Since Start of year 2020, World has witnessed a phenomenal change in delivery of education, A Major Shift from Classroom based education system to Online education delivery. In most streams of education this is kind of forced but required change due to pandemic enforced restrictions. However Most Educational stalwarts still prefer classroom over Internet medium of delivering and there are several right reasons for it. Engineering education is an immensely popular stream of education in India close to 20 lakh seats Engineering admission happens each year in India. With Pandemic Driven Lockdown Halted day to day life, engineering education was also not spared. Engineering students also switched to Online mode of Education but most of them are not liking it, we connected with several students & teachers and found below reasons for their disappointments.
Firstly, Human connection between Teacher and Students, which helps students on understanding the subject better, which is missing during an online class, as everyone is looking at a computer/mobile screens, Human Interaction and connect experience can not be replaced by online methodologies of delivering lectures.
Secondly, Students also feels that engineering is a practical dependant learning for which, scope have come down drastically as college labs are closed. Corporate houses which generally provided practical exposure opportunities as well as ideation of exposure are also restricted to online methods only.
Another highlighted reason for dissatisfaction of students and faculty is to lack of focus span in a home setup, we have all seen funny videos where during an online class or work meeting some family members have walked in and funny incidents happened. Apart from being funny these videos show us important part of Study from Home OR work from home trend where attention can be disturbed at any second by anyone, from Mother shouting to take food, to Vendor Shouting in adjacent street, or even On screen distraction like an advt. pop-up or Urge to check social media can distract the person trying to focus to learn or Teach. in comparison to a classroom where a salient and conductive atmosphere is created to serve the purpose of Focus.
We all would agree that college life is someone’s most memorable time an online environment can never fulfil chai time with friends, A online reading season can not replace library whispers, A WhatsApp forward cannot compensate prank on a friend, an online doubt solving hour cannot cover for all night study camps. An online lecture cannot be compared to in class guidance from favourite faculty.
We are poised to witness re-opening of colleges in few months, but lessons learned from pandemic time will remain with us forever and hopefully academic fraternity will never forget importance of A classroom.