Shoma Chakravarty

Although the move to incorporating more online learning in college classrooms has been a topic of discussion for some years now, Shoma Chakrwarty, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Maniben Nanavati Women’s College, Mumbai never imagined it would land up on her doorstep the way it did during the lockdown.

Read her first-person account of what it has taken her to reimagine teaching Psychology to post-graduate students remotely and why a never-say-never attitude always helps to find unexpected opportunities in unprecedented times.

If someone had asked me about the viability of online education for our mainstream teaching in March 2020, I would have scoffed. But today, with half a year of online classes behind us, my ideas stand soundly revised – the online medium is a perfect solution for our teaching requirements in this imperfect, unprecedented time. As we grapple with extraordinary circumstances where an invisible but pervasive threat redefines our life and all it encompasses, let us take a look at what COVID means for higher education.

For students, the key stakeholders of our education system, the pandemic at its outset spelt doom. In a country like ours, the transition to online mediums for class cannot be encapsulated in one word. We are a nation of many realities: financial, geographic, economic, and gender-based and these differences will continue to impact the way in which online education works. Students considering dropping out to manage household economic demands or stuck in a limbo of uncertainty about their final exams are the real casualties of the pandemic in the education sector.

“At the end of many of these classes, there’s a sense of shared accomplishment – we celebrate that some part of life still feels normal.”

For those able to attend class, there are different challenges. Accessibility to reliable internet is the biggest operational constraint. Frequent interruptions, drastically adapting our pedagogical methods to the online medium, and challenges in ensuring student engagement in a virtually faceless classroom – it’s a triathlon for students and teachers alike. As an academic institution, my college was quick to point out in a staff meeting that we, as teachers, must be flexible and gentle with our students because distress is now pervasive.

Reality pedagogy or reaching out to students in ways that hold and honour their lived experiences, has been a binding element with discussions about regular concepts (patriarchy, mental health stigma) reaching surprising depths spontaneously. Using TED Talks, news pieces, supplementary videos, and tailored discussion and reflection activities have been the glue to keep these online classes welded together. At the end of many of these classes, there’s a sense of shared accomplishment – we celebrate that some part of life still feels normal.

Is this sustainable in the long run? For the subject I teach, psychology to postgraduate students, unfortunately not. For teaching in this area to be actionable, ultimately, there is a need for the other. Students need to learn to observe and relate to another individual as a human being, and learn how to facilitate change through dialogue. For established practitioners, this may be possible to learn virtually. For fresh interns, the learning curve from a student, to an intern, and then, a fresh professional, requires hands-on training, interaction, and supervision – something that is true for most humanities and development postgraduate programs as well as sciences which have considerable laboratory work.  

“…as with everything else in COVID times, we focus on the doable. Making online aids for teaching, online research tools like Mendeley, e-learning courses for ‘virtual’ hands-on skill-building on Coursera – these have all been our go-to solutions.”

This is the roadblock of online education for us, and I suppose the same non-equivalence shows up in different ways for different grades and subjects. The practical components, where knowledge is operationalized and applied and the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy remain largely untapped. Questions are already being raised about subject matter knowledge, ability for practical applications, and real-world mapping of skills for thousands of students. All of this impedes students’ scope for further education and employability – an eventuality we will have to take stock of, soon.   

However, as with everything else in COVID times, we focus on the doable. Making online aids for teaching, online research tools like Mendeley, e-learning courses for “virtual” hands-on skill-building on Coursera – these have all been our go-to solutions. Using social media as a substitute turf for the real-world demands that professionals meet is another interesting evaluation method for both knowledge and application. We live in a world that it more virtual than ever. The testing grounds, therefore, may be found there too.

What does this mean for mainstream education? The chalkboards will gather dust for a while, for sure. But in the meanwhile, educationists and institutions have to figure out really what it is that they offer, at what metrics of quantity and quality, and at what price point. If the bulk of an academic year moves online sustainably and the promise of a job remains distant for the youth, then, do online vocational courses, certifications and internships trump the traditional college degrees? How does mainstream education stay relevant and feasible in these times when paying course fees is a stretch for many homes, and online education is more accessible and tailored than ever before? 

These are questions that will need time and thought. Hopefully, together, we will arrive at meaningful solutions soon.