Coronavirus Disease 2019 and Its Effect on Teaching and Learning Process in the Higher Educational Institutions

In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, most of the higher education institutions (HEIs) across the globe have replaced conventional teaching with online teaching. However, the technological preparedness of countries of varied nature differs significantly. In this context, the purpose of the study is to answer the following research question: how are the HEIs mitigating the difficulties that have resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic to facilitate online teaching–learning process? The study is carried out based on a cross-sectional study from 281 academic professionals who are employed in HEIs in India and Ethiopia. The findings from this comparative study highlight that digital divide and lack of institutional preparedness are found to be major problems that constrained the effective implementation of online teaching/learning. Besides, this study also found that training programmes for the faculty members to utilize web resources and facilitate online teaching were found to be limited in both the countries. The article concludes by offering suggestions and policy advice to minimize the digital divide and for successful implementation of online teaching in HEIs. © 2021 The Kerala State Higher Education Council.