A Study on Perception of Students Towards Online Classes in India

“eLearning doesn’t just “happen”! It requires careful planning and implementation” goes an anonymous quote. Unfortunately, the sudden shift to online teaching due to COVID-19 situation did not leave teachers and students a choice. The study was conducted in the wake of COVID-19 when colleges had to suddenly shift to online mode of teaching. Though teachers could get hold of teaching materials online, were the students comfortable to this shift? The call to shift gained more significance in some other aspects too—whether the students had the necessary accessories and connectivity to connect to the classes. Also, when they connected what were the challenges and how effective was the learning are some questions which opened up during these pandemic classes. The study was planned with this background, and the objectives of the study were: 1. To understand the purpose with which online classes started 2. To identify the understanding level of students 3. To bring out the issues felt by students 4. To analyse the differing requirements, if any, among different levels of study 5. To identify the preference of students towards online classes in future. With this objective, data were collected from 123 students of UG and PG from arts and science colleges in Chennai. A structured questionnaire was prepared with 17 closed ended questions. Google Forms was used for data collection, and the students were reached through WhatsApp group and Email. Convenience and snowball sampling was used. A target of 100 students was planned, and by the cut-off date planned, 123 responses were received. As there were no missing data or information, all the samples collected were used for analysis with SPSS V.20. Frequency, chi-square, Friedman’s test, multiple response set, ANOVA and independent t-test have been used to analyse the data. The analysis revealed, inter alia, that 1. Majority of the respondents are girls and are in UG. 2. There is no association between demographic factors in the study and the variables of the study except gender. 3. There is significant difference in certain aspects like need for more e-contents and class notes being shared among different levels of year of study. 4. More than 20% of the respondents had at least 3 issues related to taking up online classes. It is important to note that though many studies have been conducted across the globe amidst pandemic with respect to students’ perception towards online learning, it is significant that none of the studies focus on arts and science college students in Chennai, India. This study brings out the understanding of the problems faced by the students and the perception of the students to learn in a virtual environment. The scope of the study is limited to arts and science college students in Chennai and cannot be generalized to all streams of students. The data were collected in December 2020, and many changes in virtual platform have aroused interest in the mind of the researcher to do a follow-up study including the aspects of assessments, gamification in classroom and LMS which is not taken up in the present study. The practical implication of the study is that the college management should take into consideration the problems of the students and fine-tune the online classes accordingly.