Universities worldwide have been conducting e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic to continue education irrespective of faculties are familiar with e-education or not. This study assessed perception and preference for e-teaching amongst 438 faculty members. Results revealed that around half of teachers were conducting e-classes without any training, and they also had conducted examinations using online platforms. Teachers perceived e-teaching as effective during the pandemic, time-efficient, easy to share materials, unsuitable for monitoring or conducting practical classes and less effective for evaluation. More than three-fourths of the teachers preferred online teaching during the pandemic, and most preferred both physical and mixed teaching in the post-pandemic era. Their preferences were influenced by their age, teaching experience, academic discipline, current residency, training on online teaching, hours of online classes taught per week, internet connection used, types of classes and whether they had given online examinations. The major challenges in online teaching during COVID-19 were difficulty in practical work, difficulty in monitoring students and insufficient feedback. This study suggests online teaching during the pandemic and mixed teaching after the pandemic. Training faculty members on online teaching, designing e-platforms suitable for examinations and ensuring stable internet connections are also recommended for effective and smooth e-education.

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Background The universities of Bangladesh are closed for more than seventeen months due to the covid-19 pandemic. This prolonged detachment has psychological consequences among the students. This study assessed the anxiety level and its determinants among the undergraduate students of Bangladesh, along with constraints faced by them during e-learning. Methods A web-based cross-sectional survey among 206 undergraduate students was conducted using a well-structured questionnaire. Their anxiety level was estimated using Zung's self-rating anxiety scale (SAS) and determinates were identified by employing a Tobit model. The problem confrontation index (PCI) was used to rank the constraints. Results About 82.5% of the undergraduate students in Bangladesh are experiencing mild to extreme anxiety, while 14.08% are experiencing extreme anxiety. Students' gender, father's year of schooling, family size, residential area, academic year, current accommodation, and access to high-speed internet affect their level of anxiety. Learning alone at home, lacking access to learning resources and inaccessibility to other e-learning platforms are the top three constraints students face during e-learning. Limitations Self-reported data, socio-demographic variables and online survey. Conclusion Covid-19 has been causing anxiety among the students. This study recommends providing better internet services for facilitating e-learning along with access to different e-learning platforms.

This study focused on the development of a protocol for cryopreservation of sperm of the endangered fish species, Pabda Catfish Ompok pabda. The activation of sperm motility was tested at various osmolalities of NaCl. The motility of sperm decreased with the increase of osmolality; it was completely inhibited at 319 mOsmol/kg. Toxicity of cryoprotectants to sperm was evaluated using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), methanol, and ethanol at 5, 10, and 15% concentrations at an incubation time of 0–35 min. Five percent and 10% cryoprotectants produced 45–75% and 40–75% motility for the 5‐ and 10‐min incubation times, respectively. Sperm incubated with 15% cryoprotectant had less motility from the beginning of incubation. The cryoprotectant was toxic to sperm. Three extenders, Alsever's solution, egg‐yolk citrate, and urea egg‐yolk, as well as three cryoprotectants, DMSO, methanol, and ethanol, were used for the preservation of sperm. Alsever's solution with DMSO showed best performance producing highest equilibration motility (83 ± 3.3%, mean ± SE) and postthaw motility (71 ± 4.4%) followed by levels of 68 ± 1.7% and 51 ± 1.7%, respectively, with Alsever's solution plus methanol. Sperm preserved with Alsever's solution plus DMSO produced 79.33% fertilization and 42.38% hatching while fresh sperm yielded 82% fertilization and 53.49% hatching. No statistical comparisons between cryopreserved and fresh sperm were made as we did not standardize the sperm concentration for fresh and cryopreserved sperm during breeding. Fry produced from both cryopreserved and fresh sperm were reared in aquaria for 6 weeks and no significant differences for length (P = 0.452) and weight (P = 0.431) were observed between the two groups. The protocols developed through this study can be applied for conservation of endangered Pabda Catfish, and the findings of breeding and growth studies suggest it would be useful to disseminate the cryopreservation technology to commercial hatcheries.

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