Survey Findings- E-Learning Readiness Among College Students

Background

India currently has 95.2 % of its population who have access to electricity (World Development Indicators, 2017). The country has 86 mobile cellular subscriptions for every 100 people (World Development Indicators, 2018). However, it does poorly in terms of hours of service of its electricity as well as internet connections, only 1.3 people per 100 people have a broadband connection in India; Further, there is a lack of access to laptops and computers in the country which creates serious barriers to learning.

The term "e-learning" is used to describe several related processes such as online learning, computer-based learning (CBL), web-based training (WBT), online resource-based learning (ORBL), and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) (Ng'ambi, 2006).

India has some of the lowest tariff rates for internet in the world. But to make it scalable for learning we look at the number of households with computers and find that according to the National Sample Survey Organization, NSSO (2017), only 4.4% of rural households of which only 14.9 % have internet and 23.4 % of urban households own computers where only 42% have internet an internet connection with a computer. Owning a smartphone device has certainly become easier, however, to learn using audio-visual content, and streaming through resources needs 4G internet. In India, there are currently, 277 million VoLTE capable devices. Given that 99% of rural internet users access the internet online over a smartphone, good internet connectivity must persist. One-third access internet for more than 1 hour in urban areas and 15-30 minutes in rural areas (Nielsen 2019). These figures have huge implications on the lives of students who find themselves back at home, wherein 55% are returning to rural areas (Mukhopadhyay 2020).

COVID-19 has laid bare a lot of structural deficits in several public goods such as health, education and the internet. As education delivery, in particular, higher education has continued, several inequities have appeared in satisfaction and feasibility of this new paradigm of online learning, now that almost 5 million students who live away from homes are back in their homes among whom 55% are from the rural areas (Mukhopadhaya, 2020).

The key lesson may be to embrace e-learning tech before disaster strikes (Todorova and Bjorn-Andersen, 2011). And to make effective use of technology, we need to be ready Online Learning, Remote Working, and e-collaborations have burst because of Corona Virus crisis (Favale et al., 2020). Efforts can be taken from the supply side to make apps more amenable to mobile phones and from the demand side it should be possible to provide devices to the students. These circumstances make us realize that scenario planning is an urgent need for academic institutions (Rieley, 2020).

COVID 19 and Higher education in India

Since the outbreak the higher education institutions in India have been closed not only since the five phases of lockdown till 30^th June but a closure on higher education institutions which remains today after the lockdown has been lifted. In this time the students have begun online classes but the MHRD and the University Grants Commission made several arrangements by launching online tools and repositories for learning (Jena, 2020). This certainly provides frugal solutions to students with poor internet, but with a combination of poor availability and access of devices and network, these tools would be difficult to securely use. The resulting move towards digital open books, online exams and integrating several ICT platforms has brought some unfortunate impacts for the particular groups of students such as the specially-abled (Manzoor, 2020). With this in the backdrop, the study seeks to find between group differences for Rural and Urban areas.

This study by the Smart Campus Cloud Network (SCCN) was designed to assess the issues of access and quality of infrastructure related to e-learning[1] for college students with a sample of 20,408 across India among whom 11,002 were from urban areas and 9,406 were from rural areas. AICTE or All India Council of Technical Education had gladly agreed to be our outreach partner and we are grateful to them for sending the survey to all their colleges. Indeed, the wide variety of responses received would not have been possible without them.

• Our findings show that the students have adapted to using smartphones for learning on a large scale where over 59% of the students were only using mobile phones as a learning device. 44.25% of individuals in Municipal Local bodies owned a laptop whereas the number was 27% in panchayats. Thus, the potential for delivering higher education through mobile phones and subsidized internet data should be explored more, especially for the students in rural areas
• 55% of the respondents were moderately satisfied with online-learning, 25% were not satisfied and 13% were very satisfied. Only 27% reported to finding all online Course requirements feasible.
• Only 20% of the respondents were using wired internet technology. This number was reportedly smaller for students from rural areas and towns along with lesser access to broadband and optic fiber network vis-à-vis students in urban areas.
• In our logistic regression analysis, we find that students in rural areas are 41% less likely to say that they could meet the course related ICT requirements such a writing online exam, searching for articles online, etc.
• They were also 62% per cent more likely to have internet available for less than 12 hours vis-à-vis urban students. Lastly, satisfaction levels did not differ much among the students from the rural-urban regions.