ONLINE CLASSES IN SIKKIM DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

The recent spread of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has a significant impact in almost all sectors of economy. It's effect on education sector is even more pronounced. Keeping this in mind, the paper is an attempt to discuss the challenges and prospects of e-learning amongst the students of Sikkim. The e-learning is not a new phenomenon in promoting education in some parts of world. In India, the story of online education tends to vary as compared to rest of the world. There are a lot of challenges and opportunities for online education in India. The objective of this paper is to investigate and identify the challenges and prospects of e-learning amongst the students of Sikkim. The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) has brought significant change in almost every sphere of daily life. During the COVID-19 pandemic face-to-face communication in the classroom has been replaced by virtual classrooms on laptop, mobile etc. This paper identified the influence of e-learning on students' ICT competence. The study is an attempt to fill the gap in research of examining the effectiveness of online education amongst the students in Sikkim. The study found that e-learning has a complementary effect on overall learning. Further, it is acclimatised that e-learning will promote distance learning if adequately utilised.