OUTCOME AT A TURNING POINT –
LEARNING NEVER STOPS
Chef Ram Gopal
Assistant Professor
(Food Production)
Chitkara College of Hospitality
Management.
Contact Number: 82957-41139
Email Address:
ram.gopal@chitkara.edu.in
Chef has total eleven years of
experience in the industry and
academics too. The primary study
areas of chef are Food, Nutrition,
Hospitality, Education, Tourism,
and Management. Chef have also
authored many research papers in
national and international journal
on the topics like Food
ingredients, Religious tourism,
the Impact of online classes on
students during the pandemic.
he year 2020 was a year of reckoning for technology as it took the centre
stage to support continuity of managing many businesses, while the effects of
COVID – 19 pandemic swept the country. However, not all business structures
could be supported with technology, the tourism and hospitality industry was one
of them. An industry that was the largest employer couple of years before the
pandemic struck was engulfed by clouds of uncertainty. Simultaneously, the
education sector felt the need to evolve overnight to adapt to the situation by
accepting new teaching tools and online platforms to conduct sessions. Online
teaching was still in the nascent stage of acceptance when the pandemic started
spreading its tentacles. Use of power point presentation to explain a topic was a
common practice but nobody was prepared to conduct classroom sessions using
an online platform. The challenges ranged from poor connectivity in some
locations to lack of understanding to operate the online platforms to optimize the
delivery and create a balanced learning experience.
Faculty and students alike started to grapple with technology initially, but
overtime they learnt to use these platforms. Within the academic fraternity there
was a sense of urgency to get a grip of the situation and keep the show going.
They got themselves introduced to online platforms like Google Meet, Go to
Webinar, Microsoft Teams, ZOOM and Blackboard, to name a few. After the
initial euphoria of managing sessions online, the next big challenge in front of
the academia was about student engagement and their learning in comparison to
offline sessions.
This is the point when a team of faculties of Chitkara University, Punjab, from
cross-disciplinary background, came together to conduct a study on students
performance and receptiveness to online mode of delivery. At a time when
lockdown was stringent and online mode of delivery was the only option
available, the criticality of students’ performance was the key for future
improvement in the delivery process. The team consisted of three Assistant
Professors, two from the Department of Hospitality and one from the Business
School of the University. The uniqueness of this study was that it was based in an
environment when online delivery during pandemic had just started.
 The sample size was taken from the student community across the Business
School and the College Hospitality Management, and the data was collected from
600 students who were studying online from their respective homes based across
the country. The ratio of students pursuing under-graduate to post-graduate
programme was 94:6.
The survey included parameters ranging from delivery design and quality,
students expectation and feedback, and students satisfaction and their overall
performance. The outcome of this study underlined the necessity to develop a
course delivery that is minutely detailed and included a scope to modulate based
on continuous direct feedback from students. The delivery plan must be
complemented with enthusiasm that the faculty brings into the online session to
The outcome of this keep the students engaged, leading to a satisfying learning process. The study
study underlined the also highlighted the need to maintain a channel of continuous feedback from the
necessity to develop a students with the support of their mentors. This meant that faculties must have
course delivery that is
regular interaction with student mentors and vice versa, which also emphasizes a
minutely detailed and
need for strong student feedback system without any biases.
included a scope to
Initially, students found learning through online sessions interesting and a
modulate based on
continuous direct pleasant change from the regular on campus classroom interaction, camped in
feedback from students. their respective comfort zones at home. However, with passage of time a degree
of anxiousness did set in because the internet infrastructure is not uniform across
the country and they started to miss out on sessions due to internet outages. This
is where the intent and proactiveness of a faculty to reach across to the student/s
can be noticed and will make a valuable difference in the overall students
learning experience. This study was carried out in the early days of lockdown,
after which a lot of water has flown under the bridge. There is still not much
variance in the present scenario since then, the outcome of this study can be still
considered and applied for an improved learning experience of students and
increased academia satisfaction. The research paper received a respectful rating
in a Scopus indexed open source journal and is available online on
https://rdcu.be/cjasl.
There is yet to learn a lot from the current situation and a lot can be achieved
through collaboration.