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Abstract
Higher education is a backbone of any country, and it plays an important role in the economic and social growth of the nation. India with the second largest population have largest strength of students who are pursuing their higher education studies. With the spread of the COVID-19 around second week of March 2020 central and state governments across the country ordered to shut down the schools and higher education institutions to contain spread of virus. At the crucial time for the education sector; board examinations, nursery school admissions, entrance tests of various universities and competitive examinations, among others, are all held during this period. With the time the outbreak of virus increased and there was no immediate solution to curb the effect of pandemic, school and higher education institution closures was not only had a short-term impact on the continuity of learning for more than 285 million young learners in India but also stimulate far-reaching economic and societal consequences. Teachers are also impacted significantly at the workplace and personally. The impact of commotion was highly variable for HEIs that to remain active in the academic activities and to financial sustainability. Teachers are the pillars of the education systems and play vital role in reaching learning goals irrespective of situation. This research paper aims at analysing the impact of Covid-19 on teachers work performance and professional growth in the higher education institutions also studies the role of ICT tools in teaching & learning process.
Introduction
The education is the core of human resource development of the country, it plays a momentous and educative part in socio economic growth of the nation. According to a report of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India conducted a survey on higher education and observed that there are 993 universities, 39931 Colleges and 10725 Stand Alone Institutions listed on their portal, which contribute to education. These institutions further reflect the student density of India as the total enrolments in higher education every year are nearly 37.4 million, reflecting the expanding horizons of the education industry. The sector was seen catching pace by the passing day until Coronavirus impacted the country intensely. The HRD ministry is engaged in bringing world class opportunities of higher education and research in the country so that students can get upgrade their skills and knowledge to compete with new competitive challenges.
But arrival of uninvited crisis of COVID- 19 created problems and challenges at every corner of the world. The impact of disruption is highly variable on every sector as well as higher education also. Many countries decided to shut down the schools, colleges and universities. the closure also accords with the key assessment period and most of the exams has been postponed or cancelled. The pandemic created challenges in front of every one how to channelize the things smoothly in teaching learning process. Though top priority in this situation is to assure for adequate health facilities, but with this we have to guarantee that the process of teaching and learning should run effortlessly to keep the students in learning mode because if the students will away from the learning process for long time, it will affect their social life and the drop out rate will increase. Teacher are the pillar of education system and they are the key to achieve learning goals, regardless of context and condition. In this COVID-19 pandemic also teachers are playing their role very well by adopting the ICT technology for teaching learning and evaluation process very effectually.
Method and Materials
Teachers are also impacted significantly at the workplace and professionally by the effects of COVID-19 pandemic. To study the above-mentioned objectives of the research paper the data was collected through primary and secondary data sources. For the purpose of primary data collection, a survey was conducted with the help of structured google form questionnaire and sample has been selected from the teachers of higher education institutes of Nagpur city. For the purpose of this, a questionnaire was sent to 80 respondents, 76 respondents positively responded to the survey. The relevant secondary data was collected from various sources of information such as Research Papers, Reports, Books, Websites etc.
Data analysis and Interpretation
The immediate solution with the COVID-19 pandemic was to adopt online teaching and learning platforms to minimize its impact on higher education institutions and to continue the learning process. But the country like India with massive socio-economic inequality, different circumstances of students and teachers, it was too difficult to instantly shift from physical to virtual platforms. But with the effectiveness and adoptability skill of the teachers, they ensured the active involvement of the students in the learning process. The following survey was conducted with the help of structured questionnaire to know about the impact of COVID-19 on higher education institutions and the effective use of online teaching platforms for teaching and learning process as well as professional growth of the teacher.
Findings and Conclusion
The COVID- 19 is affecting the people in all form and all over the world, economically and socially the citizens are suffering with this pandemic. The rising health emergency and national lockdown is disturbing the education sector also. This research paper conducted a survey to observe the impact of COVID -19 on higher education institutions, on the teachers performance and the role of online teaching and learning process during lockdown period. Most of the teachers adopted the online teaching platforms for safeguarding the studies of the students and applied various online evaluation techniques for mapping the performance of the students. It may be first time the education system made a paradigm shift to the virtual teaching by merging the physical teaching with online teaching learning. While surveying it is observed that teachers experienced that the pandemic impacted the work performance and efficiency.
Most of the respondents utilised their lockdown period for the professional growth by engaging them with various activities like learning new skills, by developing various ICT teaching techniques for harnessing their virtual teaching and learning skills. Teachers also involved in academic research in various stages in pandemic period. Most of the respondents mentioned that they helped the students academically during the lockdown to solve their academic problems. Majority of the respondents utilised the ICT resources for creating the new teaching learning resources specially for virtual classes with the help of different webinars, FDPs, various online sessions. They also ready to continue with online teaching platforms after pandemic if there is a need. Teachers adopted the virtual classrooms very easily some may find it difficult but with practice and by implementing they also found it easy and user friendly. Most of the respondents felt that there is an impact on the performance of students, due to absence of physical classroom teaching. Every student is not comfortable in virtual teaching platform to share their queries. But the respondents accepted that the online teaching tools were very useful to connect with the students during pandemic period.
Also, respondents experienced that pandemic diverted the mindset of the peers and slowed down their learning capacity. So, it is observed that with the help of ICT tools teachers were able to connect with the students to solve their academic problems and help them to keep in touch with the teaching and learning process. While studying it is observed that there are some challenges in online teaching which can be solved by taking certain measures. Also observed that this pandemic came with many opportunities for the teachers as well as students. students can utilise virtual platforms for online internship programs in any part of the world which will give them chance to acquire the practical knowledge about their subject with the help of teacher mentors. With this pandemic teacher and students realised the need of the automation in currents academic world. Also cleared the way forward to the digitalisation of the education sector for preparing teachers and students, for any uninvited situation, by imbibing the confidence without creating chaos or panic.
References
- DNS Kumar (2020) Impact of COVID-19 on Higher Education https://www.highe reducationdigest.com/impact-of-covid-19-on-higher-education/
- Rhea Kelly (2020) https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/04/16/4000-plus-us-higher-ed-institutions-impacted-by-covid19-more-than-25-million-students-affected.aspx
- S Burgess, H Sivertsen (2020) Schools, skills, and learning: The impact of COVID-19 on education
- Richa Choudhary (2019) https://government.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news /educat ion/covid-19-pandemic-impact-and-strategies-for-education-sector-in-india/75173099
- W Tamrat D Teferra (2020) COVID-19 poses a serious threat to higher education https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200409103755715
- https://www.globalpartnership.org/news/response-covid-19-outbreak-call-action-teachers
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2314721016300214
- https://mhrd.gov.in/policy_initiatives
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