Abstract
In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, most of the higher education institutions (HEIs) across the globe have replaced conventional teaching with online teaching. However, the technological preparedness of countries of varied nature differs significantly. In this context, the purpose of the study is to answer the following research question: how are the HEIs mitigating the difficulties that have resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic to facilitate online teaching–learning process? The study is carried out based on a cross-sectional study from 281 academic professionals who are employed in HEIs in India and Ethiopia. The findings from this comparative study highlight that digital divide and lack of institutional preparedness are found to be major problems that constrained the effective implementation of online teaching/learning. Besides, this study also found that training programmes for the faculty members to utilize web resources and facilitate online teaching were found to be limited in both the countries. The article concludes by offering suggestions and policy advice to minimize the digital divide and for successful implementation of online teaching in HEIs.
Highlights
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has challenged the current global sociopolitical dynamics and economic landscape (Cuaton, 2020)
Our findings indicate that the major issues linked with the impact of COVID-19 on teaching and learning activities in Higher education institutions (HEIs) include digital divide among the institutions and academic professionals, and lack of preparedness among institutions and teachers
The HEIs around the world have adopted ‘universalization of online education’ to overcome the restrictions imposed on classroom-based teaching and learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic
Summary
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has challenged the current global sociopolitical dynamics and economic landscape (Cuaton, 2020). It is already evident that the direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are pervasive (Holmes et al, 2020), and it primarily affects public health with spillover effects in many other key areas of human life, ranging from socioeconomic, political and cultural life (Kummitha, 2020; Ng & Peggy, 2020). The pandemic has left several challenges to HEIs in both developed and developing countries. HEIs made a significant effort to maximize the digital technology use to conduct the classes and delivering lectures online (Awogbenle, 2020; Labar, 2020; Kasturi Behari & Ganas, 2020). The usage of the digital technologies by HEIs is not even across the globe (Tamrat & Dmatew, 2020)
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