Challenges Faced By Students To Conduct Online Academic Activities During Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

   The outbreak of COVID-19 has desperately disrupted human life activities. As the first line of defense; transportation, manufacturing industry, tourism, education, shopping malls have been completely shut down. Education sector soon decided to prepare for online classes. Educational institutes, teaching staff and students were not well prepared and well equipped for e-learning in most of the world. The rising advances in information technology have led to the development of new learning and teaching methods in the education sector. A lot of developing countries have adopted e-learning as an instrument to improve accessibility and moderateness of advanced education. During the COVID-19 lockdown period, numerous colleges across the world had to accept internet educating and learning in spite of many challenges. Pakistan also is doing practice of e-learning classes in spite of many issues. Google zoom, Microsoft Team, LMS, YouTube, Whats App, online white board, bit paper; Self CAD, Google classroom etc. are being used as tools in e-learning. The major goal of this study was to identify the challenges faced by students to conduct online academic activities during COVID-19 pandemic. The nature of this study was quantitative and survey method was used for this study. Population was all postgraduate students at university level. The University of Agriculture, Faisalabad was selected through purposive sampling. All the students of M. Phil education from 2^nd and 4^th semester were selected as target population through purposive sampling. A sample of 153 students was drawn through www.surveysystem .com out of 254 total populations at confidence level 95% and confidence interval 5%. A well designed questionnaire was used as a research tool for this study. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for data analyzing. Almost half (49.7%) of respondents  belong to 22-24 years of age, (20.9 %) respondents belong to 25-27 years, (18.3 %)  belong to 25-27 years of age, (5.9 %) respondents age belong to 31-33 years and (5.2%) respondents age belong to Above 34 years. More than half (54.9 %) were male respondents while (45.1%) respondents were female. It was founded that Almost  half (49.7%) respondents were very highly agreed with the statement of zoom a digital resource used in class for online learning rank at 1^st position with highest (mean value 4.42). It was found that more than one third (33.3%) respondents were very highly agreed with the statement of learning management system (LMS) a digital resource used in class for online learning rank at  2^nd position  with mean value (4.09). It was concluded that Higher Education Commission (HEC) should directed to all universities and all colleges to make very much fabricated learning the executives frameworks (LMS) to start online classes so that loss of learning should be remove.