research report on online education in india

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• Published: 06 June 2024

Perceptions and challenges of online teaching and learning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in India: a cross-sectional study with dental students and teachers

• Lakshmi Nidhi Rao 1 ,
• Aditya Shetty 1 ,
• Varun Pai 2 ,
• Srikant Natarajan 3 ,
• Manjeshwar Shrinath Baliga 4 ,
• Dian Agustin Wahjuningrum 5 ,
• Heeresh Shetty 6 ,
• Irmaleny Irmaleny 7 &
• Ajinkya M. Pawar 6  

BMC Medical Education volume  24 , Article number:  637 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Online education has emerged as a crucial tool for imparting knowledge and skills to students in the twenty-first century, especially in developing nations like India, which previously relied heavily on traditional teaching methods.

This study delved into the perceptions and challenges experienced by students and teachers in the context of online education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from a sample of 491 dental students and 132 teachers utilizing a cross-sectional research design and an online-validated survey questionnaire.

The study’s findings revealed significant insights. Internet accessibility emerged as a major impediment for students, with online instruction proving more effective for theoretical subjects compared to practical ones. Although most teachers expressed comfort with online teaching, they highlighted the absence of classroom interaction as a significant challenge.

This study comprehensively examines the perspectives of both students and teachers regarding online education during the pandemic. The results carry substantial implications for the academic community, underscoring the need to address internet access issues and explore ways to enhance engagement and interaction in online learning environments.

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Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has undeniably reshaped the global educational landscape, forcing a rapid shift towards online learning methodologies. While some disciplines have transitioned relatively smoothly, dental education presents unique challenges. Unlike fields with a primarily theoretical foundation, dental education hinges on the development of practical skills and direct patient interaction [ 1 , 2 ]. This inherent need for hands-on clinical experience necessitates a critical examination of online learning’s suitability for dental education [ 1 ].

Research across diverse international contexts underscores the limitations of online learning alone in fostering essential technical skills in dentistry [ 3 , 4 ]. Recognizing this reality, the Indian dental education model prioritizes hands-on learning as a core curricular element. However, the pre-clinical phases often incorporate simulations using mannequins, hinting at the potential for blended learning approaches. In this scenario, online platforms could be strategically utilized to deliver theoretical knowledge, thereby freeing up valuable classroom time for instructors to conduct in-person skill development sessions with students [ 5 , 6 ].

Despite advancements in technology, digitalization efforts in the Indian dental sector have primarily focused on practical training tools like computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) and 3D printing technologies [ 7 , 8 ]. Traditional face-to-face lectures remained the dominant method for knowledge delivery, with online learning remaining largely unexplored within the Indian dental education curriculum before the pandemic [ 9 ].

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted this status quo, propelling online learning to the forefront of dental education [ 10 ]. This unprecedented situation necessitates a comprehensive assessment of its impact on the perceptions and experiences of both dental students and educators across India. This leads us to our central research question: “To what extent has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the perceptions and challenges of online learning among dental students and teachers in India?”

By delving into this question, we aim to shed light on the strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement in online learning within the context of Indian dental education. These findings will inform future curricular development, allowing for a well-considered and strategic integration of online and traditional approaches. Ultimately, this research seeks to enhance the overall educational experience for dental students. By ensuring a balanced curriculum that leverages the strengths of both online and offline learning, we can equip future dentists with the essential knowledge and practical skills necessary to thrive in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape.

Study design

The study utilized a cross-sectional research design to collect data from 500 dental students and 150 teachers in India. An online-validated survey questionnaire was employed to gather quantitative data. The study population consisted of undergraduate and postgraduate dental students and teachers from diverse dental colleges across India. Participants were selected through purposive sampling based on their willingness and availability during the study period. Ethical principles were strictly followed, including obtaining informed consent, ensuring confidentiality of participant data, and safeguarding participant privacy. This sampling method was chosen due to practical reasons, as randomly sampling would have been resource intensive. Leveraging existing networks and professional contacts facilitated access to a varied participant pool, ensuring engagement and data quality. To enhance representativeness, participants from various dental colleges, urban and rural locations, academic levels, and age groups were included in the sample.

Questionnaire

A self-administered, English-language questionnaire developed using Google Forms was utilized to evaluate perceptions and challenges of online dental education during the COVID-19 pandemic in India [ 11 ]. The questionnaire was structured around three main domains: satisfaction with online teaching, encountered problems, and comparisons between online and traditional classroom learning experiences.

In order to ensure the validity and reliability of this questionnaire within the unique context of Indian dental education, a thorough validation process was undertaken. Face validity was established through evaluation by a qualified researcher and questionnaire design specialist. Their assessment focused on the clarity, comprehensiveness, and relevance of the questions, resulting in revisions to improve clarity and minimize ambiguity in terminology, phrasing, and structure.

Content validity was ensured through the input of two subject-matter experts (SMEs) with significant experience in Indian dental education. These SMEs, who were independent of the study, assessed the questionnaire against the defined research objectives. Their feedback ensured that the questionnaire comprehensively covered the intended constructs, leading to further refinements.

Pilot testing was then conducted with a representative sample of 20 dental students and 10 teachers. This phase aimed to identify and address any remaining issues with the questionnaire’s understandability, flow, and length. Based on the feedback received from the pilot test participants, minor adjustments were made to optimize the user experience.

Data analysis

Following data collection, survey responses were entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and then imported into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were employed to summarize participant characteristics such as age, course of study (undergraduate, postgraduate), place of study (town, village), and self-reported familiarity with e-learning skills. These characteristics were presented as frequencies (N) and percentages (%) to provide an overview of the sample composition.

Chi-square tests were conducted to assess potential associations between categorical variables. However, the use of the Chi-square test is contingent upon meeting the assumption of expected cell frequencies being greater than 5. In instances where expected cell frequencies fell below 5, Fisher’s exact test was employed as a more appropriate alternative. Statistical significance was established at a p -value of 0.05 or less.

Participant characteristics and survey completion

A total of 500 students initiated the online survey, with a completion rate of 81.8% ( n  = 409). Similarly, among the 150 teachers who began the survey, 132 completed it (completion rate: 88%). To ensure a sufficient sample size for analysis, the survey period was extended beyond its original timeframe, potentially introducing a selection bias. This decision aligns with the purposive sampling methodology employed in this study.

Student perceptions

Satisfaction with online learning.

A significant portion (44.7%, n  = 183) of students aged 18–21 reported satisfaction with online instruction. Interestingly, age did not significantly influence satisfaction levels. Undergraduates expressed higher satisfaction compared to other course levels ( p  = 0.001). Location also played a role, with students from both urban (41.8%, n  = 79) and rural areas (45.6%, n  = 73) reporting similar contentment levels ( p -value = 0.034). Notably, students with advanced e-learning skills reported significantly higher satisfaction ( p -value = 0.001).

Evaluation of specific aspects

Students across various age groups, locations, and course levels expressed satisfaction with the topics covered ( p  = 0.032 for undergraduate students, p  = 0.002 for those knowledgeable about e-learning) and the instructors’ efforts (particularly those aged 18–21, p  = 0.001, undergraduates, p  = 0.010, and students with e-learning skills, p  = 0.001). However, no significant difference was observed in self-reported understanding of the subject matter based on demographics or e-learning skills. Overall, students aged 18–21 (42.7%, p  = 0.001) and those with e-learning knowledge ( p  = 0.006) exhibited greater appreciation for the quality of teaching.

Engagement and flexibility

Among participants familiar with e-learning (specific number not provided), a significant proportion (42.9%, p -value of 0.019) felt they could effectively engage with instructors during and after online sessions, regardless of age, location, or course level. Additionally, a notable number of undergraduate students with e-learning skills ( p -values of 0.039 and 0.001, respectively) appreciated the flexibility of attending online classes at their convenience. Furthermore, 40.2% of participants with e-learning skills ( p -value = 0.054) found online learning beneficial, particularly for theoretical subjects lacking practical components. Notably, a majority of participants across demographics agreed that online teaching could be valuable for future mass education initiatives (data presented in Table  1 ).

Challenges with online learning

Despite some advantages, participants with e-learning skills (48.2%) also reported internet connectivity and speed issues. Slow internet hindered video streaming for students across all age groups ( p  = 0.005). Only 20.6% of participants with e-learning skills disagreed with this finding.

Interaction and collaboration

Except for those residing in rural and semi-urban areas ( p  = 0.022), participants did not report significant concerns about general interaction problems. However, challenges emerged regarding sound quality and group study. Poor internet connections caused sound issues for students above 21 years old (55%, p  = 0.02) and those without e-learning skills (27.7%, p  = 0.03). Similarly, joint or group study proved difficult for participants over 21 (55%) and those residing in rural areas (48.8%, p  = 0.025).

Subject suitability

A significant portion (41%) of participants unfamiliar with e-learning skills expressed concerns about the effectiveness of online learning for subjects like mathematics, accounting, and laboratory-based courses ( p  = 0.077). This suggests that students perceive these subjects as requiring a more hands-on or interactive approach that may be challenging to replicate in an online environment.

Learning environment

Across all demographics, a consistent trend emerged: most participants reported feelings of isolation and a lack of belonging when learning online (data presented in Table  2 ). This indicates that online learning environments may not adequately foster the sense of community and social interaction typically found in traditional classrooms. Students generally favoured classroom settings for the increased engagement and interaction with teachers and classmates, qualities perceived as lacking in online environments. This preference was further supported by students with limited e-learning skills (33.7%), who agreed that classroom learning was superior and considered online teaching/learning to be less beneficial ( p  = 0.045).

Impact on learning

The majority of participants believed online classes had minimal impact on developing students’ overall personalities and communication skills. Students with limited e-learning skills (50.6%) likened online learning to watching YouTube lectures ( p  = 0.061), implying a passive learning experience. This suggests online learning may not be as effective as traditional classroom settings in fostering these crucial soft skills.

Despite concerns about suitability and learning environment, a significant portion of participants, particularly undergraduates (42.7%, p  = 0.001), expressed satisfaction with the topics covered and the instructors’ efforts in the online environment. This highlights a potential disconnect between student concerns and their actual experience with well-designed online learning.

Most undergraduates strongly agreed (49.2%, p  = 0.04) that online teaching/learning is extremely useful during disasters such as the coronavirus pandemic (Table  3 ). This emphasizes the potential of online learning as a contingency measure for educational continuity during unforeseen circumstances.

Overall, student perceptions regarding the suitability and learning outcomes of online learning were mixed. While some found it beneficial for specific situations and expressed satisfaction with well-designed online courses, concerns existed about its effectiveness in fostering a sense of community, developing soft skills, and replicating the interactive nature of traditional classroom settings.

Teacher perceptions

Advantages of online teaching.

A considerable number of teachers (40%) viewed online classes as a more adaptable alternative to traditional classroom settings. Similarly, nearly half (49.2%) expressed this view regarding student accessibility. Additionally, a significant majority (59.8%) believed online teaching offered students improved 24/7 access to learning materials.

Challenges of online teaching

Teachers reported a significant decrease (50%) in the use of standardized coursework compared to traditional classrooms. While they strongly disagreed (38%) that online teaching eliminates the need for proper lesson planning, they overwhelmingly felt it hindered creating a good interactive environment with students (87%). Furthermore, teachers believed students were less likely to ask questions in an online setting (61%) compared to a physical classroom. However, most teachers (79%) appreciated the elimination of physical travel associated with online teaching.

Suitability and effectiveness

In terms of learner level, online teaching was perceived as more suitable for advanced learners (58%) than beginners. Teachers also believed online teaching was better suited for theory-based subjects (87%) compared to laboratory-based ones. Opinions were divided regarding the optimal use of online teaching for knowledge transfer, with 39% disagreeing and 24% remaining neutral. The teachers concurred that online teaching was a valuable tool during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, but they generally preferred face-to-face teaching under normal circumstances. Data pertaining to these findings is presented in Table  4 .

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a rapid shift to online learning platforms in dental education globally, including India. While this transition aimed to maintain educational continuity [ 12 ], it presented unique challenges for a country grappling with limited internet infrastructure [ 13 ]. Existing disparities in access were exacerbated by the pandemic’s suddenness, highlighting the need for innovative solutions tailored to the Indian context [ 14 ].

Our study aimed to understand the perceptions and challenges of online dental education among students and educators. Our findings resonate with existing research, highlighting both the advantages and limitations of online learning. Similar to previous studies, both students and educators in our research acknowledged the benefits of flexibility, improved online teaching skills, and efficient time management [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Additionally, the significant role of online resources and social media platforms in fostering learning and interaction, as emphasized by Azer et al. (2023) and Wimardhani et al. (2023), was evident in our findings [ 17 , 19 ].

This research explored factors influencing student satisfaction with online learning. Consistent with Shaheen et al. (2023), our results indicated higher satisfaction among younger students (aged 18–21) and those with stronger e-learning skills, suggesting a correlation with technological comfort [ 18 ]. However, unlike Schlenz et al. (2023) who observed a general preference for online learning, our study did not find significant variations in satisfaction based on age, location, or field of study [ 15 ]. Notably, students with advanced e-learning skills reported higher dissatisfaction with internet connectivity and speed, suggesting a potential link between heightened expectations and increased frustration with technical limitations. This aligns with observations made by Pratheebha & Jayaraman (2022), Chang et al. (2021), and Wimardhani et al. (2023) regarding student challenges in online learning environments [ 16 , 19 , 20 ]. While acknowledging the quality of online instruction, many students in our study, similar to those in Chang et al. (2021), expressed feelings of isolation and a preference for the interactive elements of traditional classroom settings [ 20 ].

The transition to online learning presented specific challenges in dental education, particularly for subjects requiring hands-on experience. Deery (2020) emphasizes the need for dental schools to adapt their curricula and policies to incorporate effective distance learning methods [ 21 ]. Our research reinforces this notion by highlighting the importance of a strong educator-student connection for successful online learning. In the face of these challenges, educators and administrators remain committed to creating a conducive learning environment that prioritizes adaptability.

Online learning platforms offer unique advantages. E-learning technologies empower learners to personalize their learning pace, sequence, and content, leading to improved engagement [ 22 ]. Additionally, recorded online lectures provide flexibility for students to access learning materials at their convenience [ 23 ]. Our research, building upon prior work by Pham (2022) and Chang et al. (2021), demonstrated a weaker association between peer-to-peer interactions and student satisfaction, consistent with findings in other online learning environments [ 20 , 24 ].

Several factors influence the success of online education, including educator willingness to share content online, student capacity for online learning, and the quality of available digital resources [ 25 ]. Political, economic, and cultural factors also significantly influence the transition from traditional to online learning [ 25 ]. While acknowledging the potential for academic collaboration and remote work, many educators recognize the opportunity to integrate blended learning models into future curriculum development [ 26 ].

“Internet self-efficacy” – an individual’s confidence in navigating online tasks – plays a crucial role in online learning success [ 27 ]. In India, internet connectivity disparities between urban and rural areas present a challenge for both students and teachers. These connectivity issues, along with software problems and audio/video functionalities, can disrupt learning and create a frustrating experience. Institutions can mitigate these challenges by offering comprehensive internet skills training to enhance students’ and educators’ internet self-efficacy before implementing online courses [ 24 ]. However, the pandemic’s swift implementation of remote learning may have limited the availability of such training protocols.

Challenges and innovations in clinical skills development

While online learning offers numerous advantages, it presents unique challenges in dental education, particularly for subjects requiring hands-on clinical experience with patients. The absence of direct patient interaction remains a significant hurdle [ 21 ]. However, several institutions are actively addressing this limitation by adopting diverse e-learning tools like flash multimedia, digitized images, virtual patient simulations, and virtual reality (VR) simulators. Research has shown the effectiveness of these tools in teaching various clinical skills, including examination, palpation, surgical procedures, and resuscitation [ 28 ]. Notably, VR simulators have been found to be equally effective as live patient interactions in achieving learning objectives, offering a promising solution for overcoming limitations in online dental education.

The rise of virtual interaction and blended learning models

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly transformed the educational landscape in dental education by introducing virtual teaching platforms. This shift has reshaped interactions between educators and students, impacting how they learn and assess progress. The rise of web-based resources has facilitated the emergence of innovative virtual interaction methods, such as student-patient simulations and peer mentoring programs. Research suggests these methods can be effective in enhancing medical students’ knowledge and psychological well-being [ 29 ]. However, this transition to online learning has also encountered obstacles, including technical difficulties, privacy concerns, reduced student engagement, and potential exacerbation of mental health issues due to social isolation [ 27 , 29 , 30 ].

Optimizing blended learning for future dental education

The unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the importance of exploring student preferences and technical challenges to optimize blended learning models in dental education. By addressing the diverse needs of students and effectively integrating online and offline learning components, educators can foster successful learning outcomes in an ever-evolving educational environment [ 30 ]. This research underscores the multifaceted nature of online dental education and emphasizes the necessity for collaborative efforts to leverage its advantages while mitigating limitations.

Building educational resilience and adaptability

The significance of these studies extends beyond immediate pandemic adaptations. They contribute to a broader understanding of learning adaptations, hybrid learning environments, digital literacy, pedagogical innovation, mental health and well-being, policy implications, and the continuous enhancement of educational practices [ 30 ]. Reflecting on experiences and lessons learned during the pandemic can assist educational institutions in refining their teaching and learning approaches, ensuring greater resilience and adaptability in the face of future challenges [ 29 ]. Therefore, the insights from these studies offer valuable guidance for shaping the future of dental education and broader educational practices in a post-pandemic world.

Limitations and future research directions

We acknowledge limitations in our study. Employing random sampling methods in future research would be crucial to draw more widely applicable conclusions regarding perceptions and challenges in online dental education in India. Additionally, we recognize the challenges associated with relying on self-reported data, including potential social desirability bias. While acknowledging these limitations, our study adopted a people-centred approach, employing a diverse questionnaire, contextual analysis, and insightful techniques to gain a profound understanding of participants’ experiences with digital instruction. However, these limitations underscore the need for further exploration, particularly in understanding the potential misalignment between outcomes of digital and in-person events from instructors’ perspectives. This area warrants additional research through targeted interviews, subgroup analyses, and consideration of contextual factors, aiming to enhance our understanding of effective teaching modes and benefitting student learning outcomes.

In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online and virtual teaching platforms in dental education, offering both opportunities and challenges. By exploring student preferences and addressing technical obstacles, educators can refine blended learning models to better cater to diverse student needs. The insights gleaned from pandemic experiences provide valuable direction for bolstering the resilience and adaptability of educational practices in a post-pandemic era.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed throughout the current investigation are attainable from the corresponding author following a justifiable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all the volunteers who participated in the study.

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LNR: Conception and design of the study, Data acquisition, Data analysis, Discussion of the results, Drafting of the manuscript. AS: Conception and design of the study, Data acquisition, Discussion of the results, Drafting of the manuscript. VP: Conception and design of the study, Data acquisition, Data analysis, Discussion of the results, Drafting of the manuscript. SN: Conception and design of the study, Data acquisition, Data analysis, Discussion of the results, Drafting of the manuscript. MSB: Conception and design of the study, Data acquisition, Data analysis, Discussion of the results, Drafting of the manuscript. HS: Drafting of the manuscript, Proofreading and editing for final submission. AMP: Proofreading and editing for final submission. DAW: Proofreading and editing for final submission. II: Proofreading and editing for final submission. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Rao, L.N., Shetty, A., Pai, V. et al. Perceptions and challenges of online teaching and learning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in India: a cross-sectional study with dental students and teachers. BMC Med Educ 24 , 637 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05340-2

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Impact of Online Learning in India: A Survey of University Students During the COVID-19 Crisis

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The unprecedented situation of COVID-19 caused the government of India to instruct educational institutions to switch to an online mode to mitigate the losses for students due to the pandemic. The present study attempts to explore the impact of online learning introduced as a stop-gap arrangement during the pandemic in India. A survey was conducted (N=289), via Facebook and WhatsApp, June 1-15, 2020 to understand the accessibility and effectiveness of online learning and constraints that students of higher education across the country faced during the peak times of the pandemic.

The analysis and interpretation of the data revealed that the students acclimatized in a short span of time to online learning, with only 33.21% saying they were not satisfied with the online learning mode. However, the sudden shift to online education has presented more challenges for the socially and economically marginalized groups, including Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Class (OBC), females, and students in rural areas, due to factors like the price of high-speed Internet (78.20% identified it as a barrier to online learning), insufficient infrastructure (23.52% needed to share their device frequently or very frequently), poor Internet connectivity, etc. According to 76.47% of respondents, the future of learning will be in “blended mode.” A total of 88.92% of the respondents suggested that the government should provide high-quality video conferencing facilities free to students to mitigate the division created by online education in an already divided society.

The unprecedented situation of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 forced the Indian education system to move to digital learning and teaching to fill the gap created by suspending classroom teaching across the country. Technological development and the Internet have changed the lives of people immensely and have also brought a huge change in various fields (Nadikattu , 2020) .

The majority of countries worldwide temporarily closed educational institutions to contain the spread of the COVID-19. According to UNESCO (2020) , 191 countries have implemented nationwide or localized school closures, resulting in over 91% of enrolled students, or 1.5 billion people, not being able to go to school as of April 20, 2020 (Lamrabat , 2020) . UNESCO has supported countries in their efforts to mitigate the immediate impact of school closures, particularly for more vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, and to facilitate the continuity of education for all through remote learning (UNESCO , 2020) .

The decision of the countries to switch to an online mode of education in light of the outbreak of COVID-19 was needed to contain the spread of the pandemic. Although the Indian government has attempted to control the damage by introducing online teaching through the virtual classroom, uploading and sharing e-study materials, and through virtual interaction, all such tools and techniques have limitations. This damage control mechanism will certainly have long-term consequences on the quality, accessibility, and deliverability of educational content. The effects of the global pandemic on the education system may vary from country to country, depending mainly on infrastructure and quality of content. The outbreak of COVID-19 has affected all segments of students, but it is particularly damaging to students of the vulnerable groups of the society.

The people of the vulnerable groups in India are disadvantaged in comparison to others mainly on account of limited access to basic needs or services. The vulnerable groups susceptible to mainly social and economic discrimination include women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, children, aged, disabled, poor migrants, people living with HIV/AIDS, and sexual minorities (MES , 2011) . As per census of India 2011, the Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Scheduled Caste (SC) account for 8.2% and 16.2% of the total population of the country respectively (Census India , n.d.) . The term OBC, which stands for Other Backward Class, is collectively used by the Government of India to categorize the educationally or socially underprivileged castes living across the country. It is one of the official classifications of the population alongside General Class, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs).

There are reports of students of a large section of the country facing difficulties coping with the present online system of delivery of education based on the digital divide. The closure of 1.5 million schools due to the pandemic and lockdowns in 2020 has impacted 247 million children enrolled in elementary and secondary schools in India (UNICEF , 2021) . The interruptions in the teaching and learning process have adversely affected mainly the students without smartphones and computers, those with poor Internet speed or lack of stable Internet connection, electricity failures, etc. The early evidence and news reports also indicate that the impact of COVID-19 is most severe among the students from vulnerable groups due to their inability to continue with studies due to meager economic conditions. Moreover, re-contextualizing the teaching and learning process to an e-learning mode has several limitations for students with less access to technology.

The problem for the students with meager sources of family income is more severe and such students require additional attention and support. The online method of delivering content is a big barrier for such students and their families. It has restricted both the cognitive as well as non-cognitive development of these students. The online delivery of education may turn out to be harmful if the pandemic situation continues for a long time for the students living in poverty. The situation will adversely affect students from indigent and other marginalized groups in particular. Moreover, health and psychological issues such as mental stress, eye strain, headache, backache, neck ache, spondylitis, sleeplessness, irritation, aloofness, lack of physical peer interaction, etc. emerging from the sudden introduction of online education can cause the students to experience many difficulties. Any stress and inadequate resources to alleviate these potential harms may lead the individual to experience psychological distress (Lazarus & Folkman , 1984) .

As an offshoot of digital and Internet technology, e-learning or online learning has developed the potential to make some notable changes in accessing educational curriculum outside the traditional classroom and previously existing technology over the last two decades. However, the widespread technological innovations and infrastructural growth divided the world into the physical and digital world since the dawn of the new millennium. Besides the availability of the infrastructure, a detailed lesson plan, presentation, and good study materials need to be prepared for effective online learning. The lack of online teaching skills, no training for preparing lesson plans, poor or no hands-on training of software, unavailability of infrastructure, etc. among the educators of developing and underdeveloped countries stand as a major challenge. The trend of online learning has been benefiting the learners from developed counties with sound technological infrastructure more than the developing and poor counties, resulting in a huge gap between education rich and education poor countries.

Over the years, India has introduced several public policies in different sectors to acquaint and encourage citizens to accept digital technology for a wide range of benefits. Of late, digital activity is gaining acceptance across different sectors including education, especially in private educational institutes, coaching centers, and distance learning universities in pre-COVID-19 India.

In a country as diverse as India, along with overcoming the infrastructure barrier, there needs to be a focus on overcoming the barriers of language and content (Saini , 2018) . The migration to online learning has been looked at as a good solution for the future by experts while overcoming the infrastructural barriers in gradual progression to maintain quality and accessibility to meet the learning needs of the growing population of the country.

There may be numerous pros and cons of online education with respect to the students of different classes, castes, genders, and economic conditions. Despite all odds, the government and stakeholders of educational institutions have been working hard to strengthen the knowledge of the individual, larger community, and society for any normal and future crisis situations.

This paper concentrates on the socio-demographic impact of the introduction of online learning process in higher education on students of different classes, castes, genders, urban, and rural areas in higher education.

Literature Review

Fast research growth and technology have made distance education easy (McBrien et al. , 2009) . “Most of the terms (online learning, open learning, web-based learning, computer-mediated learning, blended learning, m-learning, for ex.) have in common the ability to use a computer connected to a network, that offers the possibility to learn from anywhere, anytime, in any rhythm, with any means” (Cojocariu et al. , 2014) .

Not only the teachers but also the students are facing challenges due to a deficiency in proper learning attitudes, lack of suitable materials for learning, more involvement in classroom learning, lack of self-discipline, and the inadequate learning environment at some of their homes during self-isolation (Brazendale et al. , 2017) .

Using a qualitative content analysis approach, the study conducted by Sun and Chen (2016) reviewed 47 published studies and research regarding online teaching and learning since 2008. Their study primarily focuses on how theories, practices, and assessments apply to an online learning environment. Some prominent factors required for effective online instruction included well-designed course content, motivating interaction between the instructor and learners, well-prepared and fully supported instructors, creation of a sense of online learning community, and rapid advancement of technology Sun and Chen (2016) .

In their systematic analysis, Navarro and Shoemaker (2000) observed that the learning outcomes of students having online classes were as good as or better than traditional classroom learning, irrespective of the background characteristics of the students. The student learners were highly satisfied with online learning.

Lederman (2020) had the opinion that the COVID-19 crisis compelled both teachers and students to embrace the digital academic experience of the online teaching-learning process. Bao (2020) was perhaps one among the early researchers during the pandemic who described how universities have been moving from classroom-based education to online education, owing to the exponential number of COVID-19 cases. The teachers have been delivering course content through various online platforms, including online educational platforms, videoconferencing software, and social media (Aguilera-Hermida , 2020) . The online educational platforms like Google Classroom and Blackboard allow teachers to share notes and multimedia resources to continue the regular studies of students. Students can submit their assignments via educational platforms and teachers can track the progress of students.

Videoconferencing tools such as Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams have been playing important roles in delivering online lectures and organizing discussion sessions. In fact, these platforms typically support slideshows and have several useful features. A number of universities and institutions of higher education have been disseminating course material through their official websites (Chatterjee & Chakraborty , 2020) .

Several countries were equipped with significant infrastructure for online education before the pandemic hit the world (Mishra et al. , 2020) . Despite this, not all universities were prepared to shift to complete online education. There are some empirical studies that suggest that students have a better learning experience in a physical classroom than through online education (Bojović et al. , 2020) . Students miss the assistance they obtain from their peers in classrooms and laboratories and access to a library (Aguilera-Hermida , 2020) . However, students believe that online education facilitated the continuation of their studies during the pandemic (Mishra et al. , 2020) .

The caste system of Indian society is one among the world’s oldest forms of surviving social stratification. The system of caste segregates the Hindus into four main categories - Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras, based on their karma (work) and dharma (religion or duty in Hindi language). This system of casteism among Hindus is believed to be more than 3,000 years old. This system of social division dictates nearly all facets of Hindu religious and social life, where each group occupies a definite place in the complex social hierarchy. The communities living in rural India are mainly segregated on the basis of castes - the upper and lower castes. They have been living in segregated colonies with restrictions on movements, alliances and sharing facilities. The Constitution of India banned discrimination on the basis of caste after country’s independence from British rule, and, in an attempt to correct historical injustices and provide a level playing field to the traditionally disadvantaged, the authorities announced quotas in government jobs and educational institutions for scheduled castes and tribes, the lowest in the caste hierarchy, in 1950 (BBC , 2019) . The Constitution of India defines who are members of the SC and ST under Article 341 and 342 with respect to any state or union territory.

The population of OBC consisted of 52% of the country’s population according to the B P Mandal Commission report (TNS , 2021) of 1980, and it was determined to be 41% in 2006 (TNN , 2007) by the National Sample Survey Organisation. A constitutional provision of 27% reservation (PIB , 2014) was made in public sector employment and higher education to uplift the OBC.

The review of literature suggests that online learning has both positive and negative aspects in terms of delivery of content, current environment, and availability of infrastructure. The trend of learning via online mode is not new for the students belonging to privileged classes in India. There are a section of people opting for online learning via various platforms like edX and Coursera for better learning and international exposure. The present crisis of the pandemic forced some students to not be able to carry out their studies in the online mode due to several to social, economic, and infrastructure related issues. These issues include no or poor Internet facilities, no mobile phone, laptop or computer, no conducive environment for learning, etc. The sample for the current study mainly represents only those higher education students who were forced to go to an online mode of learning.

The researchers have not found any studies on the effectiveness of online learning among the students of higher education of varied demographics during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study may be helpful to understand the effectiveness of online learning especially among the vulnerable groups of the society during the pandemic.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

The current study investigates the effect of the sudden shift of the entire learning environment from physical to online mode. The research questions formulated for the study are as follows.

RQ1 : How or what were the opinions of the students regarding online mode of learning?

RQ2 : How has online learning affected the students of different groups, particularly disadvantaged members of society, including OBC, SC, ST, rural, and female students?

RQ3 : Will the online mode of learning will reduce the discrimination among the different socio-economic groups of the society?

The following hypotheses have been framed and will be tested from the data collected.

H 1 : Different sections of the society were differently impacted due to the sudden shift to an online mode of learning.

H 2 : There were sections of the society who lacked sufficient infrastructure for online learning.

H 3 : Online learning is considered less effective and the interaction level is also less.

Methodology

There is the need during the ongoing pandemic to study and understand the efficacy of online education when students of various disciplines of India are entirely dependent on learning online. An explorative research design technique has been chosen for this study, and the analysis in this paper will also look into the following aspects of online learning.

Frequency of participation in learning via online classes, the kind of devices used, mode of connection, and the platform used for learning online.

Suitability of the additional e-material available for the online learning process among learners.

Effectiveness of online learning among students in higher education. (Satisfaction, understanding the subject, classroom adjustment, teacher-pupil interactions, peer interaction/sharing).

Constraints faced during online learning (gender, economic status, social status, place of residence, and health).

Problems faced by e-learners in the process of learning such as conceptual, theoretical, and practical clarity of the content, technical problems, and the physical environment.

Effectiveness of online learning in the present situation of the pandemic and future implications.

Need and preference of learners for better learning and understanding of the content and realistic approach to the subjects.

A Google Form containing 38 questions has been developed to understand respondents’ experiences and perception of online classes during the pandemic. It also attempts to investigate how the sudden shift has differently impacted students belonging to different socio-demographic backgrounds. The responses to the questionnaire helped us to determine the frequency of participation in learning via online classes, the kind of devices used, connection mode, the platform used for learning online, etc.

The link to the questionnaire was circulated online via various Facebook and WhatsApp groups of students of higher education, aged 18-30 years across India. The link was kept active for 15 days from June 1, 2020 to June 15, 2020 to collect responses from the e-learners of the target group. The responses of 289 e-learners were recorded during the period. All the questions were close ended. The collected data was recorded on a nominal or ordinal scale. Therefore, the data received is categorical data.

Pertinent tools to analyze categorical data were used, which include frequency analysis, contingency tables, and chi-square test for testing the associations of the categorical data. Using cross-tabulation, we could get grouped frequencies to find whether there is a pattern of association between two or more variables.

Results and Discussion

Out of 289 responses, 171 (59.16%) were male and 118 (41.83%) were female. In terms of caste, the majority of the responses were received from the General Category ( n =192, 66.43%) and Other Backward Class (OBC) ( n =67, 23.18%); only 15 responses were received from members of a Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) each.

Participation, Device, Connectivity, and Platform

A total of 211 (73.01%) students responded that they participate most of the time in online learning, whereas 69 (23.87%) said that they participate some of the time. The number of students who seldom or never attended online classes was very low (8 students and 1 student, respectively). This clearly reflects that students did not face much difficulty starting to learn online. The majority of students ( n =245, 84.77%) were using smart phones for online learning, whereas the uses of laptops, tablets, and desktops were limited to only 38, 4, and 2 students (13.15%, 1.38%, and <1%) respectively. More than three-quarters of the students (76.12%) used mobile Internet to participate in online learning, which indicates that using wi-fi connectivity is less popular or not available.

The number of students using Zoom as a platform for learning was the highest ( n =153, 52.94%); 60 (20.76%) used WhatsApp, 33 (11.42%) used Google Classroom, 21 (7.27%) used Google Meet, and 22 (7.61%) used other platforms of class room meetings. When it comes to receiving study material, most of the learners preferred WhatsApp ( n =252, 87.20%) and only 35 (12.11%) preferred other online platforms.

E-Material Preference and Satisfaction

It was observed that students preferred e-notes and online videos over e-books as supporting resources for online learning (see Table 1 ).

In response to the question about whether they were satisfied with the online mode for effectively learning the subjects covered on their syllabus, 96 (33.22%) of the e-learners were not satisfied. Other students responded to the same question that they were very satisfied (20, 6.92%), satisfied ( n =62, 21.45%), or that it was manageable ( n =111, 38.40%).

Exposure and Material

A total of 122 (42.21%) strongly agreed and 124 (42.91%) agreed with the statement that hands on experience in a physical classroom may not work in an online mode. A total of 19 e-learners (6.57%) could not decide. Another 18 (6.23%) and 6 (2.08%) respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed, respectively, with the statement that practical exposure with a teacher in a physical classroom interaction may not work online. The responses reflect that the majority of the students felt that they get less practical exposure in the online mode of learning.

Most of the students ( n =270, 93.43%) received online material from their teachers; only 19 (6.57%) said that they had not received it. Only 58 students (20.07%) had recorded lectures from their teachers. A chi-square test revealed that type of course and the level of satisfaction in online learning are independent, that is, not affecting each other (χ 2 (9, N =289)=10.257, p =.330). However, residential area (urban, suburban, or rural) and students’ satisfaction level are associated (χ 2 (6, N =289)=29.239, p <.001). This is an indication that the urban students (privileged) are more satisfied than suburban and rural (less privileged) students. It hints that online education has created a divide in the society. This result shows that H 1 is supported that is, the different sections of the society were differently impacted.

Constraints of Learning

To explore the constraints faced during online learning, several questions were asked, and pivot tables were created to understand the associations between the responses to these questions and some important demographic variables such as gender, caste, family income, place of residence, etc.

On the question about whether the online schedule of classes caused any problem to their family members’ daily routine or not, the majority of students reported that it has created a little problem ( n =108, 37.37%) or it was never a problem ( n =94, 32.53%). However, when the responses of the same questions were cross tabulated with gender and caste and a chi-square test was applied, it was found that responses were independent of caste (χ 2 (12, N =289)=9.6776, p=.1389), but related to gender (χ 2 (4, N =289)=13.531, p =.009). These test results suggests that female students had to adjust their household work for online classes. In addition, while this does not directly indicate infrastructural issues, it may be an indication that female students may not own their own device for attending online classes, which may be attributed to less infrastructure. Therefore, these results may support H 2, which stated certain sections of society have insufficient infrastructure for online learning.

The responses of the e-learners were evenly spread when the question of whether the sharing of a device while attending an online session created any problems for family members or not. A total of 80 respondents (27.68%) rarely had any problem, whereas it was never a problem for 72 respondents (24.91%). The details of the responses are in Table 2 . The results of chi-square tests showed that problems due to sharing a device were related to both caste (χ 2 (4, N =289)= 25.504, p =.009) and gender (χ 2 (4, N =289)=13.68709, p =.008), further supporting H2.

Note. 1 = very frequently/strongly agree , 2 = frequently/agree , 3 = occasionally/neutral , 4 = rarely/disagree , 5 = never/strongly disagree

An attempt to explore whether this problem has any association with gender/caste/household income and residential area (urban, suburban, or rural) has been done. Cross tabulations have been done with all these. A chi-square test for independence for attributes was performed. The chi-square test revealed that the constraints of learning are associated with gender (χ 2 (4, N =289) =13.687, p=.008) and caste (χ 2 (12, N =289)=26.504, p =.009). However, no association was found between the responses to this question and the income status of the respondents’ families. These results help to understand the online learning constraints of e-learners in terms of their gender, economic status, place of residence, and societal standing (caste). The results of the test support H 1 .

Internet Speed

Most of the respondents ( n =226,78.20%) agreed or strongly agreed that the price of high-speed Internet is a barrier to online learning (see Table 2 ). Caste (χ 2 (12, N =289)=25.501, p =.013) and income (χ 2 (12, N =289) =27.921, p =.006) were found to be significantly associated with the price of high-speed Internet being a barrier to online learning. These results support H 2 , that is, that certain groups lacked the infrastructure needed for online learning.

Information Overload

Most of the respondents (52.60%) opined that the abundance of e-materials on course curriculum may lead to information overload, whereas the number of students who responded yes or no were found to be 76 (26.30%) and 61 (21.10%) respectively (see Table 3 ).

Note. 1 = Yes, 2 = Somewhat, 3 = Maybe/Not sure, 4 = No.

Stress and Remedies

The majority of the students strongly agree (21.45%) and agree (37.03%), that online classes were stressful.

The majority of the students believe, that is, agreed (36.33%) or strongly agreed (18.00%), that inclusion of online music and meditation classes can reduce the stress of online classes. Table 2 shows that 19.73% disagreed and 6.58% strongly disagreed that music would reduce stress, and 19.36% were undecided.

If undecided responses are excluded, strongly agree/agree are combined, and strongly disagree/disagree are combined, and a z -test for difference of proportion is conducted, it reflects that more people agreed with introducing music and meditation as supplementary classes along with main the subjects ( z =5.3, p < .001).

User-Friendliness of Tools

A total of 139 respondents (48.10%) found online learning tools user-friendly (see Table 3 ). When the responses yes and somewhat were combined and a z -test was conducted, the result of the test suggests that the majority found online tools user friendly ( z =11.4, p <.001).

Readiness for Online Learning

The number of respondents who feel that India is not ready for online classes was found to be highest ( n =112, 38.75%) in the survey (see Table 3 ). An equal number ( n =65, 22.49%) of participants responded somewhat or yes, whereas 47 (16.26%) of respondents were not sure. The responses of the participants indicate that the present situation for online learning is not encouraging when considering India’s readiness for online learning in similar situations in the future.

Online vs. Classroom Teaching

On the question of whether the students, who have been forced to attend online classes due to the pandemic, had attended classroom classes before the outbreak of COVID-19, the majority of the students, which includes very frequently (17.99%) and frequently (46.37%), had attended classes regularly, 17.65% attended occasionally, and 13.49% rarely attended classroom classes before the outbreak of COVID-19, whereas a small percentage (4.50%) never attended classes held in regular classrooms (see Table 2 ). The majority of the students (64.36%), which includes very frequently (17.99%) and frequently (46.37%), attended online classes regularly.

Should We Replace Classroom Teaching with Online Teaching?

More than half of the respondents (53.29%) had the opinion that online teaching cannot replace classroom teaching, whereas 22.49% believed that online teaching can replace traditional classroom teaching; 9.00% of the respondents were not sure, and only 15.22% believed that online teaching can replace classroom teaching (see Table 3 ).

The limitations of online learning may hamper the majority of the respondents’ ability to understand contents and develop skills related to the subjects.

Art of Teaching and Students’ Zeal for Learning

More than 70% (71.28%) of the respondents believed (yes or somewhat) that online learning has affected the art of teaching and zeal for learning (see Table 3 ). A total of 28.75% (19.38% no and 9.37% not sure) have different views.

Future Approach to Learning

More than three-quarters of total respondents, who either agreed or strongly agreed, believe the future of learning would be blended, that is, a combination of classroom and online learning (see Table 2 ). Only 2.42% disagree and 6.23% were not sure about it.

Support from Government

A total of 88.93% of the respondents either strongly agree or agree (see Table 2 ) with the statement that the government should provide high quality video conferencing facilities free to all students. The percentage of respondents with opinions such as disagree, strongly disagree, or undecided were minimal.

Practical Components of Learning

The majority of the respondents ( n =260, 89.97%) either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that they faced difficulties in comprehending lab/field-based activities when taught online (see Table 2 ). These results support H 3 .

Preference of Learning

More than half of the respondents (54.33%) believe that face-to-face interaction is a better option (see Table 4 ). A total of 22.14% preferred 50% face-to-face and 50% online. Only 4.15% preferred completely online learning. These findings support H 3.

The findings of the study suggest that there is a serious need to invest a sizeable amount of money in the development of infrastructure and to frame national policy to overcome challenges faced during the stop-gap arrangement of the teaching-learning process and continue it as an additional mode of teaching and learning even after the pandemic ends.

With the current experience of online education, advancement in technologies, proliferation of education, and ample opportunities of learning from experts, the modes and ease of learning have been significantly changing over a period of time. Hence, there is a need to develop new theories that deal with effectiveness, opportunities, and necessity for online learning.

We can observe the following from this study.

(i) Different sections of the society were differently impacted due to sudden shift on online mode of learning.

(ii) There were sections of the society who did not have sufficient infrastructure for online learning.

(iii) Discrimination among different classes may not be there as it takes place in physical classes, but the online mode of education will widen the gap among different sections of the society.

(iv) Teaching satisfaction level with the online mode is less than in-person education mode and even less for suburban and rural students.

(v) Constraints of online education are associated with gender and caste, indicating that online education creates more division in an already divided society.

The findings of the study may not be suitable to derive a universally acceptable conclusion, as it was conducted with a small group of people. The results may vary due to different social and economic standings of different groups of students of higher education, who have been continuing their online education during the pandemic crisis. However, the results of the study may give a direction to future researchers who wish to conduct similar studies with a larger sample and derive any model, concept, or theory based on the findings.

Submitted : February 27, 2021 KST

Accepted : July 18, 2021 KST

08 Jun, 2024 | 6:05 AM IST

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Recent trends of research in open and distance education in India

Asian Association of Open Universities Journal

ISSN : 2414-6994

Article publication date: 1 October 2020

Issue publication date: 19 October 2020

The purpose of this paper was to analyse the research trends on the Indian Open and Distance Education (ODE) system as reflected in the articles published in the prominent journals of distance education across the world.

Design/methodology/approach

A study was undertaken to review the research articles on ODE in India published in 11 prominent peer-reviewed journals of distance education during the period 2010–2019. Content analysis was done to find out areas of research undertaken in the ODE of India based on a validated classification of research areas; types of research studies conducted; and authorship and publication patterns.

Out of a total of 2,571 articles published in 11 selected journals, only 191 (7.42%) pertained to ODE in India. The majority of these 191 articles (68.42%) were published in Indian journals. The Indian and Asian journals together accounted for 93.55% of total articles. Globally, the share of articles on the Indian ODE system was significantly low ranging between 4.27 and a maximum of 10.77%, which was much below expectations from a country having the maximum number of ODE learners in the world. Results further revealed that 63% of the contributors to research on ODE in India were affiliated to Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Research limitations/implications

The limitation of this study was only analysing the research articles published in journals of distance education and other types of articles, namely, book reviews, editorials, field notes and workshop reports were excluded from the analysis.

Practical implications

The study is intended to help researchers, policymakers, and open and distance education institutions to draw a roadmap for the promotion and conduct of system-based research, which would be vital for strengthening the system.

Social implications

The quantum of research is not proportionate to the number of faculty members working in the ODE system of India and the large number of learners that it serves, which is a matter of concern. For any system to grow its periodic systemic review is essential. The research outcomes need to be ploughed back into the system for its betterment.

Originality/value

The study is original. There is no such study undertaken till date. This study will be extremely useful to researchers, as the gaps in distance education research which are yet to be addressed, have been identified by the authors.

• Open and distance education
• Content analysis
• Research trends
• Research areas

Srivastava, M. , Mishra, B. , Rao, D.K. , Abrol, N. , Varma, V. and Bhushan, B. (2020), "Recent trends of research in open and distance education in India", Asian Association of Open Universities Journal , Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 263-283. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAOUJ-06-2020-0044

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Manjulika Srivastava, Bijayalaxmi Mishra, Dev Kant Rao, Navita Abrol, Vandana Varma and Bharat Bhushan

Published in Asian Association of Open Universities Journal . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

The seed of distance education, sown in the middle of the 19th century, blossomed a century later, for the reason that many countries had adopted it post-Second World War. Decolonization led many nations on the trail of expanding their educational base. The opportunity of access, affordability and convenience offered by the Distance Education system made it the preferred choice for them. The foundation of the British Open University in 1969 was a seminal moment in the history of distance education and its subsequent success had a rippling effect across the world ( Srivastava, 2012 ). The Open University system ushered in “radical deviations from the traditions of University Education” by introducing large scale industrialization of education ( Peters, 1983 ). By this time, a century's worth research had gone into the growth and development of the Distance Education system. On the basis of review of the research conducted in the field of distance education during 1970s and 1980s, “the dearth of research on Distance Education was replaced by a wealth of studies” (Holmberg, 1986). More than 300 studies on distance education could be listed that had been published mostly in the latter half of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. Interestingly these research studies had their base in the knowledge and theory already developed in other disciplines such as Education, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, History and Economics. Such efforts that lead to emergence of new knowledge, can be ascribed to the beginnings of a new discipline, that of distance education ( Holmberg, 1986 ).

The first journal to publish research specifically in the field of distance education was “ Distance Education” published by the Australian and South Pacific External Studies Association (ASPESA) – the predecessor of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA), founded in 1973 for professional development of distance educators working in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the member countries of the University of the South Pacific ( Bewley, 2008 ). It was followed, almost simultaneously in the 1980s, by launch of three more international journals, namely, “ Open Learning” in 1986 (renamed as “Open Learning: The Journal of Open Distance and e-Learning”); the “ Journal of Distance Education” in 1986 (renamed as “The International Journal of E-Learning and Distance Education” in 2014) and the “ American Journal of Distance Education” in 1987. These journals played a pivotal role in establishing distance education as a separate discipline in the scholarly world ( Moore, 2016 ). The distance education as a discipline thereafter never looked back and a number of good quality journals were introduced centred around various facades of open and distance education (ODE) which has resulted in an exponential growth in the literature on ODE.

India, with 15 Open Universities (OUs), more than a 100 Directorates of Distance Education (DDEs) which are functioning under Dual Mode Universities (DMUs), and more than 1.7 million learners pursuing their higher education through this mode ( UGC, 2019 ), has one of the largest ODE systems in the world. For any system to grow and maintain its quality and standards, its periodic review is essential. Being a dynamic technology-assisted system, ODE keeps on evolving with the adoption of new technological interventions, and needs to be regularly evaluated to ensure the efficacy and effectiveness of the system. The journals published in the field of distance education are providing the platform to distance educators/practitioners, teachers and students working/studying at these institutions to publish scholarly work in the field of ODE and at the same time disseminate their scholarship and extension of their research to the rest of the world. From an Indian perspective, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) took the lead and started the “ Indian Journal of Open Learning (IJOL)” in 1992 for promoting professional development of its teachers, academics and students, including their counterparts working in other OUs and DDEs. The launch of IJOL was major milestone in the journey of research in distance education in India. Along with launching the journal, IGNOU also played a major role in strengthening the concept of system-based research by funding ODE faculty members working at IGNOU, other OUs and DDEs to undertake research on various facets of ODE. The erstwhile Distance Education Council (DEC) under its research project scheme provided funding to nearly 100 research projects to the tune of about 10m rupees ( Srivastava, 2012 ).

The University Grants Commission (Open and Distance Learning) Regulations, 2017, which regulates all ODE Institutions in India, lays major emphasis on research by faculty members ( Government of India, 2017 ). Research has also been made mandatory for all teachers and academics working in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) including universities, as it acts as an important indicator for evaluating their academic performance in appointments and career advancement ( Government of India, 2010 , 2018 ). Promoting and undertaking quality research is as essential for Indian universities, as it is for other universities, to achieve higher global rankings. To encourage system-based research, Research, Innovations and Extension, forms a major criterion for assessing and grading an OU or a DDE working under a DMU for accreditation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). In the case of an OU, this criterion is assigned 20% of the overall weightage. NAAC evaluates an OU by assessing the contribution of its teachers and other academic staff members in research for the development of the ODE system; and other disciplines to contribute to new knowledge. Therefore, OUs are expected to give due consideration to research and provide a conducive and enabling environment in terms of infrastructure, human resource and finance, etc. to different stakeholders. Research, hence, needs to be facilitated by a suitable policy framework. This criterion seeks information on the policies, practices of research and development at a university ( NAAC, 2019 ). Also, it is the quality of research which represents the academic image of not just the individual carrying out research, but also the institution to which the researcher belongs.

To assess the quantum of research done on ODE at higher education level in India;

To explore the trends of areas research in the ODE;

To categorize research in ODE from the point of view of the research methods used along with the institutional affiliation of the researchers undertaking research in ODE;

To find out the potential areas and the hitherto neglected areas of research in ODE in India and

To suggest measures to improve the standards and encourage system-based research.

Literature review

Regular attempts have been made to review and classify research on distance education across the world, with a few isolated attempts on research trends on ODE in India. The first major study that focussed on the research articles published on Correspondence Education, prevalent in India since 1960s, was undertaken by Gupta and Arun in 1986. In their study Gupta and Arun categorized the research articles into 11 areas and highlighted that the focus of research was on the concept and definitions, course development, use of media and technology, student evaluation, student enrolment and dropout, the problems that ails the system and its future. They pointed out that research was still at the nascent stage since most of the articles expressed the views of the authors and not based on empirical study ( Gupta and Arun, 1986 ).

The next major study was undertaken by Panda (1992) , which was far more comprehensive and exhaustive, covering 142 research articles on ODE in India both published and unpublished and MPhil and PhD dissertations. The research studies across selected articles were classified under nine research themes, with a clear demarcation of research under correspondence education and ODE and further placed in the structural framework of input, process and output model. The themes shortlisted by Panda covered almost all facets of ODE, namely, concept and growth; course design and development; instruction; learner support; media and technology; learners and learning; policy and management; evaluation; economics and staff development. Through his study, Panda (1992) brought out that the majority of the research articles were descriptive surveys with not so structured methodological designs and that there was a lack of holistic studies to arrive at any generalizations. He highlighted numerous constraints for research in distance education which were lack of funding, staff members and institutional policy. This study evolved into a book covering 152 research studies on ODE in India with detailed annotations on 88 research studies with the authors expressing the same concerns as pointed out by Panda in 1992 ( Panda et al. , 1996 ).

The study by Panda was followed by Mishra (1997) , who undertook an elaborate study across 361 articles published in four leading distance education journals. He analysed the nature of research published in these journals; research methods used; average number of references per contribution; contributions without references; authorship pattern; the most frequent contributors and their country of origin. The study by Mishra revealed that research in distance education was majorly based on survey method, mostly descriptive and lacked methodological rigour. He also found that single authors were contributing to majority of the research articles and that more than 80% papers originated from the UK, USA, Canada and India, which interestingly coincides with our findings.

On the completion of 10 years of IJOL, Mishra (2002) undertook another study. This time, he did a comprehensive review of all the research articles published in the IJOL since its inception covering the first decade of its existence. In his analysis pointed out that it was the IGNOU that provided it strong institutional support to the journal because of which it emerged as a good platform for exchange of ideas and dissemination of information for both Indian and foreign authors. Mishra's findings, however, matched with his own as well as other researcher's findings that the research methods used in the articles published in IJOL were mostly descriptive, followed by survey method and conceptual analysis with the majority of researchers using questionnaire and psychometric scale and lack of methodological rigour. Another finding that the first author's country of origin being India (66%) and that even within India, majority of articles originated from Delhi, again coincides with our findings. Thereafter, Tripathi and Kanungo (2010) made an attempt to profile the type of research including citation analysis, authorship pattern, popular areas of research and research methodologies used, published in IJOL from 2000 to 2009 covering 204 articles authored by 335 contributors. In a recently published article, Satyanarayana and Mantha (2018) had summarized all the review studies undertaken in a chronological manner up to 2006 only. In any case, in the study by Mishra of 2002 IJOL emerged as one of the most scholarly publications of ODE in India.

We did not come across any other such major review of research in ODE in India, justifying the need for taking up the review of literature published on ODE system of India and find out the gaps in the existing research, so as to suggest a way forward.

Methodology

This research study was undertaken to explore the research on ODE conducted in India and abroad and published in prominent journals of distance education during the last decade from 2010 to 2019 by mapping the research contribution of Indian and foreign researchers working at HEIs in India and abroad. The study was based on an extensive review of articles on “Open and Distance Education in India”, published in 11 prominent journals in the field of distance education, three of which were published within India while rest eight were published abroad ( Table 1 ). Only those Indian journals were included in the study which featured in the UGC Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (UGC CARE) list.

Based on data mining of 2,571 articles published across 104 volumes and 306 issues and published between 2010 and 2019 in 11 selected journals; 191 articles that focussed on research in ODE in India, were shortlisted. The content of these 191 articles was thoroughly analysed by our team of six raters or coders for classification of the areas of research, the types of research methods used by the researchers including their institutional affiliations, authorship pattern, gender-wise distribution and a content analysis of research studies conducted. A tool was prepared for data collection covering the following parameters: volume number, issue number; total number of articles published in each issue; article on ODE in India which was further classified under the following: research area, research method used; institutional affiliation of the author(s) and gender of the first author, The collected data were subjected to quantitative and descriptive analysis for reporting the outcomes of the study and graphical presentations to explicitly highlight the findings.

Inter-rater reliability between coders

In order to ensure the reliability of data and rating methods, the authors conducted an inter-rater reliability test, by conducting a sample analysis across 30 randomly selected articles. In order to ensure minimum variation, the coding was done at two levels, first all the six authors (coders) coded the articles distributed amongst them and second, once the coding at individual levels was completed, all the six coders were divided into two groups of three coders each, who again checked the correctness of coding. Finally, for evaluating the degree of consistency amongst the coders, we used the Cohen's Kappa by randomly selecting 30 articles ( Cohen, 1960 ; Neumann, 2007 ; Zawacki-Richter et al. , 2009 ). For the classification of research methods, a coding consistency of 0.799 was achieved between groups A and B. The coding consistency for classification of research area between group A and group B was 0.934. Thus, the inter-rater reliability, being more than 0.75, was excellent for both coding of research methods as well as research area ( Fleiss, 1981 ; Bakeman and Gottman, 1997 ).

Findings and analysis

Journal-wise representation of research on ode in india.

An analysis of articles published in the selected 11 journals of distance education, revealed that out of total 2,571 articles published during the period 2010–2019, only 191 or a meagre 7.42 pertained to ODE in India ( Table 1 ). Interestingly a majority of these articles (68.42%) were published in the journals published from India, namely, Indian Journal of Open Learning (36.65%), Edu Tech e-Journal of Education and Technology (12.04%) and Asian Journal of Distance Education (19.37%). If we further add the articles published in Asian Association of Open Universities (contributing 4.71%) published by Indonesia, and Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education (contributing 20.42%) published by Turkey, both being Asian countries, then this share further increases to 93.55%, signifying almost negligible articles on ODE on India were published by journals originating from European or American or other countries ( Figure 1 ).

The shares of articles published on Indian ODE within respective journal was also calculated. The findings show that barring IJOL wherein articles on Indian ODE featured to the tune of 72.92%, no other journal, including those published within India, contributed more than 34% on Indian ODE (EduTech 33.33% and AJDE 30.57%) of the total articles published therein.

The year-wise distribution data of articles further showed that the share of articles on ODE in India in the overall publications was significantly low ranging from a low of 4.27% in 2014 to maximum 10.77% in 2013 ( Figure 2 ). This low representation for sure was much below expectations from a country contributing to maximum number of ODE learners in the world. Thus, our findings coincide with the findings of other researchers including Mishra (2002) .

Pattern of authorship

In order to study the authorship pattern as to whether the research on ODE in India has been solitary or collaborative, and if collaborative, then whether the collaboration was inter- or intra-institutional, we examined the trends in authorship of the research articles over a period of 10 years across both Indian and International journals. We also tried to map the gender-wise distribution of the researchers, by taking into account the gender of the principal and corresponding author. In case the principal and corresponding authors were different and belonging to different genders, then we split the score equally between the two. In respect of articles not explicitly notifying the principal or corresponding author, the gender of the first author was taken into account.

The total number of authors, who contributed the 191 articles in our study, was 333. The authorship pattern ( Table 2 , Figure 3 ) revealed that almost 97 (50.78%) articles were published by single authors against 94 (49.22%) articles in collaboration. Of the 94 articles published in joint authorship by 241 researchers, accounted for 29.32%; and 14.66% of total 191 articles were published in joint collaboration of two and three authors, respectively. An insignificant 3.66% and 1.57% of the articles were published in joint collaboration of four and five authors, respectively. Trends further showed that except for the year 2010, when publications in joint collaboration of two authors were more than the single author publication, the single author publications always outnumbered publications by two or more authors. This trend in publication of articles on Indian ODE system was indicative of the kind of research undertaken by these authors, which was mostly system based, directed towards policy formulations or representation of learner support services data, where most of the researchers carried out solitary research in their own domains. This trend was in variance with the study conducted by Zawacki-Richter et al. , (2009) who in review of distance education literature published in five prominent journals of distance education between 2000 and 2008 observed a decrease in percentage of single author articles in comparison with an increasing trend towards multiple author articles. Our results of authorship pattern differed from those of Wong et al. (2016) who reported 26.9% single author articles and more than 70% multiple author articles in 2015 as against our 51% and 49% articles published by single and multiple authors, respectively.

An analysis of the institutional affiliation pattern of the 333 authors showed that almost 99% of the articles were written by authors affiliated to Indian Institutions (50 institutions) against only three authors belonging to institutions outside India, i.e. Commonwealth of Learning, Canada, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia and University of Houston, Texas. Interestingly all the authors (100%) in both Indian and foreign institutions were of Indian origin who had contributed articles on ODE in India (see Figure 4 ).

Further analysis of institutional affiliation of the authors revealed that 233 authors were affiliated to Indian Open Universities and 205 were from the Indira Gandhi National Open University alone. Thus, out of the total number of authors from Indian HEIs, 63% came from National Open University, i.e. IGNOU. The contribution of authors from State Open Universities was 8%, together making the contribution of authors working in OUs to 71%. Authors working at other universities (55 authors) and institutions and colleges (38 authors) accounted for the 29% of the total authors which was below expectation, considering more than 200 conventional universities and standalone institutions have been offering programmes through distance mode during this period. Our data in respect of institutional affiliation and collaboration of authors coincides with that of Wong et al. (2016) who reported that a majority of research collaboration was done between authors from the same institution.

Classification of research methods

On the lines of majority of reviewers ( Grant et al. , 1987 ; Zawacki-Richter et al. , 2009 ), we also classified research in ODE into quantitative – comprising articles based on statistical analysis of data using simple to multivariate techniques; qualitative – comprising articles using data without any statistical analysis, like case studies, interpretive and descriptive ethnographies, etc.; and mixed – comprising both qualitative and quantitative aspects.

Table 3 describes the types of research articles published on the ODE in India during the last decade (2010–2019) in the 11 journals of distance education selected for this study. The study revealed that, as already mentioned in previous sections, out of a total 191 research articles on ODE in India the majority (36.64%) were published in IJOL, followed by TOJDE (20.41 %) and AJDE (19.37%). Interestingly, not even a single article was published in IJEDE on Indian ODE during the last decade. The study further revealed that around 57.07% of the total 191 articles were based on empirical research whereas nearly 42.93% were theoretical in nature. On further exploration of articles based on empirical research studies, it was established that maximum (55.05%) research studies were of mixed type, i.e. using both qualitative and quantitative methods followed by quantitative research (25.69%) and qualitative research (19.26%).

Our findings vary from Zawacki-Richter et al. (2009) who in their study between 2000 and 2008 comprising 695 articles, had reported 29.1% quantitative, 19.9% qualitative, and 12.9% mixed and 38.1% other studies. Our results also vary from that of Bozkurt et al. (2015) who while studying the research trends in distance education on the basis of articles published between 2009 and 2013, brought out that research studies were mostly qualitative (47%) and quantitative (37%), and just a few were mixed (16%). One of the reasons for this variation is perhaps the fact that only about three-fifth of research studies on ODE in India were empirical in nature (see Figure 5 ).

Further analysis of data on two specific parameters, namely, (1) authorship and (2) the research methods used by the authors, ( Table 3 ) revealed that 53.40% of the principal authors/corresponding authors were females whereas 46.60% were males. This shoulder to shoulder contribution of males and female researchers was certainly an encouraging trend, establishing an encouraging gender-wise representation of faculty members and researchers working in ODE system. With regard to the research methods employed, it was found that while quantitative methods of research were dominated by males, female researchers had majorly undertaken theoretical research methods, and in case of empirical studies they were more focussed towards qualitative research as well as usage of mixed methods comprising both quantitative and qualitative methods in comparison to their male counterparts,. A journal-wise analysis has been presented in Table 3 .

Classification of areas of research

The ODE system is a global phenomenon and hence every country has different research priorities based on the social, economic and geographical context, complexities and requirements. Since the authors attempted to evaluate the trend analysis of research in the ODE system in India, they found it appropriate to select those parameters that were likely to have an impact and change the direction in which ODE was likely to progress in the near future. Therefore, the seven key parameters identified and prescribed by the NAAC for assessment and accreditation of Open Universities and Directorates of Distance Education, formed the broad categories of classifying research articles published in the journals selected for present study, (mentioned at serial number 1 to 7, Table 4 ). In addition, since the research in the country could not be segregated and isolated from global perspectives and development in the field of ODE, the following four more areas were also added explicitly in addition to the above listed seven categories, namely, Scope, Growth and Development; Economics and Funding; Quality Assurance in ODE; and Globalization and Networking (mentioned at serial number 8 to 11, Table 4 ).

We thoroughly examined all the 191 articles on Indian ODE system for classifying them on the basis of research area an analysis of which has been given in Table 5 , Figure 6 . The data in Table 5 revealed the frequency of publications under different areas as categorized under 11 heads. A glance at the total number of publications across the broad categories of research over a period of 10 years showed that teaching, learning and evaluation comprised the highest number of articles with 36.13% of the total publications followed by articles on the curricular aspects (18.85%); learner support and progression (14.13%); governance, leadership and management (9.95%); research, innovation and extension (6.81% ); scope, growth and development (6.28%); infrastructure and learning resources (3.14%); quality assurance in ODE (2.62%); institutional values and best practices (0.52%); economics and funding (1.05%); and globalization and networking (0.52%). Our findings somewhat coincide with the findings of Wong et al. (2016) who had reported that that “instructional design” had the largest group of research articles published in both 2005 (25.5%) and 2015 (21.4%) and a significant number of research articles were published on “learner characteristics” in 2015 (14.3%).

The publication trends portrayed the skewed number of publications in some of the important areas like globalization and networking, funding and economics, institutional values and best practices, which certainly was discouraging, requiring ODE institutions in India to introspect and take measures to improve research in those areas. Taking cue from the available data, it could be inferred that probably our ODE institutions were yet to focus on areas with a global perspective. Our findings of an imbalance in the articles published across various research areas is in consonance with that of Zawacki-Richter et al. (2009) and Bozkurt et al. (2015) who had also found an imbalance between research areas as well as the fact that research on areas such as globalization and cultural aspects of ODE remain relatively scarce.

Curricular Aspects (36 articles)

(2) Teaching Learning and Evaluation (69 articles)

(3) Research, Innovations and Extension (13 articles)

(4) Infrastructure and Learning Resources (6 articles)

(5) Learner Support and Progression (27 articles)

(6) Governance, Leadership and Management (19 articles)

(7) Institutional Values and Best Practices (1 article)

(8) Scope, Growth and Development (12 articles)

(9) Economics and Funding (2 articles)

(10) Quality Assurance in ODE (5 articles)

(11) Globalization and Networking (1 article)

The sole article explored the possibilities of sharing of academic resources through the adoption of an institutional policy for OERs and MOOCs as part of the global open access and open education movements and networking amongst educational institutions.

Potential areas

Themes like “Governance, Leadership and Management” and “Research, Innovations and Extension” were moderately explored by researchers during last decade. It has further been observed that “Globalization and Networking” thematic area was the least preferred by the researchers for the purpose of research as only one research article was written in this area. Besides this, “Economics and Funding” theme was not touched upon significantly with only two articles found in the journals, though the inflow and outflow of monetary resources is the backbone of any system and considerably required to plan for future endeavours and hence, needs exhaustive research. For any institution to flourish and mark its significance, both quantity along with quality matters, however, without quality, numbers may not sustain for long. Keeping this fact in mind, it is pertinent to mention here that a theme like “Quality Assurance in ODE” was not considered a priority area for research as only five articles were published in the said area. Another area, namely “Institutional Values and Best Practices” was also a neglected area with only one article belonging to this particular theme. Apart from above-mentioned thematic areas, “Infrastructure and Learning Resources” which is an important area reflecting the development of an institution, barely six articles were articulated on this theme, in the last 10 years.

Further, the OUs and DMUs over the years have evolved and have established practices that have become their recognizable attributes or distinctions. These special attributes need to be studied and extensively published so that the model can be replicated or modified as per the needs of other universities. Also, NAAC has established the benchmarks to maintain the standards of quality in the ODE system. New areas of importance have emerged which need to be explored and investigated such as empowerment and inclusion; environmental consciousness and sustainability, human values and professional ethics; transparency in financial, academic and administrative functioning; responsiveness towards learners; accountability and transparency; e-governance; technology enabled learner support; etc. ( NAAC, 2019 ).

Measures for strengthening system-based research

The journey of distance education research, not only in India but also in Asia, has been staggered in terms of its outcome and application for development of the ODE system. The SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) (2020) which ranks academic and research-related institutions based on research performance, innovation outputs and societal impact measured by their web visibility reveals that only five OUs figure in the portal consisting of 3898 HEIs, namely, The Open University of UK (United Kingdom) ranked 795; the Open University Netherlands (Netherlands)1658 ; the Open University of Israel (Israel) 2,144; Anadolu University (Turkey) 2,328 and Hellenic Open University (Greece) 3105. Interestingly, none of the Asian Open Universities featured in the list. This scenario is palpable since the ODE institutions particularly in India need to travel extra miles and take their endeavours towards making their research base strong. It is not that research is not going on in Indian Open Universities; rather, perhaps it is the non-publication by Indian researchers in international journals that has projected this picture. A university is known by the research it indulges in. Research is the gateway to investigate and identify the gaps and infuse new ideas into the system. The following measures adopted by ODE institutions will strengthen research on ODE system and yield the desired results.

Dedicated research centres

Instances show that wherever the universities have their dedicated research wing, it has yielded results. The Open University UK has a long tradition of carrying out research into learning and learning analytics, applied research into the use of new technologies through its Institute of Educational Technology established in 1970, for modelling the design of learning at the Open University. In this regard, the dedicated research departments on ODE supported by ODE institutions like International Research Foundation , Deakin University, Australia; the American Centre for the Study of Distance Education at College of Education at Pennsylvania State University, USA; Canadian Institute of Distance Education and Research at Athabasca University; need a special mention. Amongst the dedicated research units in Asia: Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education (STRIDE) in IGNOU; Prof. G. Ram Reddy Research Academy of Distance Education (GRADE) in BRAOU; Institute of Distance Education in Korean National Open University and Centre for Research in Distance and Adult Learning (CRIDAL) (renamed as the Institute for Research in Open and Innovative Education ) in Open University of Hong Kong; are also independent units devoted for research in distance education ( Gaba, 2007 ).

Institutional policy on system-based research

A critical analysis through the present study also poses a formidable question. Where have we gone wrong? Maybe it is the absence of a robust institutional policy which has prevented or impeded the research temperament in the OUs and Dual Mode Universities. An institutional policy will put the faculty on the path to undertake both discipline-based and system-based research. System-based research needs to be encouraged by ODE institutions to constantly review the existing practices and bring about qualitative improvements in the functioning of the system. ODE being a dynamic system adopting and adapting to the new technological advancements, needs to be constantly changing as per the requirements of the target groups it serves. However, all systemic changes should be informed decisions embedded in solid research. This will reflect on the commitment of the institution towards quality assurance.

Funding of research activities

The financial health of the OUs, further limits the promotion of research. The 14 State Open Universities in India, contributing significantly to the higher educational aspirants in the country have immense potential. They need adequate financial resources for research, capacity building activities, incentive for research and most pertinently, government support. Therefore, the onus is on the government as well as ODE institutions to encourage research at the university, both systemic and discipline based. In India, where the government targets towards increasing the GER, thrust should be on empowering those universities/institutions particularly which are offering education at affordable costs to the disadvantaged sections of the society.

Collaboration with industry

Collaborative research activities with industries, is one of the important aspects to be integrated in the institutional policy of an ODE institution. Besides the institutional policy, what is important is the need to conduct multidimensional research. It is worth mentioning Borje Holmberg's distinction between endogenous and exogenous research. Endogenous research looks at work done within distance education, such as studying the methods, systems, media, etc. Exogenous research focusses on the economic, demographic, cultural, social and political contexts of ODE. ( Kanwar and Balasubramanian, 2014 ). “Institutions that generate knowledge increasingly play a role in the networks of relations among the key actors: University (Science), Industry (Business), and Government (Governance). The governments create a system that defines, regulates an innovation process of enterprises. Conceptualization of this system is provided by a three-dimensional vector space called Triple Helix of university–industry–government model. Each of the three actors, university–industry–government, participates in Wealth generation” ( Vaivode, 2015 ).

The extensive review done by the authors reveals that in spite of having access to online journals, the presence of research studies on ODE on India in foreign journals is scanty; slightly better represented in the Asian journals and Indian journals. The quantum of research is not proportionate to the number of faculty members working in the ODE system of India and the large number of learners that it serves, which is a matter of concern. Research on ODE in India, in absence of a strong institutional policy for research in the premier universities offering programmes through distance mode, faces a number of challenges that need to be addressed. Even after nearly six decades of the existence of Dual Mode Universities, and nearly four decades of OUs in India, the institutional best practices pertaining to ODE have not generated required attention perhaps due to lack of networking and collaborative ventures amongst ODE institutions as well as fewer number of publications in international journals. However with the emphasis on research output of the teachers working in HEIs, including Open Universities and Directorates of Distance, Education, which is an essential and important parameter for accreditation of the institution, its national ranking, as well as a mandatory requirement for career advancement of teachers, the research is picking up a fast rate. This study will provide valuable insights and certainly act as an ignition to motivate ODE practitioners, working at Open Universities and Dual Mode Universities, to take the research on ODE forward.

In fact, for any system to grow its periodic systemic review is essential, more so for the ODE system, being a dynamic and innovative system that constantly keeps on evolving, through the adoption of newer technologies for improving curricular aspects, teaching–learning and evaluation and learner support services to its dispersed learners. The ODE system in India requires more empirical research to be undertaken periodically. The research outcomes need to be ploughed back into the system for its betterment. Thus, the missing links in distance education research which are yet to be addressed in its entirety needs to be systematic, professional and action based.

Distribution of articles published on ODE system of India in 11 journals

Share of articles published between 2010 and 2019 on Indian ODE system across 11 journals

Authorship pattern of articles published on Indian ODE

Institutional affiliation of the authors

Research methods used by the researchers

Classification of total publications in 11 research areas

Journals and data of the period 2010–2019

Categorization of research methods: journal wise and gender wise

Journal-wise frequency of publication across the 11 research areas

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Indian government E-learning initiatives in response to COVID-19 crisis: A case study on online learning in Indian higher education system

• Published: 23 June 2021
• Volume 26 , pages 7569–7607, ( 2021 )

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• Madanjit Singh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1151-6729 1 ,
• Sulaimon Oyeniyi Adebayo 2 ,
• Munish Saini 2 &
• Jaswinder Singh 1  

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Recently, the whole world has faced the deadliest and dangerous consequences due to the transmission of infectious novel coronavirus (nCov). With the outbreak of COVID-19, the education learners, practitioners, and other stakeholders were at the sake of a loss, as it causes the suspension of physical classes and physical interaction of the learners. In these circumstances, Electronic learning (E-learning), Online learning, and the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools came in handy. It helped the learners in the dissemination of ideas, conducting online classes, making online discussion forums, and taking online examinations. Like the government of each country, the Indian government was also caught off-guard but the existing E-learning infrastructure was able to leverage on while devising plans to tailor them to new situations and launching new ones. The initiatives at the forefront of this noble battle launched by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) includes Diksha, Swayam Prabha Channel, Shiksha Van, E-Pathshala, and National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER). It worth noting that apart from the Indian central government efforts, each state has various online education initiatives that are tailored to their needs. This research evaluated each of these initiatives commenced by central and state governments and present a detailed analysis of most of the relevant initiatives. Additionally, a survey is conducted to get insights of learners in concern to online learning. Despite the issues raised in this learning, the outcomes come to be satisfactorily favoring online learning.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

Electronic Learning (E-learning) is the acquisition of knowledge with the help of electronic media or devices such as laptop computers, desktop computers, mobile phones, iPods, and iPads (Bakare & Orji, 2019 ). In the modern world, E-learning (online education) meaning can be extended to the use of different applications of computers such as Artificial intelligence (Gams et al., 2019 ), Quantum Computing (Cox, 2013 ), and Machine learning in knowledge acquisition (Lykourentzou et al., 2009 ). It also gives students the liberty to be in charge of their learning activities (Gomes & Gomes, 2011 ) and can be interpreted as virtual learning as only the electronic copy of the learning materials is available and not the hard copy.

A noteworthy development in E-learning over the past decade has a great impact on educational and training practices in the information society (Khan, 2015 ). Educational institutes are investing huge capital in E-learning systems to align with the new developments (Levy, 2006 ). E-learning development is not limited to academia alone. With the arrival of the internet and online learning methods and emerging technologies, E-learning has become more acceptable in the workspaces. (Khan, 2015 ).

Manual or traditional ways of learning are becoming more obsolete day by day because of the evolvement of ICT. Employment of ICT is becoming more popular in the modern education system (Sood & Saini, 2020 ) and the majority of the students do not find it interesting to learn with the physical copy of books or other study materials (Rambli et al., 2013 ). Furthermore, the manual ways of learning require more space, money, and time in maintaining the learning materials than electronic ways, physical materials can be misplaced, stolen, or damaged easily (Iwayemi & Adebayo, 2019 ).

ICT is one of the major tools driving the learning system in the twenty-first century (Oliver, 2002 ; Khlaisang & Koraneekij, 2019 ). The manual ways of learning are being faced out in academia as well as various industries in the world. According to research conducted by Quinn in 2011, it was established that the percentage of companies planning to provide E-learning support for their staff has risen from 38.5% in 2007 to 51% in 2011 (Quinn, 2011 ). Different researchers have the opinion that traditional learning methods should be used alongside ICT-driven learning methods (Yom, 2004 ; Hameed et al., 2008 ; Ariana et al., 2016 ). Another example is Adzobu in his 2014 research, where he opined that online learning platforms will co-evolve with traditional learning platforms in the future (Adzobu, 2014 ). Also, Iwayemi and Adebayo gave the same opinion that automated systems should not eliminate existing manual systems but should work side by side with the existing system (Iwayemi & Adebayo, 2019 ).

The significance of E-learning can no longer be veiled. The evolvement has been rapid over the last decade and several agencies, companies, and government bodies are embracing the changes. This evolution sees limelight in the mid-1990s as an initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (Cerón-Figueroa et al., 2017 ) and has been massively engraved into our daily activities since then. E-learning can be segmented into two approaches, asynchronous and synchronous (Shahabadi & Uplane, 2015 ). Asynchronous gives a flexible approach and enables learners and teachers to learn and teach at a convenient time without being dependent on each other and is mostly used in online courses (Hrastinski, 2008 ). The synchronous approach on the other hand gives real-time feelings of physical classroom experience (Hrastinski, 2008 ). The experience is more social and enables real-time interaction between teachers and learners. Typical examples include video conferencing and webinars. Educational Institutions, Organisations, and Government Agencies should be aware of the cons and pros of the two approaches for them to make productive decisions in their online learning initiatives.

The highly transmissible Corona Virus (Shereen et al., 2020 ), also known as COVID-19 which emanated from China in December 2019 (Zhang et al., 2020 ) has since its inception date claimed over 2,000,000 lives with over 120,000,000 infected worldwide. Footnote 1 United States of America (USA), India, Brazil, Russia, and the United Kingdom (UK) are the most affected countries. The USA has over 30,000,000 confirmed cases to date and UK has the lowest among the five has over 4,000,000 confirmed cases with 120,000+ deaths. Footnote 2

The advent of COVID-19 called for the closure of physical classes (Pal & Vanijja, 2020 ), which left government and educational bodies with the only option of virtual learning to curb the novel coronavirus. Government with working E-learning systems and procedures find it easier to transit to the online learning space (Uju & Olofu, 2020 ) while those without solid E-learning programs or systems take a longer time to adjust to the sudden development.

2 Aim and objectives

This study aims to evaluate the Indian Government Initiatives for E-learning especially during the COVID-19. In extension, we intend to perform the following objectives:

Assess the E-learning (online learning) initiatives of the Indian government in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Evaluate student’s and teacher’s responses to E-learning initiatives and their tools.

To examine the insights into the outcomes (or responses) of online teaching in Indian higher education institutes.

To attain the above-mentioned objectives the study is conducted in two phases (refer to Fig.  1 ). Phase 1, emphasizes explaining and exploring the various online learning initiatives taken by the government of India in the period of COVID-19. In Phase 2, we have conducted an online survey to access and explore the responses of the online learners (students and faculty members) specifically belonging to higher education institutes or organizations.

Phases to conduct the study

3 Organization of the Paper

This paper is organized into the following sections. The “ Related Work ” section covers a review of research work on E-learning (online learning) and the educational initiatives taken by the Indian central and state governments in response to COVID-19. The Section “ Modern Perspective of E-learning ” encompasses an overview of the Merit and Demerit of E-learning as well as requirements for developing a standard E-learning system. Necessity, History, and modern perspectives of Open Education Resources (OER) are discussed in the “ OER ” section while E-learning tools evaluation is given in the “ Evaluating the use of E-learning and its tools ” section. Indian Government E-learning initiatives are covered in the “ Indian Central State Government Initiatives ” and “ Indian Central State Government Initiatives ” Sections. The “ Case Study ” section provides insight into Indian Government Initiatives for E-learning. It mainly consists of the data collection process, data pre-processing, methods, and algorithms employed in conducting and evaluating responses of the respondents (teacher and student). The elaborative explanation of the conducted research is provided in the “ Discussion ” section highlighting a detailed analysis of the conducted survey. The later part of the study concludes the major findings and also specifies the possible future recommendations.

4 Related work

E-learning is a concept that has been in existence since the 1960s but became widespread with the advent of the internet and the web (Bezovski & Poorani, 2016 ). Observing the growth of E-learning from the early 2000s, there has been increasing research on internet technology which is the bedrock of E-learning (Elango et al., 2008 ; Verawardina et al., 2020 ). Since then, scholars around the world have been assessing and evaluating the E-learning systems and giving recommendations that will optimize the process.

The novel coronavirus which broke out in 2019 acted as a catalyst in boosting the outreach and usage of E-learning. E-learning has been raised to be one of the major driving forces in the academic space. It has been a key player in ensuring the continuation of teaching and learning during the COVID-19 outbreak (Chang & Fang, 2020 ).

It is observed that before the COVID-19 outbreak, there have been several government initiatives relating to E-learning. Virtual School of the National School of Government in the United Kingdom established in 1970, GoLearn now known as USALearning by the United States of America, the Canada School of Public Service Campusdirect initiated in 2004 and the Civil Service College Open Academy of Singapore established in 2001 (Chen, 2014 ) are few of the old government initiatives towards E-learning. Government initiatives on E-learning have increased tremendously over the last decade, Indian government’s SWAYAM Footnote 3 and DIKHSA Footnote 4 both initiated in 2015 are typical examples of this.

It is no doubt the advent of COVID-19 is sudden, governments are left with no choice but virtual learning, especially amidst lockdown. The COVID-19 outbreak has elevated E-learning solutions by making it mandatory (García Vazquez et al., 2020 ; Radha et al., 2020 ). Though some governments had to pause learning activities because of the unavailability of working E-learning strategies, this research piece will help in solving similar problems in the future by collating detailed information about E-learning initiatives.

As the government trying to get acquainted with the latest development of a complete virtual learning environment, teachers and students are also in the process of getting used to the new development brought by the COVID-19 pandemic (Abbasi et al., 2020 ). Though teachers show better growth in the development than students. More than half of the student population face challenges with electricity, internet among other factors that affect their E-learning experience (Subedi et al., 2020 ). Students’ negative experiences also affect the teachers as they get disturbed during classes (Subedi et al., 2020 ), but teachers are performing better on the E-learning platforms (Gohiya & Gohiya, 2020 ).

Different researchers have successfully accessed the E-learning platforms, users’ (tutors and learners) perspective, developers, and government efforts in enhancing these platforms and initiatives before the COVID-19 outbreak. Shahzad et al. ( 2020 ) having performed an empirical analysis on Malaysian students dataset gathered with the help of google survey established that male and female have different usage levels of E-learning in Malaysian Universities.

Research conducted at the University of Tabuk established that above 60% of faculty members’ overall responses range from negativity to uncertainty (Albalawi & Badawi, 2008 ). Hoq ( 2020 ) argues otherwise in his 2020 survey performed to verify teachers’ preference towards diverse features of E-learning. He found that majority of teachers have a positive opinion towards E-learning.

Assessing the quality of E-learning in the Middle East, Elango et al. ( 2008 ) revealed that students attest to receiving all the needed support similar to the classroom environment. In the same manner, Loh et al. ( 2016 ) affirm that students perceive better learning outcomes in E-learning though they still have concerns about the flexibility of self-paced learning, lack of human interaction, self-motivation, and fostering teamwork.

Liaw ( 2008 ) surveyed 424 university students with a standard questionnaire to examine the learners’ satisfaction, behavioral intentions, and effectiveness of the Blackboard E-learning system. It was revealed that self-efficacy influences learner’s satisfaction with backboard E-learning. The same study also established that multimedia instruction, interactive learning activities, and E-learning system quality can influence the effectiveness of E-learning. In a similar direction, Al-Fraihat et al. ( 2020 ) gave the main determinants of E-learning perceived satisfaction as technical system quality, information quality, service quality, support system quality, learner quality, instructor quality, and perceived usefulness.

Kanjilal and Kaul ( 2016 ), while examining the Digital India initiative of the Indian Government gives more insight on Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) and other initiatives like National Mission on Education Through ICT (NMEICT), National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), a joint program of IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and IISc (Indian Institute of Science). Similarly, (Chandwani et al., 2010 ) in their E-learning initiatives in India established that the Indian government always has given preference to the use of ICTs as a means of mass education.

Al-Rahmi et al. ( 2019 ), after evaluating the responses of 1286 students using E-learning systems in Malaysia observed that six perceptions of innovation characteristics (Relative Advantages, Observability, Trialability, Perceived Compatibility, Complexity, and Perceived enjoyment) have impacts on students’ E-learning behavioral intention. A similar study, (Salloum et al., 2019 ) while examining the impact of Social Medica Practices on E-learning systems acceptance established that social media practices have significant positive impacts on Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU).

Smaili et al. ( 2021 ) proposed a sustainable E-learning system to tackle school dropout. The new model was achieved with an adaptive E-learning system by manipulating the traces left by users’ interaction with their learning environment.

After referring to all these previous studies, we concluded that they gave different views on the usage, needs, advantages, and disadvantages of E-learning. The researchers are driving the common conclusion that the E-learning system will serve better and be more productive if properly implemented (Ristic & Stefanovic, 2020 ). These key points serve as the foundation on which we build the present research work. Although several studies have been conducted on COVID-19 and E-learning, few delve into the realm of government responses and initiatives on E-learning during the COVID-19 outbreak which is the main focus of this research. Furthermore, we also look forward to evaluating the responses of 354 students and 49 teachers, studying and working in 7 universities and 15 colleges (targeting only the higher education institutes/organizations) by surveying their online learning and teaching feedbacks especially in the period of this pandemic. We expect the outcomes of this study to help students, parents, and teachers in employing the best online education platform(s). Further, it will assist the Indian government as well as other governments in taking swift action in the future.

5 Modern perspective of E-learning

Usage of modern ICT for teaching and learning in the Indian higher educational institutions has become paramount (Arkorful & Abaidoo, 2015 ). The development that information technology has brought to the field of education cannot be overemphasized (Chen & Lien, 2011 ). The modern perspective of E-learning is becoming more diverse as it is being influenced by many factors. Sun et al. ( 2008 ) categorized these factors into six dimensions; student, teacher, course, technology, system design, and environmental dimensions. Though user satisfaction is one of the salient factors in determining the success of a system (DeLone & McLean, 1992 ), the students are more concerned about the quality of course content in terms of E-learning systems (Sun et al., 2008 ). Ease of use, usefulness, system quality, information quality, and computer self-efficacy are major determinants influencing user’s perception of E-learning systems (Hammouri & Abu-Shanab, 2018 ). Faculty members on the other hand have different perspectives that influenced their perception of E-learning. Abdekhoda et al. ( 2016 ) established that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influences, and behavioral indentation have a direct impact on faculty perception of E-learning. Novice faculty members as well as lecturers from Computer Science, Engineering, Education, and Arabic show more positive perceptions than other faculty members (Albalawi & Badawi, 2008 ). Voluntary participation of teachers in the E-learning initiatives is also a major factor that will directly influence their perception (Hrtoňová et al., 2015 ).

5.1 Advantages of E-learning

With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, universities and other educational institutions around the world are able to continue the teaching activities with the help of E-learning (or online learning) initiatives. This is a major indicator that E-learning is paramount to the global educational system. E-learning provides useful content that will prepare learners for their studies (Chen & Yao, 2016 ).

The most significant advantage of E-learning is the flexible feature of the system (Kimiloglu et al., 2017 ). The system can be accessed anyplace anytime (Nedeva & Dimova, 2010 ). Compared to traditional learning, there is a huge savings of cost (Arkorful & Abaidoo, 2015 ) and time (Talebian et al., 2014 ).

Kimiloglu et al. ( 2017 ) ironed out other advantages of E-learning as; convenience & accessibility, customization, outsourcing, cost-effectiveness, as well as employee commitment and motivation. In a similar pattern, (Puri, 2018 ) listed five (5) advantages of E-learning as; Consistent, scalable, personation, better retention, and time & cost saving. While examining the merit and demerit of E-learning within agricultural students in Iran, (Talebian et al., 2014 ) gave advantages of E-learning to include; Time and place accessibility, equity, enhancing group collaboration, direct access to other training resources, enhancing international dimension of educational services and determining the rate of progression in courses.

5.2 Disadvantages of E-learning

E-learning systems are attracting more users day by day. However, these users also face some challenges which are preventing them to derive the full benefits of E-learning and eventually make some of them give up on its usage. A major shortcoming of E-learning is the inability of the tutors and cohorts to discuss course contents and subject matter frequently (Elango et al., 2008 ). Some of the basic challenges of E-learning include Credibility, Technical issues, Computer Literacy, Time Management, and Self-Motivation.

Credibility

Everyone deserves to get value for time and resources invested which is justifiable but it does not work that way all the time on E-learning platforms. Since the struggle is not visible like attending physical classes or attending seminars/workshops, people tend to have some doubts about the credibility of E-learning (Mungania, 2003 ). Also, there are certain discriminations between online degree programs obtained through E-learning and the ones obtained physically in the college (Motlik, 2008 ).

Technical issue

Technical issues can be referred to as problem (s) that arise from hardware/software resources of the platform. Most users of E-learning platforms lack the basic technology requirements for the course they are enrolling for (Alkharang & Ghinea, 2013 ). Platform portability, which is the ability for the platform to be accessible from any device, weak internet bandwidth, unstable power supply, and hardware challenges such as weak monitor display can be a threat for the users in deriving the full benefits of the platform.

Computer Literacy

Although an average twenty-first-century student will be computer literate. However, most users lack knowledge of computer usage (Gagnon et al., 2007 )) such as basic skills to troubleshoot hardware failure, file handling, and word processing. Users with a lack of the above skills are likely to create the problem (s) for themselves even though the entire platform is working well. Furthermore, this may make it hard for them to follow the designed Learning Management System and their learning experience becomes problematic which may eventually prevent them from being on the same level as their virtual classmates.

Time Management

Online courses are as time demanding as their offline counterpart. While E-learning gives freedom to students to learn at their desired time (Nedeva & Dimova, 2010 ), extra care must be taken to schedule the learning because of the regular day-to-day engagements of the students. The vague (Claxton & Murrell, 1987 ) and digital nature (Kumbhar, 2009 ) of E-learning indicate that bad-time management could lead to failure.

Self-Motivation

E-learning requires self-discipline which is lacked by many students. The distraction of being on the internet (Azlan et al., 2020 ) is already there. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, news websites, Ads are enough to distract students. Users should manage their internet usage closely to avoid wasting precious study time. E-learning (online learning), unlike classroom learning, lacks check and balance. If a student lacks proper discipline, he can lag with his virtual classmates which may eventually arise the desire to quit the course.

6 Open education resources (OER)

Open Education Resources (OER) is a movement for openness in higher education that can be attributed to larger trends such as Open Source Software (OSS) and Open access (Hylén, 2006 ). Mainly, OER includes educational resources like textbooks, curriculum maps, course materials, streaming videos, multimedia applications, podcasts, and other learning & teaching materials that are openly available for the use of students and teachers without the need to pay royalties or license fees (Butcher, 2015 ). OER works with Creative Commons, founded in 2001 to revive the shrinking public domain for content owners to retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions (Atkins et al., 2007 ).

6.1 Need of OER

The primary need of OER is to serve as a robust platform that encompasses learning and teaching materials that are readily accessible to students, teachers, and open source contributors. It is believed that openly licensed education materials can contribute to increasing the quality as well as the effectiveness of education at a reduced cost (Butcher, 2015 ).

6.2 Historical perspective

OER came to the limelight in 2002 during the conference held by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). UNESCO convened a group of academics, majorly from developing countries to access a new development – the Open Course Ware (OCW) initiatives of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (D’Antoni, 2009 ). The Mission coined the term “Open Educational Resources” as;

“The open provision of educational resources, enabled by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use, and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes. (UNESCO, 2002 )”

OER movement is still new as it is less than two decades since its inception but significant initiatives have been undertaken since its inception to ensure its development.

6.3 Modern perspective

Traditionally, OER includes textbooks, course readings, and other learning materials for educational purposes (Gerald & Mary, 2020 ). With the tremendous evolution of the internet and online platforms, OER also advanced to be more efficient, effective, and productive. One of the major challenges of the early OER is the end user’s accessibility to high-speed internet connections, most especially in developing countries (Johnstone, 2005 ). This problem is deteriorating with modern OER as the high-speed internet connection is becoming widely spread than it used to be, especially with the advent of 4G and 5G technologies. Also, modern OER platforms have undergone several modifications from open source contributors and this has made it to be more user-friendly, cost-effective, more accessible, efficient, and productive.

6.4 Tools, platforms and other open educational resources (OER)

The longest-running and largest OER initiative named OpenCourseWare Project was released in 2002 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Gerald & Mary, 2020 ). The initiative now provides course materials for more than 2500 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) courses.

Another OER initiative is Connexions founded in 2000 by Richard Baraniuk and his colleagues at Rice University. It was changed to OpenStax CNX in 1999. The new OpenStax was based on the philosophy that scholarly and educational content can and should be shared, reused and recombined, interconnected, and continually enriched. Footnote 5 Connexions’ resources are still available under a CC BY Creative Commons license, which indicates that the content can be used, adapted, and remixed as long as attribution is provided (Kelty, 2008 ).

Another OER initiative is the California-based non-profit organization founded in 2007 named the CK-12 Foundation. It aimed at reducing cost and increase access to K-12 (from kindergarten to 12th grade) education in the USA and the world at large. CK-12 foundation tools are used by more than 38,000 schools in the USA alone alongside a growing number of international schools (Hepler, 2014 ).

OER tools have evolved widely today that we almost lost counts, there are hundreds of tools for Open Education Resources. Educause, Cloe, Open Class, Google in Education, Ariadne, WikiEducator, ATutor, Open of Course, The Open University, Olat, Canvas, Citizendium, Commonwealth of Learning, SchoolTool, are few among them.

7 Indian government E-learning initiatives

In this section, we present the content on prominent and effective E-learning initiatives taken by the Indian central and state governments, pre and peri COVID -19 pandemic.

7.1 Central government pre COVID-19 E-learning initiatives

The Indian government has always been giving preference to the use of ICT as a means of mass education. CLASS (Computer Literacy and Social on Schools) project was launched as far back as 1984 by the Indian government to make computer literacy a compulsory project for class XI and XII. 2598 and 2371 schools started computer literacy in the seventh five-year plan and eight five-year plans respectively (Chandwani et al., 2010 ).

A communication satellite is known as EDUSAT (Educational Satellite); the satellite primarily devoted to the education sector was launched on the 20th of September, 2004 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) (Khanchandani et al., 2015 ). EDUSAT provides education to millions of people at their doorstep and enables information to be disseminated in local languages and dedicated long-distance learning in India (Chandwani et al., 2010 ).

SWAYAM, a major initiative of the Indian Government on E-learning was initiated to provide an integrated platform and portal for online courses in the education sector of India (Kanjilal & Kaul, 2016 ). SWAYAM was developed by the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) with the help of Microsoft and was specifically designed to benefit working professionals, college dropouts, and students from remote areas (Nayek, 2018 ). The strength of SWAYAM lies in its qualitative evaluation system, recognition of credits and equity access, and affordability (Kaveri et al., 2016 ). Its history can be traced back to 2003 with the initiation of the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) by the IITs and IISc. Though it focused on courses in Engineering, Science, and humanities stream, the horizon was broadened to all disciplines in the higher education sector in 2009 with the launch of the National Mission of Education through ICT (NME-ICT) (Kanjilal & Kaul, 2016 ).

Other Indian government pre-COVID19 E-learning initiatives includes; Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC), National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), Online Education Broadcast and Virtual Classrooms, Sakshat, Institute of Life Long Learning (ILLL), and School of Open Learning (SOL) E-learning Gateways.

7.2 Response to COVID-19 outbreak

The Corona Virus Outbreak was sudden and unexpected, the government and educational institutes are not adequately prepared. The government ensures learning continues even during the lockdown. State and UTs individual efforts to take education to the doorstep of every child is commendable and a strong indication that E-learning remains one of the tools that leverage the effect of COVID-19 in the country.

7.3 Central government Covid-19 era E-learning initiatives

With the demanding nature of COVID-19, the government had to provide alternative means for teaching and learning, especially during the lockdown. The first initiative is to access existing systems and leverage them to meet the current demand. DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) launch in September 2017 was one of the tools the government leveraged in the COVID-19 era. VidyaDaan was launched in April 2020 as a national content contribution programme to leverage the DIKSHA platform.

A comprehensive initiative of the Indian government called PM eVidya aimed at unifying all efforts related to digital, online, and on-air education was announced on the 17th of May, 2020. It was aimed at enabling equitable multi-mode access to education. Footnote 6

Further E-learning initiatives that are employed during this COVID-19 era include; Swayam Prabha TV Channels, For open schools and pre-service education, On Air, For the differently-abled, E-textbooks, and National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER). Footnote 7

Swayam Prabha TV channels

MHRD dedicated thirty-two (32) channels to broadcast high-quality educational programs. It provides separate channels for school education and higher education. The initiative is still undergoing development and upgrading as the content & topics are expected to be organized by chapter and topic-wise in the future to ensure asynchronous usage by everyone anywhere, anytime.

For open schools and pre-service education

Approximately ninety-two (92) course contents relating to the National Institute of Open Schooling from grades 9 to 12 were uploaded on the SWAYAM portal. The contents can be accessed through SWAYAM.

Radio broadcasting focused on learning-based activities are being used for children in remote areas. 289 community radio stations were also employed to broadcast NIOS for grade 9–12 students. Shiksha Vani Podcast with 430 audio contents owned by Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) is being used to deliver all the subjects of grades 1 to 12.

For the differently-abled

One Direct-to-Home (DTH) channel is dedicated specifically to hearing-impaired students. Study materials in sign language are developed in Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) for visually and hearing-impaired students; the materials are available on YouTube and NIOS website. Footnote 8

E-textbooks

Electronic textbooks are available on the e-Pathshala web portal and applications. It has mobile applications for android and iOS as well as windows desktop app. Footnote 9

National Repository of open educational resources (NROER)

NROER has approximately 17,500 pieces of e-content of The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and other collaborative partners. The materials are available for various school subjects.

The struggle of the central government in upgrading the existing E-learning tools and working on new initiatives is a continuous task. More initiatives on E-learning are expected to be inaugurated in the nearest future even after the COVID-19 phase.

7.4 State governments’ E-learning initiatives

Alongside the efforts of the Central government, State and Union Territories are not leaving the task to the Central government alone as the majority initiated several E-learning initiatives to meet the demand of the present situation. States/UT like Delhi, Rajasthan, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Kerela, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal, Meghalaya, Punjab, Ladakh, Telangana, Tripura, and many others also leveraged DIKSHA solutions for their E-learning initiatives. In particular, there are 28 states and 8 Union Territories (UT) in India. Footnote 10 It is found that covering and exploring the initiatives of each state is not possible in the present form of study, as we have faced the following set of problems and considered the subsequent inclusion and exclusion criteria:

As the complete count of E-learning (online learning) initiatives and the total number of states is high. It is not feasible to perform the fine-grained analysis with the present set of research objectives.

A limited number of initiatives are taken by a specific state Footnote 11 in comparison to other states. Therefore, we have excluded the states based on the frequency of initiatives taken by them.

We specifically, included the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). As it among the most disturbed and sensitive states in India. Footnote 12

Few states (like Delhi) have executed and implemented the most renowned initiatives.

The level of education (or literacy rate Footnote 13 ) is also taken into consideration while the selection of the states.

Excluded the states those have taken a limited number of E-learning initiatives but are utilizing the initiatives taken by central or other state governments.

The state-wise rate of population Footnote 14 below poverty is also taken under consideration while finalizing the state for consideration.

With the consideration of all the above-mentioned criteria and limitations, we have selected only five states (Delhi, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, J&K) from the sample of around 28 and 8 UT’s.

E-learning schemes by some of the States/UTs selected using the above parameters are given below.

School Education: Chief Minister (CM) of Delhi launched “parenting in the time of Corona” on 4th April 2020 with the theme “Every home a school, every parent a teacher”. Other school education schemes are live online classes, digital entrepreneurship mindset class, Online happiness class for family among others.

Teacher Education: The government also established programs for the training of teachers and faculty members. These include among others; Online Capacity Building Programme (OCBP), Footnote 15 and Learning Never Stop (LNS) lecture series.

The department of school education, Punjab initiated schemes to bring online education to each student. These involve; Creation of Mobile Application & System (iScuela Learn) which have hit over 100,000+ downloads as of January 2021, YouTube channel (Edusat Punjab), Radio & DTH/Cable TV channels, EDUSAT Contents through Satellite Network (Receive Only Terminal), E-books & month-wise e-book distribution, ICT Computer Labs, and Smart Classrooms.

Andhra Pradesh

The government of Andhra Pradesh has the following initiatives as part of her efforts to provide quality education to students; Abhyasa APP for teachers and students, E-contents for students, Toll-free voice and video calls for students in clearing their doubts and understanding critical topics, Facebook live training program, Radio and TV lessons, Webinar based ICT training, among others.

E-learning schemes in Bihar include; Digital Education Portal, Footnote 16 Social Media Based Learning (Facebook and WhatsApp), YouTube Channel, TV Channel, and Mobile Applications (Unnayan: Mera Mobile Mera Vidyalaya, Vidyavahini Bihar).

Jammu and Kashmir

Jammu and Kashmir Knowledge Network (JKKN) Samadhan AI-Based Educational Chatbot, Radio & TV Classes, Teachers Initiatives, are part of the tools used in ensuring learning continues during the COVID-19 era in Jammu and Kashmir.

8 Analyzing the outcomes of online teaching and learning with the conduct of online survey: A case study

In this section, we present the case study to investigate the ground truth on the usage of E-learning tools, online classes, and other initiatives of the Indian Government by stakeholders (teachers and students) of the Indian higher education sector. It provides insights on data analysis and methodology along with the outcomes of the conducted case study.

8.1 Data analysis and methodology

The data analysis methodology presents the information on the process of data collection and design of the questionnaire, data preprocessing, methods, and algorithms that are used to conduct the survey and to process the collected data.

8.1.1 Data collection and design of the questionnaire

An online survey was conducted to record and gain insights into the feedbacks of Indian students and teachers (or faculty members) on the conduct of online learning (online classes) during the COVID-19 situation. The survey contains a questionnaire, designed to collect information on the experience of learners for online study (learning), various issues faced by the learners, comparative responses with offline study, suggestive changes, and feedbacks from respondents. Specifically, A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a set of questions intended to capture responses from respondents in a standardized manner. Footnote 17 The quality of the data analysis in the survey process depends upon the quality of the questions asked in the questioner (Williams, 2003 ). The richness of the questionnaire depends on many factors like the content of questions, topics covered, their wording, format, and sequencing, all of which can have important consequences for the survey responses (Williams, 2003 ).

In this study, a total of 33 questions was asked in the questionnaire. The questions were divided into three categories; the first one is general information (including personal and online learning experience), the second is about possible issues/problems faced while using online learning, and the last one is the suggestion part (consisting of feedbacks and comments from the respondents). For deciding and making the efficient list of questions, we have referred to the specification of designing survey by Blair et al. ( 2013 ) in their research. For more details on the designing of the questionnaire, on inclusion (or exclusion) of a specific question, how to choose the appropriate set of responses, we suggest the readers explore the work of Blair et al. ( 2013 ).

An online version of this questionnaire was prepared and specified links were shared over e-mails, social media (like WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.), and other academic groups, targetting the audience consisting of students and teachers of higher education institutes (universities or organizations). We have preferred to conduct an online survey than offline to target a wider range of audiences while keeping in place all the COVID19 guidelines by the government (Wright, 2005 ). Additionally, the data was collected for the fortnight and stored in the database linked with the form. Samples were taken from each part of the audience (including students and teachers) of diverse age groups, levels of education, education institutes (colleges or universities), gender, streams (education specializations or fields), and from the parts of the country as shown in Table  1  (Acharya, 2013 ). A total of 403 responses have been collected, including 49 responses from teachers and 354 from students. It is also noted that the percentage of male respondents who participated in an online survey is more (approx. 55%). We also examined that most of the students belong to the age group of 20–30 years, whereas 63% of the teachers reside in the age group of 30–50 years.

8.1.2 Data preprocessing

Data preprocessing includes data cleaning, data transformation, and filtration of the collected data. It helps in removing the anomalies from the dataset and make it ready for the analysis phase. In particular, Data cleaning refers to the technique of cleaning data by removing outliers, replacing missing values, smoothing noisy data, and correcting inconsistent data (Gupta & Sabitha, 2019 ). It is a significant step as the missing, incorrect, and erroneous data can pose a significant problem to the reliability and validity of study outcomes (Salkind, 2010 ). In our study, we prepared the data for further processing by following two methods.

While evaluating the responses it was observed that different sets of questions have distinct values (on different scales) for the responses. It causes the problem of uncertainty and heterogeneity during the evaluation of responses. To tackle such an issue, we have applied the data transformation technique. It converts (or maps) the responses of the respondents into the Likert scale (Allen & Seaman, 2007 ). The Likert scale allows the assigning of the numerical weightage to the obtained responses. Additionally, it helps in effective statistical evaluation, as we have used a single scaling score for each question in the survey. One of the examples of Likert scale conversion is demonstrated below in Table  2 .

Further, the reviews (textual feedbacks) of the respondents are preprocessed for performing the quantitive content-based analysis (Riffe et al., 2019 ). This includes removal of special characters, numbers, grammatical and formatting errors, conversion of text from regional to English language, repetitive comments, missing values, abusive or vulgar comments, and misleading information. We have applied both manual and automatic techniques for data cleaning. The manual technique includes checking the responses for any vulgar or misleading information and automative techniques like R libraries for removing missing and repetitive values, google translator to convert text into English form were also employed in our research. The sequence of the preprocessing steps is mentioned in Fig.  2 .

Pre-processing steps sequence

8.1.3 Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis (or opinion mining) is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) approach to investigate the emotions, polarity, attitude, and opinion of the people from the written text (Liu & Zhang, 2012 ; Wook et al., 2019 ). In our survey, we have taken the feedbacks (suggestions or comments) from the respondents expressing their experience with the online conduct of the classes (online teaching and learning). Further, we performed opinion mining on the quantitative responses of the respondents, to examine and analyze the behavioral responses of the stakeholders.

Each feedback comment presents a sort of emotion that dignifies the acceptance or rejection of the online classes by teachers and students. The sentiment analyzer classifies the quantitative feedbacks as positive, negative, and neutral based on the extracted emotions (refer to Fig.  3 ). The working of the sentiment analyzer is shown in Algorithm 1.

Sentiment analysis of respondents feedback

The results of the sentiment analysis depict the presence of around 57% of the positive and 11% of the highly positive feedbacks by the faculty members. The students responded with only 45% of the positive comments in total. From the observed results, we may conclude that Indian higher education faculty members seem much satisfied with the online learning methods and tools in comparison to the students. Stickney et al. ( 2019 ) also presented similar outcomes, indicating the satisfaction of Higher education faculty members for online education. Furthermore, we have discussed the possible reasons for obtaining such results in the discussion section of this paper.

Moreover, there are some comments (of the respondents) specifying neutral sentiments (no emotion). We found the existence of approximately 6% of the neutral comments by both categories of the respondents. The negative feedbacks illustrate the unhappiness of the respondents with the conduct of online classes and learning. In the future study, we plan to perform an in-depth quantitative analysis on the negative comments. We also look forward to conducting the thematic analysis, to get insights into the limitations, problems, or issues faced by the learners in online learning. The negative emotions of students indicate their dissatisfaction with online teaching methods and other common problems like electricity failure, internet issues, disturbance by other participants, among others. In the collected data, we observed a total of 49% and 26% of the negative emotions (including the sum of negative and highly negative) from students and teachers respectively. This outcome pinpoints the presence of resistance and dissatisfaction among the respondents. Exploring the appropriate reasons for such a behavior is a topic of future research itself.

8.1.4 Topic modeling

Topic modeling is the statistical method to extract the relevant topics of discussion from the corpus of documents (Setiawan et al., 2020 ). It allows performing the semantic analyses and grouping (clustering) of the set of words (or similar expressions) from the documents corpus. The data points in the same group (cluster) are more similar to each other, in comparison to the data points in other groups (Saini et al., 2020 ). In this case study, we have applied the LDA (Latent Dirichlet allocation) algorithm, to analyze the comments (feedbacks or suggestions) of the respondents (teachers and students) concerning the conduct of online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. LDA is among the most prominent and widely used algorithms for extracting the topics of discussion from the set of documents. This extraction of semantic topics from the respondent’s feedback helped us to investigate the pros and cons of online learning, other problems faced by respondents, areas of improvement, the success rate of online learning, and future suggestions for online learning and teaching. With all these extracted scenarios, it will be a huge task to explore deeply into all the topics. We take it as a future challenge to explore thoroughly all the possible reasons for these scenarios. The results of the LDA algorithm are shown in Fig.  4 . The findings indicate the formation of 5 clusters, with the five most frequent and important topics in each cluster.

Topic modeling using LDA

8.1.5 Finding the relation among teaching and learning parameters

The conducted surveys illustrated the presence of variations in the responses of the teachers and students. We have used the Karl Pearson coefficient of correlation (Blyth, 1994 ) to get the degree of the dependency among the responses of both responders group. The value of the coefficient is expected to range between 0 and 1. The 0 signifies there exists no dependency among responders, whereas 1 signifies the perfect correlation (fully dependency). The degree of the correlation can be computed by using Eq. 1 (Blyth, 1994 ).

N represents the number of the questions on which analysis has been observed.

‘T’ is used to represent the value of the response of the teacher and the symbol ‘S’ is used to identify the student response value.

We have applied the Karl Pearson correlation method to the overall gathered responses of the students and teachers (faculty members). With the implication of eq. 1 , we got a strong relation (r = 0.712) among the responses of the two respondents (Benesty et al., 2009 ). It pointed to the fact that both respondents have shown a similar degree of acceptance (or rejection) for online teaching methods, tools, and problems faced.

8.2 Outcomes of the case study

Table  3 shows the results of general information collected from the respondent responses. It is seen that in Q1, almost all the responders have their own devices for teaching/learning. The percentage of both types is above 90%. Furthermore, it is observed that the most frequently used device by both the teachers and students is the Smartphone. Laptop and desktops are the next in the series based on the usage. Google Meet; an online meeting tool for attending virtual classes is the leading service used by both groups of responders as depicted from the results of the Q5. The outcome of Q6 specifies that the majority of the teachers deliver lectures by turning their cameras on, whereas large groups of students prefer to attend lectures by keeping the camera off.

Furthermore, one of the sections of the questionnaire is used to collect the issues (or problems/challenges) faced by the respondents during the online teaching and learning. The results pointing to these challenges are presented in Table  4 . Network (or Internet) and electricity are among the foremost challenges that are faced by the learners. Around 76% of the teachers and 49% of the students have confronted network-related problems. 74% and 61% of teachers and students have encountered the problem of electricity during online teaching and learning respectively. Almost half of the respondents have also affirmed the presence of disturbance (or noise) in online classes. They specified different reasons like lack of specific student interest, network issues, hardware problems, disturbance from the surrounding environment, among others.

Furthermore, for the success of online classes (or education), it is worth knowing the average class size (number of participants). It is pointed that the appropriate size is a must for successful learning in online classes (McDaniel & Dickens, 2004 ). An oversize group or group with less than 2 participants can affect the overall outcomes of the online classes. For this purpose, we have asked the responders to specify the average number of participants attending online classes during COVID-19.

Figure  5 presents the graphical illustration of the collected responses on this data. Approximately 35% of responders mentioned that they attend an online class with around 100 other students. With these findings, we feel that it is very difficult to handle such a large size group in an online class. Moreover, in an outsized online class, it is obvious that students and teachers have to encounter common problems like disturbance, lack of interest, dissatisfaction (Ake-Little et al., 2020 ). Additionally, the teacher (or faculty member) cannot make an appropriate discussion with students and will not handle the queries of the students in a better way.

Participants in a single session

In further analysis, we have explored the average duration an online learner/teacher spent for attending and delivering the lectures or conducting the discussion sections. We observed that the average daily time spent by both teachers and students on online learning is approximately 3–4 h (refer to Fig. 6 ). Students are likely to spend more time as they have several lectures to attend daily whereas teachers are bound to take only 2–3 lectures. Moreover, it is also found that the average weekly time spent by the student for attending online classes (or for online study) is approximately 20 h. Whereas, the average teacher’s per-week teaching workload is 17–18 h (approx.) as per the data provided by them in the survey. With these findings, it is further a topic of research to find the impact of online learning duration on the health of the learners. In the future, we want to explore this challenge in a detailed and elaborative manner.

Daily time spent on online learning

The end section of the survey is dedicated to taking suggestions from the users. The results of the suggestion part of the questionnaire are shown in Table  5 . It focuses on gathering information from respondents on the level of discussions, online examination, security, and their learning experience. Around 64% of teachers are in the view that online exams cannot be taken as an alternative for offline exams, whereas students are in the favour of online exams. On the other hand, both parties agree on the fact that online classes will not be able to replace offline classes.

Furthermore, we have asked the respondents to provide feedback (or suggestions) on the ongoing central and state government initiatives to promote education during the period of the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, we have requested the respondents to provide the name of initiatives they are using and rate them based on their usability (or performance) on the rating scale of below-average to excellent (refer to Table  6 ).

In particular, Table 6 presents the compiled rating outcomes of the most popular initiatives marked by the respondents. It is observed that among all initiatives NPTEL gets the highest rank, mostly ranging between good to excellent scale. It also validates the fact that NPTEL assists the learners (students and teachers) by providing more flexible learning options in comparison to other initiatives. Footnote 18 Further, we noted the higher rating (or acceptance) for SWAYAM and Social media-based e-contents. Paul et al. ( 2018 ) also pointed that SWAYAM has a wide spectrum of audiences and received the peak attention of its learners. The popularity of social media and the availability of study material on different platforms like YouTube, blogs, websites, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. cannot be eliminated (Cinelli et al., 2020 ). Social media is now being utilized as a pedagogical tool in institutes (or classrooms) to implement effective learning and teaching (Hamadi et al., 2021 ). iScuela Learn perceived the least rating in comparison to other considered initiatives. One of the possible reasons for such a behavior is the limited scope of the audience (only school students) targeted. Footnote 19

9 Discussion

Online learnings have become a vital part of education, especially with the Coronavirus outbreak. With such a vast education system in the country, it is an obvious challenge for online learning methods to meet the requirements of the education sector. The present study is conducted on exploring different online learning and education initiatives taken by the Indian government during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus to provide elaboration of the online learning environment and acknowledge why it is so important in the pandemic period. Particularly, the conducted research is distributed into two phases: the first phase provides detailed information about the Indian government (both central and state) initiatives. Moreover, while exploring these initiatives it is found that the Indian government has commenced several new platforms along with the enhancement of Open Education Resources to make online learning reachable to each learner. The central government already uses several E-learning platforms to promote education in the country, but with the sudden outbreak of COVID, many new significant initiatives came into the limelight. The Indian government promotes a few existing systems like DIKSHA, free access to e-books, radio channels, etc. Several other online programs like PM eVidya, Swayam Prabha TV, the channel for differently-abled persons, providing e-textbooks have been started in the COVID period (Kadam, 2021 ). Along with the central government, several state ministries also took comprehensive steps to assure continuity of education in corona time. The majority of the states participated in this process by either upgrading the current systems or starting new ones to meet the demand of the education sector. The success of these initiatives is determined by the feedback from the responders. In the second phase of the paper, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted to confirm the success of the online learning system. Though the outcomes indicated that online learning is the future of the education system, still it has certain hurdles in its path.

Question wise analysis of the conducted survey:

All online learners (respondents of the survey) have their devices for learning except a few would like to share with others (possibly the family members) or use cafes or departmental labs. Indian is a nation with a lot of diversity and divergence in terms of financial status (Ghosh et al., 1998 ). Everyone cannot purchase a smart device with internet data packs for attending classes. Moreover, there are certain geographical areas (even states) where it is limited or no access to the internet facility. It will become a real challenge for the Indian state and central governments to cover this digital inequality among the citizens of India (Pandey & Pandey, 2018 ).

It is analyzed that SmartPhones are the most widely used device for online learning. Affordability, availability, portability, easier operation are the possible reasons for its high usage. Moreover, for online learning, accessive use may have adverse effects on the health of learners. The findings of this study pointed that teachers (or faculty members) preferably use a laptop or desktop to conduct online classes. Whereas, the other set of participants (students) prefer smartphones.

In this digital era, it is expected that every educated person knows how to use digital devices especially mobile phones. Since our respondents are from the higher education sector (including colleges/universities) and between the age of 20–40 years. There is a good chance of them having excellent digital/computer proficiency. Age is certainly a prominent factor in determining the digital proficiency of a person. Young peoples are more familiar with the usage of modern technology as compared to older ones (Paul & Stegbauer, 2005 ; Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008 ; Broady et al., 2010 ). We also observed in our findings that the computer proficiency of the students is comparatively higher than that of the teachers. Further, our results also claimed that all responders have average or good knowledge of operating digital devices. Moreover, the success of online education depends largely on the digital proficiency of the participants.

With online teaching (or education) various set of ICT tools comes in trending. In this study, we observed that the majority of the education stakeholders preferred to use Google Meet, followed by Zoom meet, CISCO Webex, Classdojo, etc. The preference for a specific tool depends largely on additional services provided by the host (or company) along with the services for ensuring the security of the users.

Online teaching preferably comes as a replacement of offline classes in the corona pandemic period. The virtual classes create an environment where students and teachers interact face to face. It is reported in our research that some of the teachers sometimes keep their camera off, while most of the students always attend classes in camera off condition. It may be considered as a serious limitation of online classes (or education). For the success of two-way dialog, participants and hosts must have a virtual face-to-face interaction. Ultimately, it will help in building a classroom environment, forces you to stay attentive and focused, allow teachers to have a better gauge of the needs of their classes, and make the session more interactive.

Teaching and learning will be more effective only when both (participants and hosts) can understand the language used for the process of teaching (or to disseminate the knowledge, ideas, or discussion). The results of the survey present that Indian higher education stakeholders (students/teachers) mostly interact in the English language. We have also found the trends where faculty members and students favor the use of more than one language (like English and Hindi, English, and other regional languages). The feedback from the faculty members also specified that some of the students are not able to properly understand either English or the regional language. In that case, it becomes mandatory to deliver lectures in the language on which students agreed.

Every education method, methodology, or technique has a certain set of problems associated with it (Pelekh, 2020 ). The case of online learning and education is not an exception (Piwek & Savage, 2020 ). In many Indian states, continuous electricity is a problem itself (García-Herrero & Goldhammer, 2020 ). The respondents in this study have also specified that a barrier in the successful conduct of virtual classes. The electricity problem can also create other problems like a disturbance in the lecture, a lecture miss, or a part of the lecture will be missed.

Network (or Internet) issue is also among the most cited problem faced during online education. It can initiate dissatisfaction for the learner, lack of interest, disturbance, voice (or video) distortion, inability to join class, and connection loss during the class. Moreover, some users may have limited access (amount of data) available for internet usage. They have many lectures to attend/deliver daily. It may cause exhaustion in the internet data. It can be considered as one of the reasons for not attending the classes.

Since most of the users attend classes from their homes. They are on a higher verge to get disturbance from the surroundings. Moreover, in India, it is not possible in every household to have a personal space for attending classes. The results show that both teachers and students agreed that they faced disturbance during their classes while taking (or attending) classes from their respective homes.

For attending the virtual classes the learner must sit for multiple hours in front of the digital devices. Moreover, with social media additions (for some users) and the use of other digital devices by the learners, it may go to an alarming range. This will surely raise health issues for the digital device user. The most common health issue is the problem in the eyes (like watery eyes, weakness of the eyesight, tired eyes, etc) (Mohan et al., 2021 ).

The size of the class also affects the quality and success of the online lecture (Toth & Montagna, 2002 ). A large number of participants (or oversize class) will lead to many problems in the online session like higher disturbance, lesser individual interactions, affect the network traffic, etc. In our survey results, it was observed that most of the respondents have class(es) of an immense number of participants.

Effective and efficient teaching is never considered as the method of one-way communication. The success of teaching and learning depends largely on discussions, interactions, questioning, and timely evaluation of students (Kyriakides et al., 2013 ). In the era of online teaching (or education) these factors may get escaped if teaching and learning compromise on the primary objective of education.

Online classes are taken as an alternative to offline (physical) classes. Can the exam be also taken online effectively? Can online exams be a good alternative to evaluate student’s performance? These are the few questions that arise while considering the option of virtual learning. It was seen in survey outcomes that most of the teachers agreed with the statement that online exams cannot evaluate a student’s performance in a better way. Whereas, several student respondents have shown a favoring trend in the conduct of online exams. The possible reasons for students supporting online exams will be (a) it saves the travel time (b) in the situation of COVID-19, it reduces the chances of transmission of disease (c) if classes are online why should the exams not be.

There exist significant differences between the online and offline classes. Therefore, a change in the present exam evaluation (or marking system) in the online mode is required. It will be better if assignments, projects (minor or major) based evaluation are made part of old systems. In offline mode, students write the answers using pen and paper, while in the online environment it can be done either by typing (or writing on paper using a pen and then scan copy the document). Both of the techniques are time-consuming and practically difficult. For such reasons, the evaluation system for online learning should be implemented differently.

Security is a major concern in the digital era. Mixed reactions about the security in online learning have been reported from the respondents. The compromise of protection and privacy due to hacking (or other activity) may cause theft of personal data and information, which is considered as the major threat to online learning.

In India, online classes are chosen as an alternative to the offline in the urge of imposed traveling restrictions (due to lockdown) in the corona period. Therefore, the question arises here if the online classes can fully replace offline classes in the future or not? In our survey, the feedback comes in the favour of offline classes considering online classes only as a substitute in the corona era. The possible reasons may be the lack of one-to-one interactions, fewer possible discussions, and all other issues discussed above.

There is a wide range of government initiatives to aid education in a COVID era specifically focusing on the level of education, streams, languages, category of study materials, etc. These initiatives help in providing study content in the form of video lectures, radio broadcasting, TV channels, and e-books. The success or failure of the initiatives is best portrayed by its users. The responses revealed that these initiatives are very valuable for students and teachers considering the unavailability of offline classes.

The feedbacks of the users rectify the acceptance or rejection of any system. In the last question of the questionnaire, users were asked to provide their valuable views/suggestions in concern to their online learning experience. The responses are collected, preprocessed, and finally analyzed for evaluating their core emotion and extracting the topics of discussion. It was observed from the results (see Fig. 3 ) that most of the teachers have given positive feedbacks for online learning. It may be considered as their acceptance and satisfaction with the online learning methods. Whereas a mixed set of opinions (positive, negative, and neutral) are seen in the responses of the students. Students seem not to be impressed with the online learning environment as revealed by their comments. Furthermore, merely knowing the positive and negative emotions will not fulfill the purpose, there is a need to know the factors that are responsible for the observed results. For such reasons, we have applied a topic modeling technique to fetch the most repetitive topic of discussion in the feedback. The outcomes of LDA-based topic modeling will assist in knowing the pros and cons, issues, limitations, areas of required improvement in online learning.

10 Conclusion and recommendation

COVID-19 came all of a sudden and none of the countries were ready to tackle the situation created by this influenza. Over time, the governments have taken immediate and urgent actions in response to the outbreak caused by this deadly disease. The government of different countries had imposed the lockdown, forced people to stay in their houses and living places. Work from home moto has been initiated throughout nations. Likewise many other sectors, the education field also got largely affected by the spread of this pandemic. The Education institutes started to become digitized in that period and online learning became a necessity. Every country promoted the use of E-learning during the covid period. The Indian government had also responded in the best manner to tackle the consequences of this deadliest and infectious disease. For rescuing education from the effects of COVID-19, the Indian government promoted the use of ICT in the field of education, especially during the lockdown period. The central government of India and the state governments of different regions have taken many initiatives to make education reachable to every student of the nation. The government publicizes the existing E-learning projects like CLASS, EDUSAT, SWAYAM, NPTEL, CEC, ILLL, etc., and also launched new tools for encouraging E-learning. The VidyDaan was first in the series of the newly launched tool in the corona outbreak period. PM eVidya launched in the mid of May also aims to provide multi-mode access to education. Furthermore, the central government also employed and promote education TV channels like Swayam Prabha, Gyaan Darshan, etc. Other initiatives like open school and pre-service education, education on air with the help of radio channels, special classes for differently-abled students, providing free of cost e-books and digital libraries like the National Repository of Open Educational Resources are taken by the central government. The state governments also play a major role in promoting online learning in the situation of the pandemic. Most of the states incorporated the initiatives of the central governments along with their methods for providing the facility of online learning. The state of Delhi started several special classes and services like the Online capacity Building Programme, Learning Never Stops, parenting in the time of corona. The Punjab state is no behind the capital state for taking positive initiatives in concern of E-learning by creating a mobile application like iscuela learn, starting channels on youtube, TV and Radio, providing content through EDUSAT, e-book distributions, and promotion of Smart Classrooms.

The success of these initiatives can be better rectified by the reactions of the targeted audience. For such reasons, a survey was conducted to get the insights of the teachers and students of different colleges and universities throughout the country in concern to online learning. The outcomes are satisfactory, where most of the respondents favor online learning and find these initiatives as an appreciable step in maintaining the continuity of the study in the era of COVID-19. Although a wide range of users took online learning as a vital and necessary asset for education, they do not prefer it as a future replacement of offline classes because of certain limitations and issues. The issues like network connectivity, electricity problem, a large group of participants in a single class, disturbance faced during classes, and health-related issues are highlighted by the conducted study. Even though the issues affected the performance of the learning over web method, the users respond that the overall experience of the online learning is good to above average and it successfully filled the need of the education during the lockdown period in the country. Additionally, the conducted study provides insights into the learners’ perspective towards the government’s initiatives and online learning. Although the study covers a lot about the effectiveness of these initiatives still certain unavoidable limitations are existing in the study. First, we have not listed all the initiatives, we have selected only a few based on their popularity. In specific, popularity is measured by the number of daily users, the downloaded content, the rating, etc. There is a chance of getting false information while measuring these parameters. Secondly, only a few states have been selected for our observations, we might have missed the states where these initiatives are implemented precisely. Third, the chosen sample (responses of the respondents) may have certain constraints: a) the majority of the respondents might belong to a similar course and locality, b) they have used the same initiative, c) experienced similar kinds of problems. In the future, we are focused to overcome these limitations by adding more clarity to the proposed system and sample chosen for the study.

Data availability

An online survey is conducted to collect the data.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Singh, M., Adebayo, S.O., Saini, M. et al. Indian government E-learning initiatives in response to COVID-19 crisis: A case study on online learning in Indian higher education system. Educ Inf Technol 26 , 7569–7607 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10585-1

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Published : 23 June 2021

Issue Date : November 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10585-1

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Here are four interventions that can make education in India more accessible and inclusive

India is the second largest market for online education after the US. Image:  Unsplash.

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• Learning outcomes among school children in India show significant scope for improvement.
• The Education 4.0 India report identifies key learning gaps within education and proposes several solutions.
• A multi-stakeholder approach can bridge these gaps with a transformative framework.

The potential of digital interventions in the field of education in India is immense: the market for online education has grown four times since 2019 to $3 billion . A KPMG assessment showed that India is the second largest market for online education after the US. With conducive policies and initiatives of the Government of India, such as the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and over 5000 EdTech start-ups across the learning lifecycle , the current education environment is potent for digital transformation.

Alongside this, learning outcomes among schoolchildren show significant scope for improvement. The National Achievement Survey (NAS) of 2021 reported an average learning level of 59% in grade 3, 49% in grade 5, 42% in grade 8 and 36% in grade 10. This indicates a decline in learning levels with an increase in grade level and has far-reaching implications for young Indians’ readiness for the 21st-century workplace and India’s preparedness for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Have you read?

How many children in the world are getting a proper education, 'now or never': why we need to do more to save schools' 'lost generation', covid-19 has locked children out of their education with girls at highest risk.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the digital divide caused by disparate access to, and affordability of, technology infrastructure (such as internet connectivity and electricity) and devices (such as computers and mobile devices). This divide varies across geographies, demographics and communities. Additionally, students with disabilities face unique challenges due to the lack of peer support, lower concentration levels and the need for better parental support.

Enhancing learning and reducing inequities

While recognizing the huge potential of technology for enhancing learning, as well as the need to reduce inequities in educational access for all girls and boys, the Education 4.0 India initiative utilizes digital and other technologies to address learning gaps and make education accessible to all.

A joint effort between the World Economic Forum, UNICEF and YuWaah (Generation Unlimited in India) proposes solutions that align with, and augment and amplify, India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Digital Education Architecture of 2021 .

India’s NEP 2020 aims to improve the delivery of quality education for all learners, including through digital means. From revamping the educational structure to creating a robust digital learning system, the NEP 2020 is aligned with the goals of 21st-century education. It emphasizes the development of the creative potential of each child.

Keys areas that require intervention

The report identifies four focus areas for interventions: foundational numeracy and literacy (FLN), teachers’ capacity building, school-to-work transition and connecting the unconnected. The interventions are categorised under five building blocks, namely: curriculum, content, capacity, community and digital.

1. Foundational literacy and numeracy

For instance, in FLN, a major gap identified is the lack of “byte-sized” content in early learning that can ignite a child’s interest, as well as engage parents who may not be educated.

Storytelling, read-aloud and interactive content, flip books, and the use of digital tools can address these challenges. FLN solutions are centred around the following criteria: the capability of the solution to engage the home environment and the relevant actors (parents, caregivers and community); the adaptability of the solution; whether the solution is multi-modal in nature (hybrid or phygital) so as to reach parents and communities in the remotest and most resource-challenged locations.

2. Teachers’ capacity building

Enhancing teachers’ capacity to deliver education in newer formats is essential, as is their buy-in and involvement in creating and providing tech-enabled curricula. To this end, the report suggests ways to strengthen teachers’ capacity building – for instance, by improving the quality of teachers’ training, linking training with career progression, and involving teachers in designing a holistic teachers’ capacity building programme.

According to our Future of Jobs 2018 report, more than one-half of India’s workforce will need to be re-skilled by 2022 to meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

With the world’s largest youth population and more than half of the population of working age, skills development is critical for India to sustain inclusive growth and development.

In late 2018, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with India's oil and skills development minister as well as the head of business consulting company Infosys, launched a Task Force for Closing the Skills Gap in India .

The task force brings together leaders from business, government, civil society and the education and training sectors to help future-proof India’s education and training systems. Find out more about our Closing the Skills Gap 2020 initiative.

3. School-to-work transition

The third priority area, school-to-work transition, focuses on making students job-ready in a rapidly evolving employment landscape. Nearly 85% of Indian schools have yet to implement vocational courses as part of their curriculum. This report suggests interventions using digital and hybrid models to upskill students to find a good fit with available and emerging jobs.

4. Connecting the unconnected

The global pandemic has not only made digital learning central to teaching worldwide, but it has also widened the digital divide, leaving those without devices and internet connections further behind. According to the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2020-2021 survey, only around 41.3% of schools have access to computers, and 24.5% had access to the internet in 2020-2021.

For the fourth focus area, connecting the unconnected, this report categorizes schools based on their access to digital infrastructure. It suggests interventions to enable schools at each level to get better connected.

Transforming the education sector

The Education 4.0 India initiative builds on efforts by the central and state governments and leverages their interventions. The interventions recommended by the initiative can create tremendous impact – from making education more accessible and inclusive to reducing dropout rates and improving learning outcomes by using more adaptive learning systems and community engagement.

The report presents a roadmap to enhance India’s school education ecosystem and gives out a call to action to all stakeholders in the edtech space to come together to transform the sector.

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State of the Education Report for India 2023

The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) New Delhi Regional Office launched the fifth edition of its annual flagship report,  Seeds of Change - UNESCO 2023 State of the Education Report for India on Education to address Climate Change .

This year’s report delves into the role of education in tackling the increasingly complex and intensifying challenges posed by climate change. India, like many parts of the world, continues to bear witness to the dire consequences of climate change through climate disasters and biodiversity losses. Education’s full potential to shape a generation that understands the gravity of this urgent issue and equip them with the tools to combat it must be realized now.  

The National Education Policy 2020 underscores the importance of making environmental education an integral part of school curricula at all stages. In order to address climate change in India, the Ministry of Education strongly believes in the role that education can play in resolving impacts of climate change. This report by UNESCO is very timely as it comes at a time when India is making significant strides in working on the issue of climate change.

Education is a transformational tool in our fight against climate change – when we know better, we can do better. Educational systems must adapt to equip younger generations with the knowledge, skills and competencies to prepare them for the impacts of climate change. This year’s UNESCO State of the Education Report for India is dedicated to the pivotal role of education in addressing climate change. We can see from the research that India has already taken some significant steps in this direction, and in doing so, is helping to  promote  sustainable and long-term solutions to this global challenge.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training’s (NCERT) commitment to addressing climate change through school education aligns seamlessly with the vision of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The NCERT is delighted to know that the UNESCO New Delhi Regional Office has developed this report on the pivotal theme of education to address climate change and I trust this report will be an informative guide for programmes directed towards climate change education.

In 2023, India ranked eighth out of 59 countries and the European Union (collectively accounting for 92% of global greenhouse gas emissions) on climate performance according to the Climate Change Performance Index, rising two spots from the previous year. The country’s new National Curriculum Framework revised in 2023 mentions climate change 52 times. Today, India is a country well-suited for an exploration of climate education innovations, and UNESCO’s report highlights its best practices and future opportunities to do just that. 

UNESCO - has long promoted the mobilization of intersectoral partnerships, political commitments, and youth empowerment as key drivers for fully leveraging education in building a greener and more sustainable future. Its global programme, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), contributes to this end by laying the foundation for global collaboration and policy innovation. Additionally, the Greening Education Partnership (GEP), launched by the United Nations Secretary-General in 2022, provides a practical framework for education stakeholders to take further action and UNESCO serves as the secretariat to the Greening Education Partnership (GEP). 

To date, 80 Member States have joined the Partnership, for which UNESCO serves as the secretariat with strong commitment to green education systems, structured around four pillars of transformative education: 

Greening schools

Greening curriculum

Greening teacher training and education systems’ capacities

Greening communities

The four pillars of the GEP are used as a guide with which the report analyzes India’s state of education to address climate change. The report is a synergy between UNESCO’s globally informed framework and the local expertise cultivated by the research team from the Centre for Environmental Education, India who authored this report. 

The report concludes with ten concrete recommendations for education sector stakeholders, which we hope will facilitate immediate actions to enhance education’s role in addressing climate change. We also hope that the recommendations will inspire stakeholders in the environmental sector to further engage with education in their policy initiatives. 

The ten recommendations are: 

Emphasize the urgent need for collective action to address climate change through education 

Include a climate change education component in all development policies 

Integrate climate change education at all stages of education 

Support educational institutions to be green and climate-ready

Embed climate change perspectives into green skills and vocational education programmes 

Empower teachers with comprehensive climate change education training and resources 

Engage with the youth to build a green future

Incorporate local and traditional knowledge that supports low-carbon lifestyles in climate change education

Promote partnerships to foster innovations in climate change education 

Strengthen and create education-centred portals to provide reliable information on climate change 

The launch event also showcased an engaging exhibition highlighting various initiatives taken to develop education to address climate change in India. 

UNESCO New Delhi Regional Office extends its gratitude to UNICEF India, British Council India, and the Mobius Foundation for their support and cooperation. 

To illustrate the report in an accessible manner, the following audio-visual package is also available free of copyright on  UNESCO New Delhi’s YouTube channel : 

Summary video underlining the recommendations of the report

Short capsules highlighting the key recommendations of the report 

Seeds of Change - 2023 State of the Education report for India on Education to Address Climate Change

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Being the first of its kind to incorporate both employability and sustainability factors into the methodology , the QS World University Rankings provides the higher education sector, governments and students a reliable rankings system that identifies the world’s leading universities in a range of performance metrics. 

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Global highlights of the QS World University Rankings 2025 

China and India’s universities have seen the biggest upward movements for both the number of institutions increasing their ranking position and for the number of significant moves (defined as 10 places or more) in the QS World University Rankings 2025.

Other highlights in institutional performance globally are: 

The UK’s strongest performance is in the ‘International Student Ratio’ indicator. It achieves the world’s second-highest average score among countries with ten or more ranked universities, behind only Saudi Arabia – underscoring the global appeal of UK higher education institutions and their ability to attract a diverse student body. 

The US continues to boast one of the world’s most renowned higher education systems for their reputation, according to employers and academics – this is clear in the ranking as four of the top ten universities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) earn 100 in the ‘Academic reputation’ indicator. 

Canada  

Canadian universities are performing exceptionally in ‘Sustainability’, with two universities among the world’s top five, including the world’s most sustainable institution, the University of Toronto . 

Australia  

Three Australian institutions are in the world’s top 20 – with the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney each climbing one position to 13th and 18th respectively. Australia also dominates in ‘International research’ in the Asia-Pacific region, claiming nine of the top 10 positions. 

Africa  

South Africa holds the African continent’s top four positions in the rankings – with the University of Cape Town (ranked 171st) being the continent’s highest-ranked institution, an improvement of two places from the previous year. Cairo University (Egypt) completed the top five in Africa, ranking 350th globally. 

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Latin America has four representatives in the top 100, one from each of its four largest economies: Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) in Argentina (71st); Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil (92nd); Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC) in Chile (93rd); and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico (94th). 

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Education Rankings by Country 2024

There is a correlation between a country's educational system quality and its economic status, with developed nations offering higher quality education.

The U.S., despite ranking high in educational system surveys, falls behind in math and science scores compared to many other countries.

Educational system adequacy varies globally, with some countries struggling due to internal conflicts, economic challenges, or underfunded programs.

While education levels vary from country to country, there is a clear correlation between the quality of a country's educational system and its general economic status and overall well-being. In general, developing nations tend to offer their citizens a higher quality of education than the least developed nations do, and fully developed nations offer the best quality of education of all. Education is clearly a vital contributor to any country's overall health.

According to the Global Partnership for Education , education is considered to be a human right and plays a crucial role in human, social, and economic development . Education promotes gender equality, fosters peace, and increases a person's chances of having more and better life and career opportunities.

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." — Nelson Mandela

The annual Best Countries Report , conducted by US News and World Report, BAV Group, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania , reserves an entire section for education. The report surveys thousands of people across 78 countries, then ranks those countries based upon the survey's responses. The education portion of the survey compiles scores from three equally-weighted attributes: a well-developed public education system, would consider attending university there, and provides top-quality education. As of 2023, the top ten countries based on education rankings are:

Countries with the Best Educational Systems - 2021 Best Countries Report*

Ironically, despite the United States having the best-surveyed education system on the globe, U.S students consistently score lower in math and science than students from many other countries. According to a Business Insider report in 2018, the U.S. ranked 38th in math scores and 24th in science. Discussions about why the United States' education rankings have fallen by international standards over the past three decades frequently point out that government spending on education has failed to keep up with inflation.

It's also worthwhile to note that while the Best Countries study is certainly respectable, other studies use different methodologies or emphasize different criteria, which often leads to different results. For example, the Global Citizens for Human Rights' annual study measures ten levels of education from early childhood enrollment rates to adult literacy. Its final 2020 rankings look a bit different:

Education Rates of Children Around the World

Most findings and ranking regarding education worldwide involve adult literacy rates and levels of education completed. However, some studies look at current students and their abilities in different subjects.

One of the most-reviewed studies regarding education around the world involved 470,000 fifteen-year-old students. Each student was administered tests in math, science, and reading similar to the SAT or ACT exams (standardized tests used for college admissions in the U.S.) These exam scores were later compiled to determine each country's average score for each of the three subjects. Based on this study, China received the highest scores , followed by Korea, Finland , Hong Kong , Singapore , Canada , New Zealand , Japan , Australia and the Netherlands .

On the down side, there are many nations whose educational systems are considered inadequate. This could be due to internal conflict, economic problems, or underfunded programs. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's Education for All Global Monitoring Report ranks the following countries as having the world's worst educational systems:

Countries with the Lowest Adult Literacy Rates

• Education rankings are sourced from both the annual UN News Best Countries report and the nonprofit organization World Top 20

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• World’s 10 Worst Countries for Education - Global Citizen
• International Education Database - World Top 20

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Sports tourism is on a rise in India, with the country’s sports tourism market expected to be valued at nearly $53 billion in 2033, according to a report released by market research firm Future Market Insights last year. The firm expects the industry to grow at an annual rate of 17.1% from its valuation of $11 billion in 2023. 

Major sporting events, including the cricket T20 World Cup series, Wimbledon, and the 2024 Olympics are coming soon. These tournaments are popular among sport enthusiasts in India, and as the spending power of Indian travelers is increasing , there seems to be an increased interest in seeing them live.

Skift reached out to online travel companies to understand the trends that they are seeing:

Rajeev Kale – President and Country Head, Holidays, MICE, Visa at Thomas Cook (India) Limited: “Our consumer data trends for 2024 highlight a 40% surge in demand for big-ticket global sporting events. Topping the list is the cricket World Cup series, Wimbledon, the Olympics, and F1. We have received about 200 queries including confirmed group bookings for the anticipated India-Pakistan cricket match in New York.”

Kale said that these events play a key role in influencing travel decisions, with 23% of consumers taking them into account while choosing destinations. 

“What is truly encouraging is that Indians are clearly displaying a spend appetite for such sporting extravaganzas.”

Daniel D’Souza – President and Country Head at Holidays, SOTC Travel: Sports tourism is becoming a major driver for the Indian market, said D’Souza. “The demand is increasing by 20-35%. Live attendance is an exciting and desirable experience for Indian travelers, evident by their dominance in overseas ticket purchases for major sporting events such as cricket, Wimbledon and Australian Open in lawn tennis, and football.” 

D’Souza added that sports tourism used to be a niche market in India previously, but is now attracting a wider audience, including high net worth individuals and ultra high net worth individuals, families, and young Indians across Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.

Santosh Kumar – Country Manager for India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia at Booking.com: “Indian sports fans are traveling the world to watch their favorite sporting events. According to our travel trends for 2024, 73% of Indian travelers are planning to travel internationally for sporting events this year. We are seeing this passion translating into real action with our accommodation search data revealing a rise in searches for host destinations.”

Kumar shared that London, Paris, and New York are among the top 10 most searched destinations by Indians – corresponding with events like Wimbledon Championships, Paris 2024 Olympics, and the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup respectively. 

TBO Tek Reports 35% Increase in Net Profit

Travel distribution platform TBO Tek has announced its financial results for the fiscal 2024. It reported a 35% increase in its net profit as well as a 31% growth in its revenue. 

TBO Tek co-founder Gaurav Bhatnagar said, “In the coming year, we will continue to invest in global market development, supply strengthening, and platform innovation. We will be looking for strategic inorganic opportunities as well.”

TBO Tek has recently launched its IPO following which it recorded a strong debut on the Indian stock exchanges . The company is planning to use its IPO funds for strategic acquisitions and investments, Bhatnagar told Skift in an interview .

Radisson Signs its First Hotel in Bihar 

Radisson Hotel Group has signed its first hotel in the Indian state of Bihar. The 120-key Radisson Hotel Patna is expected to open in 2026. 

“We are excited to achieve another milestone in our journey of expanding our presence in Tier 2 and Tier 3 regions of the country,” said Radisson’s South Asia area senior vice president Nikhil Sharma. 

The company has been strategically focusing on Tier 1 as well as smaller markets in India for its growth across brands. It recently debuted its luxury lifestyle brand, Radisson Collection, in India . 

In an interview with Skift, Radisson executive vice president Elie Younes said, “India has seen significant economic growth over the past few decades, leading to an increase in disposable income and a growing appetite for luxury lifestyle experiences. We recognize the immense potential of this flourishing market.”

Royal Orchid Hotels’ Total Income Increases by 12%

Royal Orchid Hotels has announced that its total income in the fiscal 2024 increased by 12% as compared to fiscal 2023. Its profit after tax has seen a marginal increase of 3%. 

However, the company is gearing up for the next financial year, said chairman and managing director Chander K Baljee. “We are implementing key drivers for growth to demonstrate our vision for the future of Indian hospitality – by redefining brands, strengthening our management team, and bringing in new technologies and processes. Financial year 2025 is poised to be a  transformative year, setting the company up for the future,” he said. 

The company is planning to add 30-35 new properties with about 2,000 rooms in fiscal 2025 as part of its expansion plans across India.

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Tags: booking.com , domestic tourism , earnings , global tourism , hotel earnings , hotels , Paris 2024 Olympics , Paris Olympics , radisson , radisson hotel group , sports , sports tourism , thomas cook , tourism , Travel Trends , very online , world cup

Photo credit: Cricket World Cup series, Wimbledon, and the Olympics are around the corner. Juan Salamanca / Pexels