Online Learning during Pandemic in India: Parents’ Perspective

Abstract

COVID-19 has impacted several economies globally, with most countries closing their academia resulting in the transition of face-to-face classes to online learning and later converted into the blended mode of education. This has affected over 320 million students in India. With self-initiative and parental involvement along with internet availability, online education has become a household function. “Learning Enhancement Guidelines”, issued by MHRD, puts the focus on parents’ role in online learning. This paper is an attempt to understand the perceived role and contributions of the parents in the learning of their wards under online learning. Parents contributed in various ways to online learning for their wards but they faced a lot of issues and challenges in the online mode of education for their children. For many parents, financial crunch, lack of infrastructure for online learning and lack of technological skills to help their wards in handling online classes and providing relevant educational resources, lack of subject content understanding to support the learning of their wards were major challenges in online learning during the Pandemic.