Academics (E-learning)

Academic Activities during COVID-19:

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, and has since spread globally, resulting in the ongoing pandemic. Symptoms include dry cough, accompanying flue and high fever.

Most governments around the world have temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. 


ADVANTAGES:

The biggest concern of many experts is that if we get too many infections too fast, the number of sick people could overwhelm the system’s capacity to care for them. By slowing transmission in the population, we may possibly flatten the curve, and keep the number of people sick at one time manageable.
Although it’s affecting the new born children and the aged people mostly, but the youngsters could play a role as the carriers of the virus. According to a recent research, the virus stays inactive for up-to 14 days which clearly shows how it’s killing the person silently
Further, the school environment is well suited to spread disease. Students are often packed into small classrooms, where it’s impossible to sit six feet apart. They mingle and form other similar groups by changing rooms to go to different classes. They are put into one large room to eat together, sitting side by side.
Closing schools can make a big difference in flattening the curve, and the usual routine won’t be disturbed either. Hence, it’s the best practice that could be adopted by the institutes and holding online classes may ensure that the syllabus is covered in due time as scheduled, this way the students would stay engaged and will not be wasting time on useless things such as PUBG, Tic Tok etc.

DISADVANTAGES:


These nationwide closures are impacting over 89% of the world’s student population. Several other countries have implemented localized closures impacting millions of additional learners.
Those countries who have never adopted online learning  in the past decade, will get unbalanced due to a sudden shift to digital learning amid the coronavirus crisis has posed some challenges to the system as the majority of students do not have their own computers or internet facilities.
The closures could mean students who are struggling to read at their grade level are promoted anyway and could struggle for years to come. Plans for college could be upended for high school seniors counting on their final semester to rack up credits and take one more stab at the SAT. For students from low-income families, who could have trouble getting to the free or subsidized food many of them rely on, the gap between them and their wealthier counterparts is all but sure to grow. 
But all students will suffer.
Furthermore, all we will be getting from the online classes is:
• Lack of Discipline. ...
• Ready-made Answers. ...
• Less creativity & more instruction. ...
• Tough to find an environment for study. ...
• Difficult to select best course & classes. ...
• Scripted Lectures, and
• Information overload

The online classes system is not effective in the developing countries. The government must provide better internet or a semester break as students from remote areas are unable to access the internet properly. Many are forced to travel to places with the facility to attend online lectures which is not safe in the present scenario.
Online lectures will affect grades. As the fees have been paid for quality education. The situation is not fruitful for opening educational institutions but this should be taken into consideration.
It may be noted here that the quality of online education, that is being experimented for the first time in history, is not up to the mark as teachers are not fully equipped nor prepared with the required teaching material to teach online. Another problem that would rise is the intra-university competition and this way half of the students would be neglected regardless of the heavy fees they’ve paid, if one university is providing quality e-learning and the other is not, this would be unfair. Therefore, there must be a system that looks after the whole community equally.
The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth. Not everyone is blessed with gadgets and technology. The question is: Who will be responsible for the GPA of students failing due to poor internet? 


  CONCLUSION:

The conclusion comes out to be that the government should surely take action regarding this issue. Relevant steps must be adopted and the quality of e-learning provided must be enhanced, so we can cope up with the academics and also prevent the students from wasting months on sitting idle and engaging into useless activities.


   REFERENCES:

• https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-emergencies/coronavirus-school-closures
• https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200326141547229
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/upshot/coronavirus-school-closings.html