Download Report: COVID-19: Strategies for Online Engagement of Remote Learners

Any crisis in a nation will always leave its impact on education in some way or another. Students’ right to education is threatened at times of crisis as a consequence of natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, war, disease outbreak, etc. The COVID-19 outbreak across the globe has forced educational institutions including medical schools to suspend campus learning in order to curb the spread of the virus. This has forced the teaching community to think of new avenues and alternate strategies for engaging our students. Many institutes of higher education have shifted to online- mode to ensure continuity of teaching-learning and assessment processes. It is time for us to think of ‘flexible learning’, a learner-centered approach that offers rich learning choices to the students. In online mode of flexible learning, students are provided with a variety of choices for their learning and allows them to take more responsibility for their own learning. Since, many of the medical school teachers are new to online mode of teaching their apprehension towards active online engagement of their students is inevitable. Here are some strategies for increasing and ensuring higher levels of student engagement in online teaching