Indian Journal of Educational Technology
Volume 2 No. 2, July 2020

169

Communication

Teaching with Technology: Educator’s Experience
Jignsu Yagnik* and Yamini Chandra**

*Visiting Professor, Faculty of Management Studies, Charotar University of 
Science and Technology, Gujarat, Corresponding author, Email: yagniks@gmail.com

**Assistant Professor, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai

The inevitable lockdown owing to the 
COVID-19 pandemic has created a 
situation of all-around chaos across 
all sectors of the economy. A threat 
resulting in an unprecedented standstill 
is being experienced by educational 
institutions. The traditional education 
system necessitating physical teacher-
student interaction for teaching-
learning transactions is completely 
disrupted. A positive outlook on this 
current crisis is that, it has opened 
new avenues to digital technology 
platforms for teaching, training, and 
research. Looking at the current 
situation, online platforms are the 
only means to assure continuity of the 
teaching-learning-mentoring process to 
minimize the damage. Besides online 
teaching, these platforms extend an 
opportunity to educators working 
from home to continue teaching for 
routine classes and guiding students’ 
research, business-plan projects. The 
educators are also taking exposure to 
the advanced features of these tools 
and are upgrading themselves by 
attending workshops and webinars to 
enhance their skills and adapting to 
newer learning methods. 

This article discusses our reflection and 
experience of various digital learning 
platforms which we have used for 
teaching, evaluations, and mentoring 
our students. We also share our 
learning exposure while getting hands-

on-experience on these tools.

Transforming classroom learning 
through digital platforms 

We have conducted our classes/
presentations/exams using various 
platforms such as Zoom, Cisco 
WebEx, and Google products (viz. 
Classrooms-Meetups-Hangouts-Duo). 
These video-conferencing platforms 
provide the convenience of having a 
large gathering of listeners, features 
like screen share facility to share 
various websites, PowerPoint slides, 
documents, exercises on excel sheets, 
and using artificial intelligence for data 
analysis and evaluation of quizzes and 
assignments. With the chat options, 
students were able to raise their queries 
during sessions which made it easier for 
us to understand their pace of grasping 
and learning using these platforms. 
WhatsApp (with its eight-member video-
call facility and easy information sharing) 
was mainly used for announcements or 
personalized discussions with students 
collaboratively working in group 
projects. 

These platforms have made the 
learning experience more enriching 
and interesting, the mentoring activities 
required regular interactions with 
students here Zoom served the purpose 
with its free version turned out to be a 
boon enabling us to interact and share 



Indian Journal of Educational Technology
Volume 2 No. 2, July 2020

170

our feedback instantly. The constraints 
that could be felt in zoom were related 
to a time limit of 40 minutes for a free 
plan and that of the multi-call feature of 
WhatsApp was the maximum 8 number 
of concurrent participants at one go. 
Also, as a learner, while attending a 
workshop the breakout-room feature 
that enabled secluded discussions 
between groups formed out of 
participants, was a valuable addition to 
our skills. 

Students’ feedback

A quick feedback of students revealed 
that initially when this sudden switch 
took place, they felt the new system 
was a bit difficult to adapt, and at times 
there were internet connectivity issues 
that resulted in the loss of continuity at 
times. “Being aware of the limitations, 
we allowed the session to continue 
without disturbing you when we lost a 
few seconds of connectivity or loss of 
voice, however, it was not too significant” 
said one student. While another student 
said that “I was too naïve in using such 
a system and initially, I was too scared 
that I avoided interactions, but was 
comfortable as the sessions progressed 
with days.” In general, the students 
initially required a bit of time to adapt 
to the technology-enabled learning 
process, but with passing days they 
enjoyed this new approach.

Conclusions

Digital learning has taken a huge leap 
from what it was perceived earlier as a 
complementary approach to now the 
only source of our survival for teaching. 
These platforms have emerged as 
must-have tools in times of lockdown 

for a seamless education process.  
After some initial hiccups students and 
teachers have become adept in the use 
of these tools. These tools have given 
opportunities for business continuity in 
times of crisis for the education sector. 
Thanks to Online tools that served as 
saviours.