Online Versus Offline Learning: A Comparative analysis of Modes of Education amidst pandemic

Following the second wave of the current pandemic COVID-19, education transmission is occurring via both the modes of education that is, online as well as offline in the college. The aim of the current study was, therefore, to bring forth the comparative analysis of both the modes of education and their impact on the levels of academic stress and states of the mental wellbeing of the students amidst the current pandemic. Measures of the constructs were obtained by the online Google forms, which consist of the Perceptions of Academic Stress Scale (PASS) by Dalia Bedewy and Adel Gabriel (2015) and Warwick- Edinburg Mental Well-being Scale (2008), from a sample of 100 undergraduate students aged 19-25 years studying in different colleges of Bengaluru, India. Modes of education were treated as the predictor variables whilst academic stress and mental wellbeing constituted the criterion variables. Two-way ANOVA was employed. Results show that the levels of academic stress are found to be a bit higher in students attending online classes as compared to those taking offline classes in college (MD=1.10, df= 98, t= 0.590, p> 0.05), whereas mental wellbeing is found to be low in students attending offline classes in colleges than those taking online classes (MD=5.180, df= 98, t=2.340, p> 0.05 level). The combined interactional effect of modes of education and academic stress on the states of the mental wellbeing of the students is found to be low (R²= 0.053), whilst the combined impact of modes of education and mental wellbeing on the levels of academic stress was found to be quite low (R²= 0.014). It was concluded that modes of education have an impact on levels of academic stress and states of the mental well-being of the students amidst the current pandemic, but it is low.