Hriday Arora- A teenager advocating for e-Learning invincibly

The pandemic which has brought the world to a halt was first noted in India on January 27th in Kerala. By mid-March, the country was seething, and the administration imposed stricter guidelines to handle the disease. Among the numerous lifestyle changes brought on by the pandemic was the problem of how to educate. With more strict guidelines in person, schooling wasn’t even an avenue worth pursuing. e-learning was adopted, and the government tried to implement it in their institutes and promote it as the new normal for the foreseeable future. A year later and e-learning is still normal. The first step to implementation was to educate the faculty on the efficient use of e-learning and to help the students to navigate and learn from an online school. However, before even reaching this step many hurdles had to be cleared.

The educational divide in India is closely linked with income disparities. And this pandemic only made it worse. It was virtually impossible to weather the pandemic without government aid if you weren’t financially secure. But in the long run, it gets worse, if you were trying to pursue an education from an insecure background it would have been really difficult to keep up with school. To educate the underprivileged children and to provide them with the tools to access e-learning institutions should have been our priority as without aid their education had come to a stop. The implementation of e-learning in underfunded schools was equally difficult; teaching the faculty on its use and the resources to make effective learning opportunities was a mammoth task.

What if we assume its implementation was smooth, would it still be effective moreover a long-term solution?

I sought to answer this by a public survey in which 96 students participated to answer questions relating to e-learning and how they feel about it. Note ably it was a key formative year for a lot of children as is every other year for 10th and 12th graders and them, this situation was apprehensive and unsure at best.

This survey tries to capture the thoughts of students who are undergoing e-school right now as to how they feel about it. Instead of this to achieve honest responses the student’s identity shall remain anonymous.

Following are the findings of the survey:

• Q. Were e-learning platforms easy to navigate and to use? (It aimed to check if the students were able to adapt to e-learning platforms or not). About half the students agreed it was easy to adapt to and use such platforms while 40% remained neutral. However, 3.1% said they struggled in navigating and using such platforms.

• Q. Was it easy for them to find information on e-learning platforms? (This aimed to find if students struggled to find course work and assignments on such platforms). A little more than half the students agreed that they were able to find the coursework and also learned the ins and outs of the platform after having some time to get accustomed to it.

• Q. Did e-learning make their education more efficient and was it improving on how they felt about attending school. (The question aimed to find what were the effects of e-learning on how much they were learning in a fixed period). A little shy of half of the students was neutral regarding the question which meant they believed it was an equal trade-off between attending school every day and learning online. However, the other half were on the side that e-learning made education more efficient for them.

• Q. How was e-learning affecting their course performance strictly regarding their grades? (The aim was to check if grades this year were higher than anticipated, but other factors such as lenient checking were to be kept in mind while interpreting such data and this data cannot fully be attributed to e-learning’s educational capabilities) It is worth noting that half of the students indicated better academic performance than anticipated or as compared to last year. However, 35% reported grades as anticipated and 15% reported grades below anticipation.

• Q. How did they feel about e-learning in co-relation to their experience of it for the past year? (This aimed to check if students were comfortable with the idea of e-learning as a long-term solution) Half of the students 2/3rd of the students were either comfortable or neutral to the idea of using e-learning for the foreseeable future.

• Q. Using e-learning even when they had the opportunity of in-person learning but in limited numbers with covid precautions. (This aimed to infer how the students felt on the integration of e-learning and in school learning now that such avenues are pursuable). The students were not in the favor of the integration between offline and online learning as they believed it would be hectic but would be willing to pursue it if the educational institute demands so.

e-learning, particularly in poor nations, has been underused in the past. The present COVID-19 epidemic, however, has compelled the whole globe to depend on it for education.

The majority of participants in this research highly agreed with e-learning's usefulness, perceived simplicity of use, and acceptability. Insufficient/unstable internet connection, inadequate computer laboratories, a shortage of computers/laptops, and technical issues were the most significant barriers to e-learning acceptance.

All important factors in e-learning acceptability have to be kept in mind before any conclusion is drawn. It is also worth noting the digital divide in India has hindered learning for rural and underprivileged areas and their responses were not a part of this survey, unfortunately. Their qualms are deserved to be heard but when information is gathered through a resource, they don’t have access to it silences their voice, and buries their problem. While in a time when their health is at serious risk, their education is also put on hold will prove to be a serious problem in the short and long run.

The high school student from Presidium School, Gurugram, Hriday Arora, through his extensive research on e-Learning, has effectively brought to light the importance that digital learning concepts will hold in the future.

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