Accessibility, Competency and Perception of School Teachers towards Online Teaching in the Midst of COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The outbreak of deadly SARS Corona virus devastatingly affected the entire globe in the very ways of lives. The life of every person was at risk of infection, to prevent that countrywide shutdown was declared in India since mid March of 2020. This shutdown laid education sector in a hanging mode for an uncertain period of time. Looking at this uncertainty towards reopening of educational institution, all schools, colleges and universities started educating their students through online mode. In this context, the present study focuses on assessing the school teachers’ accessibility, competence and perception towards online teaching and the needs and challenges faced thereof. Self prepared online questionnaire was shared with purposively selected 104 teachers of Chilika block of Khurda district of Odisha, India from which 91 responses were recorded. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were adopted for analyzing the data. The study revealed hundred percent adoption of online teaching, significant level of inaccessibility to prerequisites of online teaching and learning in the part of both teachers and students, inadequate knowledge and skills of teachers in online pedagogy and assessment practices and online tools and applications supporting online teaching and learning. Teachers were very passionately arranging and taking online classes, following Government sponsored online programs and applications designed for school education though facing challenges in students’ attendance and active participation in online classes and ended up with demanding parents’ and governments’ on time support in making online teaching and learning successful.

Keywords: Online teaching and learning, accessibility, online pedagogy and assessment, online tools and applications