Exploring GPS teachers experience of online teaching in Dhaka City during COVID19 pandemic

Abstract

The entire world was facing a severe health epidemic starting in the first quarter of 2020. It led to the deaths of millions of people. Due to the epidemic, educational institutions have encountered some of the most challenging problems and transformations, like some other service sectors. Face-to-face classroom activities have to be halted in schools. During this pandemic, online teaching-learning is extensively employed worldwide to avoid the learning gap of students and keep them learning. Bangladesh's government has been obliged to halt educational activities in all educational institutions in the country as of March 17, 2020. To avert an irrevocable loss of learning over 38 million students, Bangladesh's government launched a distance learning strategy within a couple of months. Distance learning was primarily converted to online teaching-learning to make learning more inclusive and accessible afterward. This study attempts to depict Bangladeshi government primary school teachers' online teaching experience during the COVID19 pandemic. The data collection site for this study was the Uttarkhan area of Dhaka North City Corporation, Bangladesh. The purposefully selected participants are government primary school teachers and involved in online teaching-learning during the COVID19 school closure. This study used inductive reasoning and in-depth analysis to discover that teachers' teaching-learning experiences in a virtual classroom are vastly different. As the majority of teachers struggled with the proper adoption issue with this new method of teaching. Simultaneously, an unsupportive environment demotivated students and teachers throughout the learning process. Less technology literacy and an excessive workload on the instructor have lowered the quality of education in various ways. On the other hand, teachers believe that with enough training and resources, they will be able to conduct successful online teaching and learning.