From patchy network to lack of space, Delhi University students recount trouble of online learning

NEW DELHI: Patchy network, sharing one laptop with siblings and lack of space at home were some of the issues faced by Delhi University students during the online mode of learning in the last two years.

Ritesh Kumar, a native of Bihar, said, "We are three siblings. Each of us had online classes and the timings would coincide. Since there was a single laptop at home, we were unable to attend all our classes." He said there was also a problem of a power cut and patchy network which hindered their classes. Soumya (22), a first year Masters student at Delhi University, said many of her batchmates, faced connectivity issues.

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"I am very privileged that I have two devices — a phone and a laptop — at my disposal but many of my classmates do not have laptops. "For our course, we need to work on a software -- PRAAT -- that only is accessible on laptop. So many students who did not have laptops faced problems because of this. Moreover, there were also connectivity issues. We had to give internals online. It was very cumbersome and students suffered because of that," she said.

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Shubhan, a final year student of the university said there wasn't much interaction during online classes. "Half of the class was sleeping with their cameras off. At least with offline classes we will be forced to pay attention," he said.

Harshita, a second year humanities student hailing from Arunachal Pradesh said, they used to face network issues. "I came here to attend classes but my SIM wouldn't work there, " she said. Student outfits had been protesting against the delay in resumption of offline teaching. It was on February 9 that the university issued a notification stating that offline academic activities would resume from February 17.