Addressing the Challenges to the Digital Collaboration Regarding the Shift from Physical Classroom to Zoom Classroom During COVID-19 Pandemic.

Authors/ Publisher: Md Belal Uddin

Abstract:

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to explore how students and teachers do experience online collaboration and its challenges while working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this study investigates how the students and teachers do experience teaching-learning conditions while performing online collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic period and How they do face and tackle challenges to the online collaboration of home working over the traditional collaboration of physical classroom.This study uses online collaborative learning (OCL) as a theoretical lens as addressed by Linda Harasim in (2017).This study uses a qualitative research method to collect empirical data. This study conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 students (05 students of the public university and 05 students of private university) and 10 teachers (05 teachers of public university and 05 teachers of private university) in Bangladesh.Both teachers and students have mixed experience about online collaboration where both parties should be improved regarding online teaching equipment and proper interaction should be increased in the classes to make it effective, for example, increased the number of student’s presence. This study argues for some challenges to online collaboration during online classes over physical classroom such as low internet speed and high cost of data connection, lack of seriousness/interaction of the students, technical skills and quality enhancement, unavailability of teachers after classes to solve student’s problems, difficult to keep concentration for a longer time, lack of proper judgment during online evaluation. This study also argues for idea generation, idea organizing, and intellectual convergence among teachers and students regarding online classes.