Effect of pandemic based online education on teaching and learning system

Coronavirus outbreak mediated pandemic impacted most of the sectors globally. This includes the academic world that consists of millions of enrolled learners and active teachers who previously had regular classes in their institutions, and due to the pandemic, got stuck at the home. To continue the education process, the online class was introduced in most of the countries, including India. In this mode, both teaching and learning happen through electronic devices which are relatively new to the entire teaching-learning community. This study aimed to understand how online classes had fared for the teachers and students in India. Besides, it tried to understand the users’ experience and the unique set of challenges that this mode of education brings.Four separate questionnaires were created for school students, school teachers, college students, and college professors. The questions inquired about various aspects of online classes such as setting up online education at home, knowledge transfer, comfort, evaluation, and future aspects. The questionnaires were circulated electronically as google forms. The responses were received from the teachers (school teachers and college professors considering all courses) and learners (school and college students considering all courses) of various educational institutions across the country. The data was compiled and the results were discussed in two ways, firstly, the perspectives of teaching versus the learning group and secondly, school versus college groups on online versus regular classes. Though online training/distance education is practiced for a long time, the research on the mentioned aspects was limited. This study is the first of its kind which reflects the merits and demerits of the new-normal online education from home in the compiled voice of teachers and learners group in India. The study addresses the participant’s compliments and grievances of online education compared to regular classes. This further enlightens how to improve the technologies to make them use more efficiently. Besides, this study gives a proper framework to modify or create educational policies, laws, and schemes to obtain equal access to resources for all.     

Notes on a Crisis: The Pandemic and English Schools

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic has created global disruption in education. It has served to highlight pre-existing inequalities, at the same time as it has stimulated new forms of educational provision, notably ‘online learning’. This article focuses on the debates and conflicts provoked by the pandemic’s impact on schooling in England. It aims to show how the historic policy preferences of Conservative governments have been carried forwards into a new situation and suggests how such preferences are at odds with ways of working developed by teachers. It places these different orientations in a broader European context and identifies a common tendency to evoke a meaning of teaching represented as at odds with the policy choices that have characterised government response to the pandemic.     

Agile and adaptive governance in crisis response: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

Countries around the world have had to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak with limited information and confronting many uncertainties. Their ability to be agile and adaptive has been stressed, particularly in regard to the timing of policy measures, the level of decision centralization, the autonomy of decisions and the balance between change and stability. In this contribution we use our observations of responses to COVID-19 to reflect on agility and adaptive governance and provide tools to evaluate it after the dust has settled. Whereas agility relates mainly to the speed of response within given structures, adaptivity implies system-level changes throughout government. Existing institutional structures and tools can enable adaptivity and agility, which can be complimentary approaches. However, agility sometimes conflicts with adaptability. Our analysis points to the paradoxical nature of adaptive governance. Indeed, successful adaptive governance calls for both decision speed and sound analysis, for both centralized and decentralized decision-making, for both innovation and bureaucracy, and both science and politics.