Online Teaching During Covid-19: A Study of State Agricultural Universities of Uttarakhand
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Date
2023-05-09
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Abstract
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) had created an unimagined situation all over the world and on 11 March,
2020 WHO officially announced it as the pandemic. Across the world, most schools, colleges, and universities were
closed to control the spread of the COVID-19 which created difficulties for students, families, and teachers to
continuing the education. Therefore, online teaching learning was the only solution to overcome this situation. There
is no doubt that the crisis has accelerated the adoption of technologies to deliver education and will help strengthen
the country’s digital learning infrastructure in the long run. Digital education needs a balanced coordination between
course content, educationists, technology and course-takers but the sudden shift to online teaching without any
planning especially in developing countries like India where the backbone for online teaching- learning was not
ready and the curriculum was not designed for such a format has resulted the many challenges and obstacles for
students & teachers. Therefore, the study was undertaken with following objectives: to study the sociocommunication
and psychological characteristics of respondents, to assess the instructional effectiveness, to study
the attitude of students and teachers, to study the expected changes in educational practices in post-Covid era, to
study the constraints and to find out the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and instructional
effectiveness as perceived by students. The present study was conducted among two SAUs of Uttarakhand and one
college from each university was selected randomly. The descriptive research design was used and sample was
selected randomly by 25 percent of students (both UG &PG) and 50 percent of teachers from each college. Thus, the
final sample comprised of 359 students and 55 teachers. A pre-tested questionnaire was used for data collection and
done by online and offline survey. Appropriate statistical tools such as frequency, percentage, average, standard
deviation, weighted mean, correlation co-efficient and garret ranking were used for the data analysis.
The results of study revealed that majority of UG students (64.89%) were belonged to younger age group
i.e. upto 21 years and PG students (67.91%) were between 21-24 years of age group. Majority of students (62.67%)
were enrolled in undergraduate program and 33.33 were in post graduate degree program. About half of students
(50.70%) had medium academic performance i.e. between 7.00-7.99 CGPA and moderate technological readiness.
Most of students were belonged to rural hill and urban plain area and also had medium ICTs exposure. The learning
style of UG and PG students was different as half of UG students (49.78%) were divergers and 44.03 percent of PG
were convergers. Majority of total students had medium self-confidence and found the online instructions
moderately effective. Majority of students were using smart phone and laptops for online classes and had favorable
attitude towards online teaching. In addition, majority of teachers were male, belonged to young age category i.e.
upto 44 years, had PhD qualification, were assistant professor, belonged to rural plain, had short teaching experience
(upto 13 years) and only 43.64 percent of teachers had received training in ICT. Majority of teachers were having
medium ICT exposure and were using smart phone and computer on daily basis. Regarding satisfaction of faculty
with online teaching, 47.27 percent had low satisfaction and perceived less competent in e-teaching i.e. 45.45
percent. Moreover, maximum numbers of teachers (47.27%) evinced a positive and favorable attitude towards online
teaching and they were having medium to high expectation for changes in educational practices in post COVID era.
Furthermore, the major constraints reported by respondents were disrupted or slow speed of internet,
connectivity problem, irregular classes over online platform, ineffective time management, large size of course
content and class size, lack of satisfaction, health issues, unfamiliarity with new online platform, lack in support
services, lack in students’perfomance evaluation as well as less interaction in online classes. The findings also
highlighted that students’ academic performance and their technological readiness had significant relation with
instructional effectiveness whereas students’ self-confidence and their attitude had highly significant relationship
with instructional effectiveness of online teaching.
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