Özet:

Recognizing the generic and piecemeal approach of the extant literature towards online learning with scant studies in teacher education, the present study was undertaken to improve online teaching-learning practices in teacher preparation programmes catered by the researchers. The single-cycle action research methodology was adopted by the researchers to capture the voices of prospective teacher educators enrolled at a central university in India. An online intervention was designed for the ‘ICT Integration: Methods and Assessment’ course which provided an opportunity to the participants to continue their classes during the pandemic via Google Classroom, Google Meet, WhatsApp, and email. Apart from providing all the relevant content in the form of readings, synchronous screen presentations, discussions, and workshops, the researchers often had to scaffold the incumbents to navigate varied resources available online. On completion of the course, data related to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of online learning were gathered on an open-ended questionnaire from an incidental sample of twenty-three prospective teacher educators. The data were analysed qualitatively by codifying the responses that yielded three emergent themes viz., humane, technical, and teaching-learning. Most number of strengths emerged under the ‘humane’ domain whereas the ‘technical’ domain contained several weaknesses. ‘Teaching-learning’ domain unveiled the opportunities and challenges of online learning. Findings indicate that, while most prospective teacher educators consider online learning as a panacea for future learning as it could facilitate access, equity, quality, delivery of uniform content, continued learning to a diverse learner base during the pandemic, a considerable strength of participants emphasize on cost and connectivity constraints. Participants also echoed how technologies are laden with hidden designs that carry the potential to hijack attention, harness choices, and subsequently polarises from the real-world. Findings suggest the need to increase awareness of incumbents towards cyberbullying, upscale digital infrastructure, bridge digital divides in terms of access and skill, evolve distinct pedagogy for online learning, enrich learning experience, redesign programmes, teaching and evaluation practices, promote judicious and responsible use of technology, reduce polarization, and remain value-driven. The study carries implications for policy-makers, educators, curriculum designers, and technology experts to reconsider the orientation towards what learning is possible, what learning matters, and how it should be assessed in the online format to prepare an empowered student and educator base. Owing to the research objective, methodology, context of the study, and sample size constraints, the findings are limited to teacher education programmes, and therefore, further research is recommended.

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