Enhancing User Experience in On Line Education –

Challenges of Educational Institutions Post Covid19 Pandemic in India

Challenge: The sudden implementation of Lockdown due to Covid 19 Corona Virus in different

phases extending more than three months in India. And it had impacted the education sector very  much. Most of the schools and colleges were not in a position to handle this wicked problem.  As per  one estimate nearly 160 million students worldwide were still forced to stay at homes and not  attending schools and colleges. The regulatory bodies of education sector such as UGC, AICTE, CBSE  and many state level apex agencies including Universities also were not able to comprehend the  problem. The policy knee jerk reactions about conduct of exams, opening up of educational  institutions, implementation of online classes, zeroing on edu-tech solutions were quite evident. The  biggest challenge is in mitigating the suddenness and wicked nature of the problem of not getting  terms with how to define and comprehend its impact on education sector.

The major stakeholders of education sector the student community is facing lot of uncertainty about  their future. The parents are very much worried about the health and safety of their children to send  them to schools and colleges and also about the loss of time. The administrators, faculty members  and supporting staff of academic institutes were also confused very much about the way forward  and also their safety. The organisations which offered placement offers to students were not sure  about their on-boarding plan due to prevailing uncertainty.

Selection: At our college we are trying different approaches to mitigate the challenge of shifting

to online mode of teaching and enhancing user experience. I suggested learning launch tool to our  team to experiment different technologies, methods and approaches. This tools I believe helps us in  experiment and quickly test an idea and gives ample scope for designing prototypes.

Application:  In our first learning launch, we concentrated on the concepts, structure and

execution of our online teaching programme. Our task at that moment is to get clarity about  content, structure, timing, connectivity and frequency of teaching sessions in online. This tested the  ability of our faculty and students and how quickly they adapt to the new approach. We organised  faculty development classes by experts through online on how to conduct the virtual classes and  some of the evaluation methods. At later stage we introduced several platforms such as Zoom,  Google Meet, Cisco Webex, Goto Meeting, Webjam , etc and created awareness about the nuances  and tips. These events breaks the inertia and made our faculty members ready for learning new  online teaching methodologies and prepared them for accepting change.

The second learning launch helps us in strengthening our resolve to make the new methodologies  more effective. More emphasis was made on teaching, learning and evaluation methods. The  student challenges were also identified. Also, this experimentaion made us to recognise the  importance of other stakeholders such as technology firms, system administrators, regulatory bodies  in education field,   and society at largenin successful implementation of project of this nature.

Insight: However, every crisis is an opportunity to learn lessons and strengthen our systems

further to make them more robust and flexible. Majority of the educational institutions have shifted  to online mode in more haphazard way and facing the challenges. The stated problem is having all  the ingredients to apply Design Thinking approach than any linear methods. The human centered  nature of the stated challenge, the divergent opinion of various stakeholders about the problem, the  degree of complexity, the lack of empirical data makes clear case for applying design thinking  approach to enhance user experience in imparting On Line Education by Educational Institutions in  Post Covid19 era in India.

Approach: The following are the guiding questions which help in applying Design Thinking

problem solving approach to the stated assignment topic how to enhance User experience in on-line  teaching:

  What are the critical success factors for implementing On-Line Teaching?

  Who are the important stakeholders in making the transition from face-to-face teaching to  On-Line Teaching?

  What kind of educational technologies are more suitable for On-Line mode f teaching?

  What are the changes that are to be incorporated in administration, reporting, compliance  and documentation aspects in educational institutes?

  How to engage the students more productively in online teaching process?

  How to make the online teaching more effective in knowledge sharing, student involvement,  evaluation of performance, etc.?

As our team has already gone through several design thinking activities in other areas and are at this  stage in the timeline, the learning launch is the appropriate tool.  The experience gained through the  learning launches must be documented and discussed at length.  The future launches should be  more effective and should lead us to a comprehensive plan for full-fledged implementation.

