COVID-19 response: students’ readiness for shifting classes online

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/CG-09-2020-0377
• Published date: 11 January 2021
• Date: 11 January 2021
• Pages: 1250-1270
• Subject Matter: Strategy,Corporate governance
• Author: Arnab Kundu,Tripti Bej

COVID-19 response: students’readiness

for shifting classes online

Arnab Kundu and Tripti Bej

Abstract

Purpose –Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led education institutions to move all

face-to-face (F2F) coursesonline across the globe. The purpose of this study was to investigate Indian

students’ perceptionof readiness for this sudden shift and atthe same time, report a possible approach

of good institutionalgovernance to respond to suchan unprecedented crisis.

Design/methodology/approach –This study followed a mixedapproach combining both quantitative

(e.g. survey) and qualitative (e.g. interview) methods. A survey was distributed among 100 purposively

selected students out of which50 were college students and 50 were from secondary schools following

heterogeneous purposive sampling techniques. In total, 30 participants were interviewed as per a set

interview protocol. Data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially based on several demographic

differences.

Findings –Findings revealed that studentswere neither satisfied nor ready for this sudden shift toward

online educationrather they felt fear, uncertainties, and severalchallenges owing to a deep digital divide

to adapt to this unprecedented shift. They were found absorbed in memories of F2F mode before the

COVID outbreak and take thisonline shift as a temporary adjustment owing to respond to the pandemic

findingno possible alternate.

Originality/value –This study contributesand extends corporate governance literatureby offering new

evidence of perception differences between the company and customers as well. Education providers

often assume that students desire online courses for their convenience and believe it equivalent to or

better than F2F courses. This study challenges these managerial perceptions by examining students’

studiesempirically and the findings will help regulatorsand policymakers to change accordingly.

Keywords India, Online education, Good governance, COVID-19,F2F mode of instruction

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

It is a fact, harsh but true, that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought online

learning into the light of immense popularity and the situation is unique in that students can

make a direct comparison of their courses before (face-to-face (F2F)) and after COVID-19

(online). Starting from China, the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, caused by severe acute

respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, has already taken up the whole world into its capture

compelling the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it as a pandemic disaster on

March 11 2020 (WHO, 2020) and almost the whole world has put underthe house arrest. As

of April 18 2020, approximately 1.725 billion learners have been affected due to school

closures in response to the pandemic according to United Nations Educational, Scientific

and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) monitoring 192 countries have implemented

nationwide closures and 5 have implemented local closures, impacting about 99.9% of the

world’s student population (UNESCO, 2020a). With COVID-19, the world has been facing a

new existential enemy and the nations contentiously must again summon its educational,

moral and scientific might to fight it backbecause it has brought a time of social distancing,

not mental. The pandemic put a massive blow over institutional education compelling

Arnab Kundu is based at

the Department of

Education, Bankura

University, Bankura, India.

Tripti Bej is based at Srima

Balika Vidyalaya,

Midnapore, India.

Received 4 September 2020

Revised 1 November 2020

14 November 2020

17 November 2020

22 November 2020

Accepted 24 November 2020

Conflict of Interest: The authors

hereby declare that there have

no conflicts of interest.

PAGE 1250 jCORPORATE GOVERNANCE jVOL. 21 NO. 6 2021, pp. 1250-1270, ©EmeraldPublishing Limited, ISSN 1472-0701 DOI 10.1108/CG-09-2020-0377

schools, colleges and universities to move F2F courses online in a hurried way to help

prevent the spread of this virus. School closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

have shed a light on numerous issues affecting access to education and broader socio-

economic issues (UNESCO, 2020c). It has raised many questions on the conventional

practices and attitudes in every sphere from politics to education, and in education, the

most discussed topic of the time is whetherwe should follow the conventional F2F schooling

or we should put a shift toward online mode leaving behind all hesitations outright. There

have been shreds of evidence that the introduction of e-learning initiatives have failed

because institutions and their constituents were not prepared for the experience (Aydın and

Tasci, 2005). Besides, people are attached to already existing pedagogies and practices

making it difficult for them to adjust to innovationsand upgrade existing ones (Watkins et al.,

2004). Carr (2000) was of the view that student perception about on-line learning has been

negative due to past experiences resulting in high dropouts and low motivation of learners

(Maltby and Whittle, 2000). Other factors were found to be low student satisfaction

associated with online learning experience (Kundu and Dey, 2018). Nonetheless, research

suggests that students and instructors are satisfied with online learning just like traditional

learning (Ali and Ahmad, 2011). Factors found to contribute to student satisfaction were

embodied in the tutorials, student contribution, the type of instructor, mode of assessment,

the content, learning environment and the resources used (Zaheer et al., 2015). Here

comes the question of students’ readiness for this shift to online mode, as it is been

discussed as the “holy grail” for any educational experiment (Akaslan and Law, 2011;

Tubaishat and Lansari, 2011;Hunget al.,2010;Park, 2009;Jahng et al.,2007) that focuses

on specific learner competencies ranging from technical, self-directed learning and

communication. Thus, the issue at hand is not associated with limitation in educational

institutions but a situation demanding for an emergency remote teaching-learning because

social gatherings including educational institutions are seen as a threat to promote COVID-

19 pandemic and have been locked down. Therefore, this study focused primarily on the

readiness and challenges that students are expected to face in online learning in this

COVID-19 era.

Rationale for research

Online learning is no longer an innovationbut has become the global norm to the majority of

the institutions during this pandemic new normal. Here students’ readiness for online

learning is very vital that necessitates the needs of evaluating their perceptions on the

importance and confidenceon this shift because perception is the personal interpretation of

information from our perspective that affect our emotions and behaviors, and our emotional

and behavioral reactions also help shape our environments and skew our beliefs of those

environments (Gollisch and Meister, 2010). This empirical study was an attempt in this

direction to find out Indian students’ readiness for this shift; how far they were prepared to

accept this transition. The basicresearch themes this study adopted were –

䊏Fear perception associated with this shift.

䊏Challenge of this shift to online.

䊏Perception toward the F2F mode of instruction.

䊏Perception toward the online mode of instruction.

䊏Competencies that students consider important for online readiness.

Theoretical framework

The concept of student readiness for online learning was first introduced by Warner et al.

(1998). In their study, student readiness for online learning was broken down into three key

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