IS ONLINE EDUCATION A MODERN ALTERNATIVE OR JUST A SUPPLEMENT?

- April 30, 2021

We are keenly aware with the Covid-19 pandemic which has made everyone’s life a living hell. It has
affected retail workers to big-shot businessmen severely. It primarily caused a significant impact on
Education. The student lives changed drastically, schools and colleges were first to close in India.
Everyone thought to themselves that Covid-19 will go away after a few weeks, but it’s been more
than a year now. To maintain the academic ways, a new system of the line was implemented which
is known as “Online Education” or E-learning.

Online education was introduced to the students and teachers where online platforms like Zoom.
Google Meet came into use. At present, the question is whether it was productive to the students.
From a positive point of view, online education has given flexibility to classes as even if we miss it,
we can revisit the recorded ones. Those classes can be viewed by the students until they understand
that specific topic. Time management is key here where online education helps students to juggle
work and college at the same. The technical point of view has gained more importance as we are
adopting the technology more than usual. Reduced cost remains a key factor as we avoid
transportation and usage of school or college facilities as we are doing it all from our home itself.
Teachers started utilizing innovative methods like animations, breakout rooms in Zoom, etc. to
instruct students without boring them as there is less human interaction.

If we focus on the negative side, there are many of them. As online education is an innovative
approach, there is an adaptability problem amongst the students as well as teachers. The critical
issue arising is the connectivity issues where the underprivileged kids will be having more difficulties.
Online education reduces the interaction between the students and the teachers. Many distractions
can happen as there is no supervision. There is on top of that the psychological factor of the
students where they are isolated and dealing with it alone.

As an MBA student, I would like to add that online education is not a long-term option for all of us.
We aren’t capturing the significant attention or knowledge we get from our traditional classes. The
workload increases as well, there is no time limit. Being a management student, time management is
being difficult even for us. That college or school life of a student is ruined by the pandemic that
he/she may never get back.

In conclusion, as for the question, the answer should be that online education is just a supplement
and cannot be considered as an alternative. The main factor being internet connectivity and
interaction. The pandemic has altered our lives to a point where we cannot return and that has been
shown clearly in the lives of students. Nobody will rely on a doctor who completed his/her education
online only. The practical knowledge is lost here as far as I have seen. We can merely hope for this
pandemic to end as early as possible for our emerging generation to prosper without such
challenges.