Analyzing education trends in pandemic times

Abstract

The global impact of ongoing pandemic has been very stressful and tensed. But the impact has been immense on students with all educational institutions being closed for almost a year now. Gradually, as all the countries are lifting curfews and reducing restrictions and life is returning to normalcy, the educational institutions still remain closed. Students of all age groups have to take online classes as that are the only way they can continue their education. Students are also dependent on various educational apps that could assist them in their education especially in the absence of a mentor with whom they can interact face-to-face in proximity. Students from privileged backgrounds, supported by their families, are able to learn efficiently as they have resources to take online classes but students from underprivileged backgrounds do not have enough resources to study in online mode. Closure of schools and higher educational institutions has also resulted in mental stress and depression. Students are at their home most of the time and they spend most of their time in front of screens either for online classes or for recreational purposes. This has resulted in deterioration of their physical health as well as mental health. Thus, we gathered data of students of various age groups pertaining to their experience in online classes- which educational app they used and whether their health had deteriorated during COVID. This data was used in assessing the situation of students during COVID using various techniques and algorithms. We also gathered data of educational apps from Google play store during the period of COVID to analyze the increase in their usage. We also studied the reviews of the apps using different machine learning algorithms including KNN, SVM etc and evaluated whether the students have benefited using these apps or not. Accuracy was calculated and a confusion matrix was created to validate our calculations and conclusions.