Hitches of Online Education: A Descriptive Study in the Ballari District of Karnataka

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted students' learning process, it has led to the suspension of all educational institutions and examinations, and has forced many students to drop out of the education system. Educational institutions have resorted to online education to ensure that children do not abandon their studies. When this epidemic forced the learning process to be moved online, the education sector faced an unprecedented challenge. While many students spend most of their time in front of mobile or computer screens, many others lag in their studies due to the unavailability of the internet, smartphones, or other associated challenges. The present study explores the online education hitches faced by post-graduate students. The study was conducted in the Ballari district of Karnataka by adopting a descriptive research design. The simple stratified random sampling technique has been adopted in the present study. A total of 200 people responded to the survey in total. It is found in the survey that difficulties in learning new technology, choosing the ideal time and location for learning at home, presenting seminar work or exercises online, and the home environment were the vital challenges faced by most of the students. The chi-square test was adopted to see the association between online learning difficulties, locality, and gender. Most of the problems do not have any association with  locality, whereas many challenges were found to be associated with gender.