A Study on Online Teaching and Learning Amid COVID-19 Pandemic in India

The outburst of the COVID-19 has proved to be one the noxious pandemic in the history of human civilization, irrespective of who’s rich or poor. The world-wide impacts are severe and we need to take immediate action. Covid-19 was originated in China and now it has captured entire world. Most of the countries announced lockdown to prevent further spread of corona infection. Due to lockdown almost all social and economic activities along with traditional education got affected and it compelled all school and colleges to shift from offline education to online education system. In India, government has taken several initiatives to provide online education to students from class 1 to post graduation through many ways including use of TV channels or different websites. No doubt online education is need of the hour and current situation where maintaining social distance is essential, the importance of online education cannot be ignored. Through online education we can achieve both objectives i.e., maintaining social distance as well as continuity in learning. Online education market is getting space in India but still some improvement is necessary to make online learning more effective and efficient. We need to consider problems faced during online teaching and learning before relying on it completely. In this paper, the role of online learning in COVID-19 times, various government initiatives for online education and different challenges encountered in the online education system are being discussed.