COVID19 and effective online classrooms
Dr Marcus Specht, professor of Advanced Learning Technologies, Open University Netherlands had said many years ago and I quote: “ The students in the future will demand the learning support that is appropriate for their context. And they’ll want it, at the moment, the need arises, not sooner; not later." This moment has now come, not only in India but in the entire world. COVID19 has created challenges we hadn’t foreseen, challenges we didn’t think were so imminent. In India, we had been talking about integrating technology with in-classroom teaching. Indeed a lot of effort had been made in this direction and experts had also accepted the difficulties and challenges that came with bringing to the students these innovative changes; and making both the student and teachers comfortable with technology. It was almost overnight that the education scenario changed and teachers were certainly caught off guard, faced with the daunting task of teaching 30-40 students from thei