Online education is ineffective is providing any actual education in India, says a study conducted by Azim Premji University across 5 states, 26 districts and 1,522 schools.
The study, titled “Myths of Online Education”, said that about 60 percent of the respondents who were enrolled in government schools said that they could not access online education.
The study also found that lack of access to smartphones for individual or shared use was the most common reason for children not being able to attend online classes.
Impact on Students
It was noted that children with disabilities find it more difficult to participate in online classes. 90 percent of the teachers who work with children with disabilities said that their students could not attend online classes.
90 percent parents of students of government schools were also willing to send their children back to school, given that their safety is taken care of. 70 percent said that online classes were ineffective and did not help their child.
More than 80 percent teachers said that they could not maintain an emotional connect with their students and 90 percent felt that no meaningful evaluation was possible in such a set-up.
Teachers Find It Difficult to Cope
The study further said that less than 75 percent teachers spend less than an hour a day with students of a certain grade.
The teachers also reported and students are finding it difficult to complete assignments set during online classes. Only about half the teachers reported that they interacted daily with their students via online classes.
Teachers also reported that they were ill-equipped to teach online. Half the teachers said that their user experience and knowledge of online modes of teaching were not as good as they should be to teach at this scale.
The also flagged the issue of one-way communication between the teacher and the student, which made it difficult to ascertain if the students were understanding what was being taught.
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