Veterinary Students’ Perception Towards Online Education in Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic aff ected many aspects of human endeavor with no exception to education system in India. This has forced all the educational institutions to take a hands-on trial on online learning. An attempt was made to fi nd out the Veterinary students’ perception towards online education in Andhra Pradesh. Ex- post-facto research design was opted for the study and was conducted in three constituent colleges of Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University, Andhra Pradesh which have moved their academic activities onto online mode through zoom platform as a part of Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). From each college 40 veterinary students were selected following random sampling procedure, thus to form a sample size 120. The fi ndings revealed that majority of the students perceived online classes as very structured but are not more eff ective for basic courses when compared to applied courses; not easy to communicate with instructor, comfortable in responding to questions, improves digital skills, requires more time for homework, more eff ective for theory component than practical, doesn’t help to continue education during COVID-19 pandemic and not satisfi ed with online classes over classroom learning. Despite of the above fi ndings almost all the respondents (99.2%) had high overall perception towards online education. The fi ndings revealed that, computer effi cacy and benefi ts had signifi cant positive relationship, while bottlenecks had signifi cant negative relationship with the Veterinary students’ perception towards online education at one percent level of signifi cance. Remaining three variables like gender, socio-economic status and technical accessibility had no signifi cant relationship at both one per cent and fi ve per cent level of signifi cance.