For better or for worse?

With Teacher’s Day just past, faculty and students across India weigh in on what the past 18 months of online teaching has been like.

Twenty years ago, online teaching would have been impossible. Had a pandemic occurred, it would have crippled the educational system. Today, we have extensive broadband access, IT-enabled tools such as Zoom, Google Meet, Slido, Moodle, and the ubiquitous smartphone and that has made a difference. In 2020, when the government announced the replacement of brick-and-mortar classes with virtual lookalikes, we hastily assumed that the future probably lay in online education that promised inclusivity. But reviewing the scene in the U.S., Michael Horn, author of Choosing College (2019, Jossey-Bass), says he doubts whether the students and their parents who have experienced hastily constructed online courses “will look back fondly on those on-line experiences”.