Survey Results

Updated on 19th October, 2020

Colleagues:

Here is a summary of the results of our informal survey as on19th October, 2020.

Since the response was purely voluntary and no personal data was collected, we cannot ensure tha this is a truly representative sample, but the stability of the statistics suggests that it is so.

1. About half of all teachers have been teaching for more than 4 months now and are more or less used to it. The problems associated with online teaching are not only because of lack of familiarity.

2. Most of students are at the UG level – 35.5% only UG and 38.3% UG+PG. This is a very difficult age group to deal with since most of them are not yet trained to be independent learners.

3. Most of the teaching (72.3%) is done from home. This is a difficult environment for most teachers with a lot of distraction and multiple demands on time.

4. Most of the teachers are using their laptops or a more than one device for teaching. Very few have tablets, which come with touch screens that enable writing on them. From the discussions we understand that a second device is used either for capturing the writing or to compensate for low bandwidth.

5. Most students are attending classes using mobile phones, either wholly or partially.

6. Many teachers have spent upwards of Rs 10,000 in the last 5 months specifically for online teaching. These figures may not seem much, but when seen along with the comment about salaries being cut by half, and also the fact that the salaries of faculty at many places (including entry-level at central universities) is around the 50K mark at max, they are substantial.

Most of the personal expenses has been on

1. Internet charges

2. Laptop/Desktop

3. Stylus/tablet for writing

Many institutes do provide their faculty with desktops. However, very few have provided tablets or wifi to the teachers, and considering that most of them lecture from home, this is an issue.

7. These expenses have to be borne by the teachers- about 86% have not been reimbursed by their employing institutions.

8. Teachers use several platforms for their classes, the most popular being Google Meet and Zoom. More than one platform is used due to lack of infrastructural support, training and policy decisions on what platforms to use. Most teachers are on their own, and have to find the best solution for themselves.

9.The percentage of students attending class is high.

10.But typically 25% of them lose connection during class.

11.About two-thirds of the respondents have said that teachers have approached online teaching cooperatively - consulting each other on the interdependencies of courses and so on.

12. However, few institutions have responded flexibly to issues such as a curriculum change or shorter terms, fewer class hours, and other such matters.

Some specific responses:

Rented a room at some distance from my house as my home is in a distant rural area and devoid of good internet facilities
G Suite – many institutes/teachers are relying on free versions of software
At a personal level, tried to equip students with basic smartphone so that will not miss the classes.
J&K students and the students from North Eastern part are facing many troubles, so some of them have to move to plane for getting 3G or 4G connections.
Students with poor network were given options to return to campus though some could not take up the option due to lack of transport or their role as caregiver.

Best Practices followed by some institutions:

Reduction of class hours.
Use of asynchronous modes including videos, audios and texts.
Removal of topics not crucial to moving forward on the learning path.
Laboratory courses replaced by pen and paper tests or into theory papers .
Flexible timetable.
Moved from 16 weeks semester to a 12 week trimester.
No Mid Term evaluation, smaller continuous assessment.
Students without access were asked to come and stay on campus.
University had given them tablets.
Faculty members took 1-2 introductory classes to familiarise. Detailed instructions were emailed to students. Mock tests were conducted before term papers to familiarise students with new pattern.
Institute is reimbursing data procure cost, and also laptop in some cases.
Data packs and reimbursable laptops for needy students.

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