Impacts of Online Education in the Development of Indian Students’ during Covid-19 Lockdown Phase: An Experience

Page: 270-272
Tapas Pal1 and Ajoy Sarkar2 (Geography and In-charge of Centre for Differently Abled Persons, Raiganj University, West Bengal1 and Sayedpur Babhan Toli High School, Jhitkia, Uttar Dinajpur2)

Lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic situation had started in India since 24th March 20201 and after that almost two years is going to be passed but it is very difficult to access digital education by the students of India properly though ‘Digital India’1 was launched by Prime Minister of India on 1st July 2015.2 Actually Indian education system is not habituated with online education rather world knows Indian education for Ashram education/Tapoban education (Tagorian model of education) 3 and Gurukula education(ancient Indian education system where shisha living near to guru)4 where environment and students are connected with each other. Lockdown has braked this spiritual connection. Lockdown has insisted the students, teachers, and education system of India access education through digital mode where the morality, ethics, values, creativity, quality, practical knowledge, and field-based project work are affected adversely to some extent. Every corner of India may get the education through digital mode but whether the internet is present in every corner of India, whether all the Indian students have the capacity to buy the android phone and laptop, whether the uninterrupted internet high speed (5G or 10 gigabits per second) 5 is available everywhere, whether the teachers of India are habituated in the online education system, whether the Indian students and teachers access online teaching-learning education ethically, whether the controller of examinations to educational institutions is experienced in conducting digital examinations. So, there is a huge number of confusions are present in our contemporary education system to run digital education completely. Again, based on the last two years’ teaching and evaluation system during a lockdown of the examination, it is experienced that almost all the students give the answers of the questions during online examination based on the pen-book method and they put the questions in google and take the answers from that. Even there are some students who do not write the answer scripts in their own handwriting rather they engage 2nd party to write it. In some cases, teachers do not check answer scripts properly and give marks just based on the roll numbers or names. In some cases, it is again observed that teacher has mistakenly provided the marks though the candidate has sent the answer-scripts in the relevant emails provided by the institution/department. Later when students saw the mark sheet without the marks on a particular paper, he/they fill up the scrutiny form with proper institutional fees, after that they pass the same paper with relevant marks. Now the question is why students will bear extra scrutiny charges due to the fault of the teacher’s careless job during the checking of the answer scripts? Sometimes students join the online examination link to present their assignments but just after starting the presentation candidate leave the link and show the excuse for internet problem. Actually, the candidate has not done the assignment properly, and to hide this truth he/she does this type of malpractice. Thus, the blended learning or hybrid teaching method should be applied to the contemporary Indian education system. Moreover, the concept of ‘Sustainable Thinking’6 must be incorporated in the development of moral education of the students and teachers.