ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND ITS CHALLENGES: DECODING TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES

The present pandemic has opened an avenue for all stakeholders of education, especially for teachers, to think about the alternatives that can be explored to keep educational processes going. The sudden outburst of this situation compelled teachers and students to create, adopt and adapt to online learning environment despite the fact that preparations and infrastructural support for the same were limited. The curriculum and examinations related commitment motivated teachers to complete the teaching learning process in due time. However, the challenges for the teachers to do so were quite immense. This paper focuses on the teachers' perspectives of online learning environment and its challenges that they came across during online teaching learning process. Based on a research survey, conducted on 110 teachers of 26 higher educational institutions of India, this paper contends that majority of teachers were enthusiastic to learn new technologies and felt that this shift made them more empowered. However, major challenge they found was lack of band width & connectivity, students' active participation and smooth interaction. This paper also highlights the perception of teachers about feasibility of online assessment and its current alignment with the curricular reforms that is the need of the hour. The paper contends that the blended approach of teaching learning may precipitate enhanced learning environment for all the stakeholders of education for the betterment of all that may pave way for futuristic educational planning even when the situation gets back to normalcy.