The Impact of COVID-19

Due to the Covid-19 situation, the educational institutions (EI) have been started to close from
March 20, 2020. At the beginning of the pandemic, countries where Covid-19 has spread
planned that educational institutions will remain closed till the end of March 2020, but now the
time has been extended for almost all countries. Educational Institutions closure extended to
keep students, staff and families safe. The duration of educational institutes depend on the
COVID-19 situation.

Use of Online platform

There is no more face to face class because the EI have been closed at this pandemic. The usual
face to face class has been replaced by online classes so that students can continue their studies.
In many countries, the Educational institutions are taking the class through TV channels, Google
Classroom, and many other platforms. The lessons/lectures have been prepared by the
teachers/professors of the respected schools/colleges/universities, but it is not the same for all EI.
Bangladesh Television (BTV) is broadcasting lessons for primary and high school students.
According to BBC, Zoom is highly being used highly to work from home in current situation. It
is communicational software that is being used largely not only for meetings and conferences but
also for the online class in this pandemic Covid-19. In our Khulna University the teachers of
Physics Discipline are taking classes through Zoom. However, in many settings online education
is still out of reality for various challenges in relation to resources insufficiency and lack of
readiness. 

Changes In Assessment Method

With social distancing, arose new changes and challenges in the assessment methods in
education system. Two popular methods to assess students in a classroom are individual
readiness assurance test (iRAT) and team readiness assurance test (tRAT), where students are
assigned with necessary materials, granted time to work on the individually or in groups,
provided with instant tests or quizzes right after the group or individual work, and finally
provided with instant feedback by the teachers.

These methods have now been digitalized by the use of a number of online platforms including
Zoom, Moodle, Google classroom, WhatsApp and so on (Gaber, Shehata, & Amin, 2020; The
World Bank, 2020). For example, Khulna university have been using the 'breakout room'
feature in Zoom to keep on practicing the assessments smoothly. With this feature students were
split into teams, assigned with leaders in each group and given time to work on their iRAT and
tRAT. As zoom can accommodate a very limited number of students in a single meeting at a
time, WhatsApp was used instead for holding the segregate single group meetings prior to the
feedback session with their course instructors. Before the feedback session began, teams logged
into the break-out rooms and posted their answers on the zoom chat. Most of the participants in
Khulna University and several other universities in Bangladesh have found the technique fruitful.

Similar assessment techniques have been applied in many other educational institutions across
the world with similar feedback from the participants. However, there is limitation where
practical exposure is required. For example in our lab experiment which requires field practice.
Besides, to ensure fruitful assessment outcomes, monitoring has also become a concern for the
educational institutions.

Internet for education: 

Accessibility and quality/uniformity of internet during Covid-19

Education system is now disabled without internet connection. In the context of the current
pandemic, digitalization is no more an option, but an obligation. Hence, for running the
education system amidst this extraordinary situation, internet access knows no bounds. Now the
question arises on the accessibility of the internet in every single community, by every single
individual on earth. Thus poor internet connection and speed have posed additional challenges to
the global digitalization of education during this pandemic. Moreover, we were informed that
some private universities have started taking online classes and are preparing to take
examinations as well. This situation intrigued us to conduct a survey on university students with
a view to understanding their situation and preparedness for online classes. 

Through our students' network, government conducted a quick survey where they received
responses from 42 public and private universities and affiliated colleges. In three days (May 9-
11), 2038 students participated in our survey where we asked some simple questions. Students
from science (55%), arts and humanities (12.1%), social sciences (11.2%), business studies
(12%) and other disciplines (4.7%) responded to their survey from both public (58.8%) and
private (41.2%) universities. 

Among them, 34% are currently located in a rural area and 66% in an urban location. Strikingly,
only 23% of the students were in favor of taking online classes in this situation, while the rest
77% opposed the idea. 

The underlying fact of this strong dissent becomes clear when they found only 55.3% of the
students have access to a laptop, PC, or a tablet to attend an online class. It shows us 44.7% of
the students cannot attend online classes due to lack of logistics. The most important factor for
online classes is internet connectivity and the survey revealed that 55% of the students are not
supported by proper internet connections at this moment to continue with online education. They
found that 40% of the students are already attending online classes, among whom the majority
(70%) are from private universities.
The most staggering figure is that 87% of students think online assessment will not be feasible
and similarly, 82% believe that online classroom is not as effective as a real classroom. 

The survey may not represent the actual scenario, because the sampling was not quite random.
We had to conduct this survey conveniently amid this countrywide general shutdown. However,
it gives us an idea about the scenario. 

The most challenging aspects found from the survey are the current location and accessibility of
appropriate device and the internet. Many students moved to their rural homes where high-speed
internet may not be available. 

On top, not all students were able to carry their books and academic materials because they could
not imagine this might go such long. Therefore, we found only 16% of the participants are
engaged in their academic study and rest are spending time with TV and social media or sitting
idle at-home quarantine. 

The fact of not being interested in online classes gives us some clue. The foremost is internet
access and the cost of the internet too. An average duration class may take 300 MB of data and if
a student attends 3 classes per day he will need to spend around 1GB of data.