Impact of COVID-19 on Agriculture education in Nepal.

Covid-19 has changed the day to activity and learning behaviour from classroom learning to distance learning. All of us, most probably, were not familiar to the online learning but now a days we are being used to and more familiar with it.

Was it feasible for all of us?

We have done a online survey with 180 respondents and recorded their information. The same piece of paper has been published in Pedagogical research. We do not find that online learning was benificial for all of our respondents as many of them represent for hills and himalayas and still many of them do not have a proper access to internet and network service providers.

How was their response on impact of covid-19 in education?

most of them had reported having a negative impact on education (82%) and no idea (6.7%) and 11.3% didn’t found a negative impact on education respectively . However, much of the respondents claimed that the practical education of students is disturbed (82%), 5.3% have no idea about this and 12.7% of the respondents think that there’s no effect on practical due to lockdown.

Involvement during lockdown

During these days of lockdown due to COVID-19, all of them are spending their time with their families and sharing ideas and knowledge. At this time student are involved in preparing for exams and the upcoming semester (27.3%), maintaining home garden (17.3%), establishing rooftop gardens (2.7%), doing some research studies (15.3%). However, 21.3% are involved in all of these activities and 16% are involved in none of them. The response of students on involvement in online courses, training, and webinars was only 44.7% and the rest 55.3% do not have access to high-quality internet to participate (details are shown in chi sq.= 21.085, p-value=0.049).

Conclusion of our study

There is negative impact on education, mainly for the agricultural students which focuses on practical field work and can’t possible in online classes. The corona virus pandemic and the lockdown has brought enormous uncertainty for students studying for exam, hoping to start new semester or college or university and entering the world of work. Therefore, the Government should initiate policy in education through long term prospective so that no any pandemic could interfere the educational institutions in digital world.

This content is taken from one of our published research item which has recently been published in pedagogical research.

Full text link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343472628_Impact_of_COVID-19_Lockdown_on_Agriculture_Education_in_Nepal_An_Online_survey