions need to create opportunities for teachers upskilling and teachers rather than only relying on their institutions must take charge of upgrading their skills. Teachers unwilling to change & learn will be redundant and find their professional survival difficult.
3. Technology infrastructure, such as inconsistent WiFi speed, hight cost of data required to deliver and attend classes, gadget malfunctioning, limited gadgets available at home, which needs to be shared with everyone is also a creating problem. And that’s why online education without adequate infrastructure support cannot replace classroom teaching, at least in present India.
4. Extended screen time is a health hazard for teachers as well as students, given that there are no fixed working hours the exposure to screen is increasing day by day and online teaching has substantially contributed to it. Converting the face to face schedule into online teaching schedule is no solution but institution must think of ways to reducing screen time may be by reducing lecture duration to 40 minutes from an hour.
5. Teaching effectiveness in online teaching is dependent upon technology based innovative pedagogies and for that some basic electronic equipments like earphone, phone tripod, mic etc. are essential items but involves cost on part of faculty as well as students.
6. Teacher was always the king of his/her class but now that control is slowly dying a natural death. Students in an online class with camera off option may make teacher feel helpless by doing something else rather than listening to the teacher.

Education institutions need to quickly have a taskforce (team) in place and immediately put together the right strategic plan to ensure they are not out of the game. Everything done till now has been very encouraging. In coming time, we know online would be critical, but for education institutions to adapt and use it well, and that too so quickly, would be interesting to see. Online teaching is no substitute for regular face-to-face teaching, but institutions cannot just wait to the face-to-face classes to start, the period has to be judiciously utilized and students leaning cannot be made to suffer.

It is too early to tell what next six months will look like and what scale challenges are waiting for us, but one thing I am very sure about is that education institutions and faculty across the country will put their 100% efforts to support their students.