An Analysis of the Students’ Experience of Online Learning During Covid-19 Across India

The educational system across the world was immensely affected due to outbreak of COVID-19COVID-19 which forced the shutdown of educational institutions. This had an adverse impact on the student community across the globe. COVID-19 required containment and isolation because of its contagious nature. Due to this the personal interaction of teachers and studentsStudents was tremendously affected. In the absence of traditional classroom teaching and one-to-one interaction, computer-based learning or online learningOnline learning emerged as the next best option. With the sudden changeChange in an environment with the new coronavirus, online learning has become a promising solution for the education sectorEducation sector all over the globe. Against such a backdrop, it becomes extremely crucial to study the students’ experiences about online learning systems adopted by the institutions during the ongoing COVID-19COVID-19 pandemic. This study used an online questionnaire to study the constructs affecting students’ perceptions about online learning. The convenient sampling method which was of non-probabilistic type was adopted by the author for this study. A cross-sectional study design was used to obtain the primary data from college and university studentsUniversity students between December 2022 and April 2023. Using snowball sampling the author reached out to respondents across various colleges and universities in India (30 in number). The questionnaireQuestionnaire was administered to only those studentsStudents who have experienced online-classroom learning owing to the COVID-19 pandemicOnline education Covid-19 pandemic’. The survey was returned by 439 respondents and there were no incomplete questionnairesQuestionnaire. Overall, the results suggested that online learningOnline learning has the advantages of ease of learning, flexibilityFlexibility, innovativeness, global outreach, and accessibility to the best of online materials as a result of which the students were overall satisfied but in spite of that the respondents have strongly agreed that their choice of learning in future would be classroom-based learning because of the face-to-faceFace-to-face interaction with the faculty members and collaborationCollaboration with the peers. The findings of the study will facilitate educational institutionsEducational institutions and policymakers to take this online learning processLearning process to the next level in a better way by using learning management systems (LMS) and collaborating with stakeholders, i.e., parents, students, and management of the higher educationHigher education institutions to improve the quality of online educationOnline education