ABSTRACT
Given the growing concern about the fast contiguity of the novel Coronavirus, the nation has witnessed unprecedented impact on the educational system worldwide. This chapter deals with how the educational board has made concerted efforts and measures to run the academic calendar in a completely virtual manner. There arises an urgent need to catechize, train, and equip teachers and students in familiarizing them with the information and communication technology (ICT) and its assorted tools that comes with all its intricacies and exploding potential, and this calls for special attention to provide expert tutelage in online teaching and learning to staff and students. There exists a common misconception that teaching skills, infrastructural facilities, competency of students, and the educational pedagogies needed for a physical classroom are all-sufficient to conduct online classes successfully. This misconception needs to be reconceptualized with the precise percipience of the fact that online tutelage is totally aloof from physical classroom teaching since the duo work at two different levels – physical world and virtual world which cannot be navigated using the same single route. Apart from the fundamental concerns, the discussion also deals with mental preparation, staff readiness, confidence to learn the new pedagogy, student accessibility, and motivation to embrace ICT-integrated learning. As online tutelage carries multidimensional aspects, it demands a separate array of knowledge and skill sets from teachers trained through experts, 160which will result in upskilling their teaching abilities. Familiarizing with the new online mode, getting the staff trained by professional ICT experts, and overcoming the emotional barrier is much focused in this study. All this invites unremitting challenges like poor network coverage, limited mobile data, incapacity to buy a new gadget, vulnerability to students and teachers on several health and mental issues it has faced in the speedy pursuit of completing their syllabus in a stipulated time frame. The study focuses on providing plausible solutions to mitigate the looming fear of online teaching and making it a common part of teaching instruction. To summarize, the teaching fraternity has a herculean task ahead to stabilize with the newly embraced norm and continue to disseminate information in a very new way, to be adroit with technology and hegemonize technology and not the other way round. Online teaching tools do provide a plethora of opportunities to be innovative, creative, productive, and resourceful.
