Abstract:

COVID-19 pandemic changed and impacted all spheres of our lives including education. Academic institutions were closed to mitigate and contain the spread of the infection. Educators and students both were behind closed doors and it was a difficult time, but it also led to new thinking, innovations, and ways to continue learning and education.Online teaching as well as distance education has existed for years before COVID 19 pandemic started but the lockdown compelled the academic institutions to learn and impart education using new media, tool, and learning environments. Online and distance education witnessed a boost in almost every part of the world as Educators learnt and trained themselves to conduct online classes. In some cases, this shift for educators was overnight. Technology certainly made it easier for the online education to continue but inequality with respect to equal access to digital infrastructure and stable internet connection for an inclusive online teaching and learning was an area of concern. The educator’s competence in delivering quality content as well as having technical expertise in online mode was also a challenge. The current work presents a summarised account of the diverse and vast literature available on the impact of technology on online education. Literature review is conducted to understand the issues and challenges with respect to online education. The systematic literature review method used in the present study provides useful insights with respect to skills, competencies and the challenges experienced in using technology for online education. The Inclusion criteria included peer review articles indexed in Scopus database starting from the year 2020 till year 2022.The rationale of selecting starting year as 2020 was it being the year the lockdown /shutdown were first announced to mitigate the COVID 19 infection. Search terms “COVID 19”, “Online education”, “Technology” was used. The present study highlights the technological requirements of developing resources to facilitate an effective learning environment for online education. Additionally, the study also deliberates on educating and training the educators for imparting effective online education as well as building a community for peer learning.

Keywords:

Online education, Online learning, COVID 19, Technology, Student Performance, Lockdown, Educators.