Online Education during COVID-19: Prospects and Challenges in Bangladesh

Abstract

COVID-19 has forced the authorities to introduce online education at all levels in Bangladesh. Students from primary to tertiary levels had initial hiccups to adapt to the newly introduced online education system because of genuine reasons like lack of appropriate device, absence or limited access to internet networks, disinterest in online education, disruption in electricity, etc. Perhaps, most of the stakeholders involved in education had a kind of hope of witnessing the crisis caused through COVID-19 over within a short period of time. Thus, none of the stakeholders was very serious in online education, expecting offline in-person education to be back pretty soon. It seems to have been realised by most of the stakeholders after almost one and a half years of the corona crisis that the pandemic may not disappear quickly. As a result, online education has recently been reinforced in Bangladesh, considering it the only alternative to the previous system. This review study explores the prospects and challenges of online education in the context of Bangladesh and finds out that prospects of it could be pretty high as an alternative education system. However, its challenges may be described as daunting given the socioeconomic and cultural constraints that prevail in the country.

Exploring dimensions of blended learning readiness: Validation of scale and assessing blended learning readiness in the context of TVET Bangladesh

“…Thus, their involvement with technical resources is below par may be seen in this statement. According to a study, the problem of unreliable internet connection during class time, the absence of adequate equipment, apathy in online education, and power outages are some of the reasons that need to be taken care of in Bangladesh [ 68 ]. Few extant literatures [ 6 , 68 ] conform with this study's findings, which suggests Bangladeshi students lack the quality of being flexible.…”

“…According to a study, the problem of unreliable internet connection during class time, the absence of adequate equipment, apathy in online education, and power outages are some of the reasons that need to be taken care of in Bangladesh [ 68 ]. Few extant literatures [ 6 , 68 ] conform with this study's findings, which suggests Bangladeshi students lack the quality of being flexible. Thus, this BLRS could be considered a reliable instrument for measuring the blended learning readiness of Bangladeshi TVET students.…”

Covid19 Pandemic and Media Performance in Bangladesh

“…(2021) & Hossain & Alam (2022) conducted studies on the impact of covid19 on garment workers, and garment sectors. Abundant studies have been carried out in the education sector such as the impact of covid19 in tertiary education in Bangladesh by Dutta and Smita (2020), prospects and challenges of online education during the covid19 by Das (2021), the covid19 impact on the education sector in Bangladesh by Barua (n.d.). There are some studies on governance that for example…”

Education during Pandemic: Perspectives of Secondary School English Teachers from Malaysia, Nepal, and Bangladesh

“…Similar kind of barriers that were faced by teachers and students during the COVID-19 pandemic are also reported in other studies (c.f. Ahmed, 2021;Bashir et al, 2021;Das, 2021;Datta, 2022;Farhana et al, 2020;Khan, Jahan, et al, 2021). In another study, Shrestha et al (2022) categorised the challenges in both Nepal and Bangladesh contexts into three groups: school-level barriers (fi rst-order barriers), teacher-level barriers (second-order barriers) and system-level barriers.…”