Online Teaching-Learning Experience During COVID-19 Pandemic – A Case Report

On the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India that was implemented suddenly since 24th March 2020, the educational institutes faced the challenge of course delivery and academic engagement of the students. Many institutes responded through online teaching-learning mode. However, the transition from physical classes to virtual mode course delivery was all of a sudden for both; student as well as faculty community. Hence, it is important to develop an understanding of perception of students and faculty members to this experience of online teaching. This work reports preliminary findings on an online course delivery initiative at an autonomous institute during the lockdown period and efficacy of the virtual model in order to validate the hypothesis that virtual course delivery is well received by the students and proves beneficial. Also, an effort is made to investigate whether the students' acceptance to online teaching is influenced by the stream they belong to and if there is any correlation between the academic achievements of students and their acceptance to online mode. In view of growing trend towards online learning post COVID-19 scenario, the findings offer valuable insights. From the view point of overall experience and benefits from online teaching-learning, a clear division is found among the students' opinions. Nearly half of the students (48.08%) have found to be benefitted through online classes while the remaining don't seem to have satisfied and thus benefitted from the initiative. The authors propose a hybrid approach combining physical and virtual experiences for future purposes, owing to inherent limitations of online teaching being reflected through the students' responses.