Challenges in Online Teaching amidst Covid Crisis: Impact on Engineering Educators of Different Levels

COVID-19 thrashed the field of education with a greater challenge by sudden forced closure of educational institutions and to seek for alternative approaches in present mandatory forced physical distancing. The task of efficiently tune the learners to equip with global competencies and to nurture the skill for developing services to meet the utmost requirements of the society. As the present condition is uncertain and keeping this aspect in view, as a best compensation to the existing forced loss to learners, the educational institutions in India adopted virtual mode for regular teaching and learning processes. Virtual approach is not a new mode but it was confined to special learning aspects rather than traditional mode of teaching as of now. Under these circumstances, being an immediate alternative to the existing huge loss, several challenges need to be addressed such as the immediate adoption of this online pedagogy by engineering educators of different levels. The present paper describes the results of survey conducted on teachers of different levels and different specialisations conducted in July-August 2020. In the first phase of study, the survey is conducted among senior career educators regarding the faculty and learner confidence in technology enabled learning and in the second phase of study, the extent of interaction by the educators with the learners and parents and Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) ability of social contact during this period. Further, 90% of them trying their best to enhance their teaching skills by the effective utilization of online teaching aids to make it as best as conventional pedagogical process and 10% of them reported that they have not utilized online teaching aids at all.