Maruf Hassan

Due to covid-19, Bangladeshi educational institutions getting closure from March 2020. Closing educational institutions have different impacts on a maximum of the students involved directly and indirectly with academic work. Many nations around the world have begun online classes and exams. Bangladesh is on the list also. In the Bangladesh scenario, online educational activities are not easy enough because we know about online class materials and apps that we don't know before. On the other hand majority of our teachers is lack experience with these online tools.

According to, Ookla Speed test Global Index for September 2020, Bangladesh has ranked 133rd for mobile internet and 98th for fixed broadband internet speed. This is the main scenery of our internet connection. It's also the main impediment to our online class and exam. On the other hand, our students have a huge lack of online resources. A World Bank survey found out that available these alternative learning methods and their uptake has been low. In this survey, aged (5-15) less than 50% of students have access to online class resources. Few of them have access to mobile phones, but most of them don't have an internet connection. For this proportion, one line class is the most formidable work to do.

Let's talk about online examination almost passing 1-year; many universities show interest to take the examination online before taken action like that most of the universities didn't find out that who is capable for online examination was not? In this situation, universities authority taking examination most of the students who live in the rural area are suffering a lot. As a result, they can't perform their best in the online exam as well. In Bangladesh, in our rural area, we have a poor network connection. Somewhere totally don't have a good internet connection. For this group of students online examination, it's the name of "Do or Die."

One more dark side of online examination is discrimination. Whenever students sit for an exam, teachers can't guard appropriately according to what they do in the exam room. So many of them, if doing an unethical task, teachers will not find out who did this. That's why the result makes discrimination among the students totally. Thus, many students lose their interest in studying, giving examinations in an unethical way and losing the inspiration of study, will create a far-racing problem for the students terribly. As a result, come out the term honest and dishonest among students and make massive discriminate on the examination result. Actually, if our exam is held in our classroom, our students will not be able to do this. The online exam makes our student's life darker according to this view.

According to SANEM ( a non-profit research organization), 23.90 students' families belong through poverty before the pandemic. After an extended lockdown, this proportion increased up to 43.90%. Just think about this proportion actually all of them have not capable of buying a data pack for online class and exam as far as Wi-Fi connection. In this pandemic, all of our students stay at home, but one shocking thing we usually see is that many of our classmates are wandering around to earn a living and trying hard to support their families financially. This type of student never attends online exams and classes because making a living to survive is the main concern to them nowadays. In study gap, put a long-term impact on their student's life. Gradually, they are at the risk of dropping out of school and students' life as well. A BANBEIS survey shows the proportion of dropout students for secondary 37.60% and post-secondary 19.60%. From these views, always a question comes in our thoughts, "Does online exam benefited or digital divide among students?"!

Our education ministry and university authority failed to take sufficient steps for our students. At the first stage of the pandemic, they don't take care of neddy students. For this reason, the time of online exams and class students act as an unusual environment. All of these reasons create a complexity among students, comes the term "Digital Discrimination." This discrimination is a challenge, and students might be turned into great violence and future burden. Government and other educational authorities should be taken combined steps to solve this discrimination. After reopening the institution, take care of students' mental health, and so on. For the race of developing countries, Bangladesh needs to solve the discrimination among the students, which creates for online classes and examinations.

Maruf Hassan

University of Dhaka