E-LEARNING- TEACHING: A NEW AGE CHALLENGES

Abstract

The global spreading of corona virus has drastically changed the sight of the social interaction. The education sector is highly affected by this pandemic situation. One of the first attempts for precaution was the closuring of schools and colleges. This abrupt change is definitely a big challenge for students, teachers, parents. All education related exams has been postponed for an uncertain time schedule. Teaching through e-learning has becomes the new normal. It is keeping everyone busy with worksheets, video lectures, assignments through ICT. The KVS has deployed it’s SWAYAM PRABHA PORTAL. Some institute have adopted the zoom app, Google classroom, and so on to overcome this new challenge. Private edu-tech companies link BYJUS. SCHOOLGURU, EDUPART have been hired. Through the e-learning system, teachers are sharing learning materials in virtual classes. They are uploading various types of documents, e-books, videos to support learning. The school management system also provides a portal for parents that can be accessed from anywhere. Although there are many benefits of e-learning, but it has its own challenges. Lack of peerconnection, absence of opportunities of collaborative learning, teacher supervision and the most important, being lack of opportunities for hands-on-learning in complex subjects such as mathematics and sciences are some of them. From the sociological point of view, the pace of e-learning teaching varies from urban area to semi-urban/rural area because of infrastructure challenges. This study has in brief shown the various challenges, opportunities for the educational institutions. Outlook for the future is uncertain, however education institutions in association with the Government sectors, big private sector enterprises should engage themselves to plan strategies to overcome the challenges discussed in this study. This study is based on qualitative data collected from various e-journals, articles, books, government published online documents, white papers.