Preparations for and practices of online education during the Covid-19 pandemic: A study of Bangladesh and Nepal

Abstract

Online education has been adopted widely to address the educational chaos created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Reports on its constraints and challenges appear daily in the global media. However, accounts of teachers’ and students’ experiences of this abrupt shift in pedagogical modality are conspicuously absent in the available literature. This article reports the findings of a study that explored teachers’ and students’ experiences of online education during the pandemic in the context of higher education in Bangladesh and Nepal. The online survey with 147 students and 76 teachers and interviews with a sub-sample of 17 participants indicate that they adapt the action potentials of the digital artifacts to local contexts and use them in the best possible ways to facilitate their communication and enhance student learning in difficult circumstances. The major challenges and constraints they experience in transitioning to online education include poor network, lack of digital skills, lack of technological support from institutions among others. The study findings indicate some pressing policy, pedagogical and research implications, which are discussed in the final section.