Online education in COVID-19 scenario: challenges, mitigation strategies and exploring a case study in India

Abstract

India is one of the largest nations with many geographical differences, which makes the learning process a difficult one in the present COVID-19 scenario. However, online mode offers big opportunity to reach out to students in remote locations though it has its own challenges too. This paper identifies a few such challenges and suggests mitigation strategies towards the same. In addition, an in-depth analysis is performed on a real COVID-19 student dataset to understand student overall behaviour in this pandemic situation as well as their experience in the online learning mode. Also, an automated framework of performing student feedback analysis is presented, which can be utilised to understand the quality of online classes by finding more useful insights from student responses. These measures will definitely support a vulnerable student population to overcome the uncertainties present in the period of extraordinary disruption.