Online learning and teaching are becoming the new normal around the world after the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the lack of facilities, infrastructure and other factors pose challenges to many urban and rural students and teachers in the smooth and effective running of online classes. The present study aims to analyse the challenges in remote/online learning as a comparative study among urban and rural students and teachers. The study focuses on understanding the different challenges to mitigate them through suggesting real-time and cost-effective solutions thereby enhancing the online learning and teaching experience.
A questionnaire survey is administered in the study to collect the data. Factor analysis, regression analysis and Independent Sample t-test are conducted to reach the results. Results indicated different learning and teaching challenges among students and teachers. However, the rural students and teachers faced more challenges compared to urban areas due to the lack of access to resources, financial constraints etc. But challenges like lack of interaction were faced more or less the same by both rural and urban areas students. The importance of some common facilities that may appear to be a need for both rural and urban students and teachers to improve the effectiveness of online teaching and learning is explored through this study