Mrs. Neha Bhosale,
Founder – Skillsgenix | L&D Facilitator | Freelance Educator

March 2020, everything stands still and settles at home right from Office, School, tuition, Medical consultation, Vegetable Vendor, groceries delivered at home, and thus we become a home addict.

The physical learning with Pen, Pencil, Blackboard suddenly Changes to Teacher on Screen, Screen sharing, chat groups, Video Conferencing, Online Meetings, Webinars, and Breakout rooms. Moreover, Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Language Apps, Conference calls became our new vocabulary.

The strength lies in how we adapt to a new pattern of learning online. It was not unknown to us, yet it was not that common, and many of us were hesitant to learn online.

It tested each one of us for our adaptability to an emergency. We learned to collaborate online and share it with our team. As the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus says “There is nothing permanent except change.” It is like when we can no longer change a situation; We challenged to change ourselves where we have adopted new daily routines and accept what is in our way.

During online training, I experienced some positive and some negative things. It was much easier to share varied content with the participants in online learning, as many good online resources are available, which were not using in physical classrooms.

With webinars, knowledge sharing became so easy that you could connect to anyone at any given time at any part of the globe. That is an excellent learning to happen which we had not experienced in life, before the pandemic.

Online learning is effective age-specific where teacher control is less and more responsibility lies with the learner. However, it is more convenient for young adults and adults than a school-going child, where face-to-face interactions are necessary for social development. Some methods are relatively suitable to one, while not to others.

Research has shown that with concentrated & structured efforts, learning material retention is more almost 25-60% during online learning as it is self-paced, personalized, and also it takes less time to learn and is enjoyable with pictures and videos as compared to classroom learning, where material retention is 8-10%.

The fact is many children had been away from education. Furthermore, there are reasons associated with it, like availability of required devices, internet facilities; for that reason, digital inclusion has become a necessity in our Country to adapt to changing situations.

Whether online learning will continue in the future; Face-to-face human interactions are necessary for education, delegating, collaborating! More emphasis can be on practices such as mindfulness, meditation and sports for the overall well-being.

We have to keep up the human values like empathy, truth, respect, affection, care, guidance, support, appreciation, love, honesty, and integrity in the virtual world, too. And then only it is going to be effective learning.

Finally, the time is challenging us to change our mindset, invent and follow new methods of teaching-learning where everyone is a lifelong learner. It demands on adopting new practices of training teachers, facilitators, and educators. Online learning will continue to be practical, and as humans, we have come so far and adapted well to this drastic change.