COVID-19, ONLINE STUDIES AND STUDENTS' LEARNING AT QUAID-I-AZAM UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD

Abstract

The current study analyzed the COVID-19, Online Studies and Students' Learning at Quaid-I-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan. The CIVID-19 is a virus outbreak from the Wuhan city of China in December and within two months it sent billions of people into lockdown in more than 200 countries. Pakistan is one of the countries which also affected from the virus. Due to the spread of the virus, the Govt of Pakistan has closed all the educational institutions, schools, colleges, and universities in March 2020. On the directives of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, all the universities across Pakistan have started online studies to facilitate the students learning process without break or stop the semester. Whereas, Quaid-i-Azam university has also closed its all fac to face academic activities and shifted to online studies. For the current research, the qualitative research approach was chosen and designed the thematic analysis. The universe of the study was limited to the three departments, Sociology, Gender Studies and Anthropology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad both males and females. The semistructured interview guide was designed to collect the data. The in-depth interviews have been conducted with respol1dent 'sface to face and through call. The purposive sampling technique was adopted. The interview was extended between 10-15 minutes. The themes were generated and divided the responses into sub-themes. The sample size was fifteen (15) were ten (10) students and jive (5) teachers both males and females from the respective departments. The jindings of the study showed that the lockdown, COVID-19 has suffered the students' academic life. The online learning or teaching was .first-time experiences, where both teachers and students were faced numerous issues and challenges. Online classes required fast internet accessibility, affordable internet connection and familiar with technological gadgets. At the beginning of classes, students have started a protest against the HEC and university's administration, however, the efforts of teachers and university students have started t take part in online learning. There is not any alternative 'way of learning in the current pandemic 'where the face to face learning is not possible. Due to online studies students from Gilgit-Baltistan, KPK, Baluchistan and rural regions have faced numerous issue like lack of fast internet services, lack of affordable internet connection, lack of operating the technological gadgets and students movements to other cities for attending online classes. Similarly, teachers have also faced challenges where they were not properly assessing the students' peljormance and learning process. Despite all these challenges and issue, students have f1-ied to maximize their presence their participation in classroom and continue their online studies.