What the pandemic taught us about online education

On February 7th, queues trailed away from gates across Delhi that had remained quiet for a long time. For the first time in two years, the schools were opening. With Coronavirus cases easing, and the time students have spent out of the classroom increasing, the city’s authorities have decided that the benefits of schools reopening outweigh the risks.

Of course, most students in urban India have had access to online and distance learning throughout the pandemic. The Indian government often present technology as an all-encompassing solution for the nation’s challenges and this is nowhere clearer than in education. Ask however the students returning to school, and the message is clear – they want learning offline.

Online learning or no online learning isn’t however the real question, but rather to what extent each approach should be used going forwards. The pandemic has proven the great value of distance learning, acting as a bridge to education in a time when face-to-face learning was not an option.

As we emerge from two years of pandemic, there is an opportunity to learn from new practice. However, innovation has also reminded us of the limitations of technology – that it cannot substitute human interaction.

The challenge for both educators and policy makers is then a balancing act. They must strike a middle ground between utilising new practice and returning to old ways, without becoming overzealous about either extreme.

Distance learning did not save students falling behind

As powerful as distance learning can be, reliance on it left many behind during the pandemic. According to a survey conducted by LIRNEAsia, 80% of school students were left without access to education due to school closures.

Of the remaining 20% with some access to education, only 55% participated in real-time lessons. More were able to watch recorded video lessons (68%) or had materials and assignments sent to their smartphones (75%).

A report from a group known as SCHOOL team (School Children’s Online and Offline Learning) revealed that within a year and a half of schools closing, the learning deficit has become as high as four years for some students.

It is worth noting that the survey focussed on less well-off communities and as such is a biased report. This means that the report is likely to paint a starker picture than is justified, as better off schools will have been missed from the sample – a sample that is also far too small to be representative of the whole country. It does however highlight that many school communities nationally have suffered severe setbacks to their education.

Integral to the effectiveness of distance learning is reliable internet connection for all students. Of the 1,400 respondents to the survey, only 8% of rural parents believed they had adequate internet access. Even in the cities where internet infrastructure is superior, only 23% believed their internet access was sufficient for distance learning.

The implications of this are damning. Only 47% of urban school students and 28% in rural areas were studying regularly. Even more concerning was that 19% of students in the cities and 37% of rural students were reported not studying at all.

That this survey only considers underprivileged communities highlights the depth of the rural/urban divide in digital infrastructure. Even though underprivileged groups were targeted for both the rural and urban data, rural respondents still reported considerably more damning figures.

The potential for distance learning is huge

Distance learning over the pandemic in India does however paint distance learning in a worse light than is reasonable. Globally speaking, there have been many success stories regarding the forced shift to online delivery.

Indeed, many UK universities intend to partially keep using online delivery now that in-class teaching has resumed. This ‘blended learning’ approach will allow education providers to mix and match the best elements of both online and face-to-face learning.

Key benefits proved to be logistical. As long as adequate internet infrastructure is in place, online delivery can reach those who physically cannot get to school or university, be it for geographical or health barriers.

The more innovative UK universities discovered more exciting possibilities, such as digital international exchanges and online international collaborative projects. The new form of delivering international experiences even had advantages over traditional approaches, namely they were cheaper and more inclusive.

A desire to return to class

According to UNESCO, 186 countries worldwide had closed their schools by the end of April 2020 in light of the pandemic. India was one of them, the government announcing the closure of all educational institutions on March 16th, 2020.

Nearly two years on and schools are only now reopening. The excitement among students queuing outside Delhi’s schools on the first day back suggests they would much rather be in the classroom than spend another day learning online.

That should not be underestimated. Learning is always more effective when the learner enjoys what they are doing. The classroom offers a community and social interaction, elements which are of great importance to both the education and the development of learners.

Yet the key point is that students evidently prefer the classroom. Two years was not enough to become fully accustomed to online learning and students still want to be back at school.

The future of online education?

The Indian government is now deeply committed to providing online learning provision and although distance learning has had a rocky start in India, the government is right to develop it. The successes elsewhere in the world and the innovations that have gone hand in hand with it show great potential for using online learning in conjunction with in-person delivery.

That means the future is blended. The internet can be used to remove barriers and create new opportunities. Currently it often raises barriers instead, but this will change with time. The secret to successful blended education will be balance. The internet will never fully replace the classroom, but a little creativity can turn it into an extremely powerful educational tool.