Google Trend Analysis and Paradigm Shift of Online Education Platforms during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Objective: The largest pandemic in history, the COVID-19 pandemic, has been declared a doomsday globally. The second wave spreading worldwide has devastating consequences in every sector of life. Several measures to contain and curb its infection have forged significant challenges for the education community. With an estimated 1.6 billion learners, the closure of schools and other educational institutions has impacted more than 90% of students worldwide from the elementary to tertiary level. Methods: In a view to studying impacts on student’s fraternity, this article aims at addressing alternative ways of educating—more specifically, online education—through the analysis of Google trends for the past year. The study analyzed the platforms of online teaching and learning systems that have been enabling remote learning, thereby limiting the impact on the education system. Thorough text analysis is performed on an existing dataset from Kaggle to retrieve insight on the clustering of words that are more often looked at during this pandemic to find the general patterns of their occurrence. Findings: The results show that the coronavirus patients are the most trending patterns in word search clustering, with the education system being at the control and preventive measures to bring equilibrium in the system of education. There has been significant growth in online platforms in the last year. Existing assets of educational establishments have effectively converted conventional education into new-age online education with the help of virtual classes and other key online tools in this continually fluctuating scholastic setting. The effective usage of teaching tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and WebEx are the most used online platforms for the conduction of classes, and whiteboard software tools and learning apps such as Vedantu, Udemy, Byju’s, and Whitehat Junior have been big market players in the education system over the pandemic year, especially in India. Conclusions: The article helps to draw a holistic approach of ongoing online teaching-learning methods during the lockdown and also highlights changes that took place in the conventional education system amid the COVID pandemic to overcome the persisting disruption in academic activities and to ensure correct perception towards the online procedure as a normal course of action in the new educational system. To fill in the void of classroom learning and to minimize the virus spread over the last year, digital learning in various schools and colleges has been emphasized, leading to a significant increase in the usage of whiteboard software platforms.

Remote Academic Platforms in Times of a Pandemic

“…There has been a significant paradigm shift in the education system following the outbreak of COVID-19 [19]. Industry 4.0 also gains momentum due to the global pandemic, pushing companies to do something that they were already testing a long time ago but were unable to realize because many managers had not accepted the idea that it is possible to lead a team remotely, aided by tools and efficient communication [20].…”

Evaluation of Online Learning During COVID-19

“…Even in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government is in charge of carrying out the teaching and learning process (43). To stop the spread of the Covid virus during the Covid-19 pandemic, schooling practices were changed from offline to online (44). Internet as a requirement for implementing online courses and quotas as a way to make advantage of the internet.…”

Students and examiners perception on virtual medical graduation exam during the COVID-19 quarantine period: A cross-sectional study

“…Overall, these tools enabled sharing clinical photographs, laboratory results and imaging using the screen-sharing feature, and facilitated the assessment of clinical reasoning and data interpretation domains via examiner questioning synchronously. Problem-based questions enabled the assessment of the clinical reasoning and higher-order thinking skills [13,14]. Hawler Medical University used Zoom as a tool for the final year assessment as the staff and students had experience with it during the early COVID-19 period.…”