Challenges and opportunities of completing undergraduate education online: Narrative study of public and private university students in Bangladesh

Abstract

The arrival of COVID-19 pandemic brought significant changes in all aspects of human life since everything came to a standstill. For maintaining social distance and safeguarding individual’s lives, soon the educational institutions shifted from in person classes to online platforms. However, the effectiveness of e-learning and pedagogic practices became a question specifically for a nation like Bangladesh where only the conventional teaching and learning approach were practised since the beginning. Thus, in this qualitative study, focus has been given on understanding the perception of undergraduate students of Bangladesh on online education. The participants of this study had to complete their Bachelors online enduring different challenges and exploring different learning opportunities amidst pandemic. Circulating open – ended questions through Google form among participants, the findings indicated that even though all the participants went through different challenges and struggles, they did not deny the fact that the practice of online education needed to be brought into the system. Their responses also shed light on the factors like poor internet issues and accessibility to digital tools which must be addressed immediately to make online education effective. Lastly, they also opined that our system still has a long way to go to completely shifting the classroom online since the practical classes done online were not at all helpful. Thus, their preference was given more towards a hybrid mode where both online and offline classes should be added in the curriculum design.