Online Pivot to Support Students' Learning Amid COVID-19

Abstract

What problem was addressed? Amid Covid-19 colleges and universities are closed down, reorganization of student education raises concerns about timely graduation. [1] Therefore, there is a radical shift across colleges to remote and online teaching models. The current article shares an experience with online teaching at a Medical College located in western India. What was tried? During Covid-19 lockdown it was decided by faculty of first professional medical course of the medical college, viz; Anatomy, Physiology & Biochemistry to shift to teaching online for a batch of 200 students. Initially, videoconferencing (VC) call applications like zoom or Team Link were utilized and WhatsApp group was created to inform students regarding topics and time. This ran smoothly to start with and 160-170 participants could join. Within few days, internet connectivity and bandwidth issues started erupting from both the sides, hampering quality of teaching. The teachers then decided to record each session via screen recording software and started uploading the same in dedicated Google Drive, sharing the link via WhatsApp group. Additionally, a dedicated YouTube channel was created for students to download videos to watch as per their convenience. This helped to minimize the challenge faced due to internet connectivity and to safeguard against cyber-attack, likely to prop up with apps like Zoom that uses VC.