Page 112 - The Indian Optician Digital Edition May-Junel 2022

of the future optometrists post pandemic. teaching were excluded from the study.
The study will enable the educators to make RESULTS
changes and design online teaching, keeping
in mind those points for the betterment of 1. The result showed a giant shift from
optometry education. classroom teaching to online mode from 15%
METHOD to 85% during the pandemic.

2. To check the association between the
This is a cross sectional, questionnaire-
based multicenter study conducted during opinions of both the students and the
lockdown (February 2021-February 2022) educators on the benefits and drawbacks
among the students and faculties of four of online education, we measured the
optometry colleges in Kolkata, West Bengal. correlation coefficient (r= 0.92) for the
The questionnaire was entirely anonymous benefits and (r=.99) for drawbacks, which
and no personal information was gathered in shows a highly positive association. Table-1
the questionnaire. It was designed to get an shows the responses of the participants
in depth understanding of the views of the regarding the benefits of online education
educators and the students regarding online and Table-2, shows the responses of the
education and it was a mixture of open ended, participants regarding the drawbacks of
closed ended questions and likert online education as below:
scale. The questionnaire was hosted in
google form and the link was circulated
to all the optometry institutes through
emails and whatsapp messages. A
total of 272 responses were selected for
data analysis. The data was extracted
in MS-Excel from the online platform
and correlation analysis was used as the
statistical tool. There were five sections
in the questionnaire that consisted of 14
questions and one question was added
to get suggestions from participants
on improving the online teaching and
learning experience. The five sections of
the questionnaire were:
1) Shift to online education from
classroom mode

2) Benefits and drawbacks of online
curriculum
3) Satisfactory level of online education
4) Effectiveness of online education
during Covid-19 pandemic
5) Suggestions to improve online
teaching in future
The participants included graduate
and post graduate optometry students,
educators with optometry and without 3. Regarding the satisfactory level of online
optometry background. The optometry students education, (Table 3) the association between
and educators who were not involved in online the satisfactory level of educators and

108 THE INDIAN OPTICIAN MAY-JUNE 2022 OPTOMETRY