Multi-criteria Decision Making and Its Application to Online Learning Platform Selection During the COVID-19 Pandemic Based on TOPSIS Method

Abstract

AbstractThe COVID-19 outbreak has made a huge impact across the nation. It really has caused damage on the education system, as governments across the world partially or completely shutting down educational institutions to combat the transmission of the deadly virus. Classroom teachings have been made obsolete by online classes, leading to a rise of web-based learning, which has sure to meet the students to continue their studies. Students, teachers, administrations, and education professionals have experience gathered of significant challenges as a result of the abrupt shift from classroom teaching to web-based learning. As a result, Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) have become widely more popular and attractive, especially as a result of the pandemic’s forced educational adjustments. In a web-based learning system, search engines have been found applicable to continue the educational process. Also, the search engines are involved with retrieving necessary documentation (images, text, video, web pages, and so on) from a large database in order to respond to the learner’s request and several online platforms have been made with different features and facilities viz. Zoom, Google Meet, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, GoTo Meet, skype, etc. In this chapter, we have been applied TOPSIS method for selecting suitable online platform from existing online platforms using Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique. Finally, to illustrate the proposed technique, a realistic scenario for selecting the online platform from a web-based learning system has been exhibited.KeywordsOnline learning platformLinguistic variablesThe COVID-19 pandemicTOPSISMulti-criteria decision makingWeb-based learning