Article Preview
TopIntroduction
A crucial part of dealing with COVID-19 is to ensure that people have convenient access to services with minimum disruptions. In order to limit loss of life and spread of the coronavirus, the government of India announced a stringent lockdown on March 21, 2020. One of the many impacts of the lockdown was that it speeded up the adoption of emerging technologies in all possible fields. Industries were forced to boost both quality and delivery time of their services and this held good for the education sector as well. Technology-enabled teaching makes learning more productive and competitive, enhancing both technical skills and knowledge (Battaglino et al., 2012; Meyer & McNeal, 2011). However, acceptance of new technology requires a change in mindset of students, educationalists, policymakers, and government agencies. Many studies suggest that given proper infrastructure and skilled educators, technology-enabled teaching will boost the academic performance of students (Battaglino et al., 2012; Biagi & Loi, 2013; Genlott & Grönlund, 2016; Jena, 2015; Meyer & McNeal, 2011; Pagani et al., 2016) but many Indian educational institutions are not ready for technology-enabled classrooms or online classes. Overall, the quality of education will be measured not only by the quality of the faculty but also by the quality of the infrastructure for Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) and the capacity to use the technology (Biagi & Loi, 2013; De Witte & Rogge, 2014; Pagani et al., 2016; Tolani-Brown et al., 2010).
A sudden change in the teaching and learning process can affect the satisfaction of the students and their performance. The University Grants Commission (UGC), an Indian higher education regulator, has asked institutions of higher education to continue their teaching-learning process using technology-enabled teaching tools. UGC has provided guidelines to the universities that stipulate that educators should be trained in such a way that they complete about 25% of the syllabus through online teaching. It has also requested the higher educational institutions to establish virtual classrooms and video conferencing infrastructure and train all teaching staff in using the technology. UGC further suggests that institutions of higher education adopt mentor-mentee counselling through a dedicated platform to provide students with appropriate guidance (UGC, 2020). However, the guidelines provided by UGC focus on the perspectives of institutions for higher education and educators and fail to address the students' acceptance of technology-enabled teaching and/or the issues they face related to technology-enabled teaching. Many Indian institutions have accelerated the adoption of technologies to deliver classes, but digital literacy is almost non-existent among over 90% of India's population (ICT Academy, 2020). Issues such as slow Internet connectivity, lack of telecom infrastructure, online system affordability, availability of personal systems and software will make digital teaching more complex. These reasons could create stress for students of generation Z, even if they are highly exposed to technology (Jena, 2015; Jena & Mahanti, 2014; Shu et al., 2011; X. Wang et al., 2020).