Suitable Strategy to Overcome the Barriers in Online Learning

Abstract

As a consequence of COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown was imposed and sudden changes in the education system from traditional face to face to fully online mode. The objective of the study is to analyse the barriers faced by the students in online learning and verify with Confi rmatory Factor Analysis and suggest a suitable strategy to overcome the barriers. The study was conducted at Acharya N G Ranga Agricultural University with 240 students who participated in online learning. The results revealed that greater proportion of the students often used smart phone (92.08%) for online learning. About 40.00 per cent of the students spent 19-28 hours per week in online classes. The study revealed nine barriers in online learning as perceived by the students namely unfavourable learning environment, lack of knowledge on eff ective use of online apps, lack of expertise and skills in using the apps, it is expensive, online learning is time consuming, internet connectivity issues, lack of uninterrupted power supply, problem with application compatibility with ICT tools and health issues. For barriers in online learning the goodness of fi t of model indices were satisfactory. The factor loadings were greater than 0.40 and reliability of two factors technical barriers and personal barriers were 0.709 and 0.812 respectively. The strategies to overcome the barriers in online learning included the creation an organised study space, active participation of the students, eliminating distractions, etc.