THE CULTURAL LAG & DIGITAL DIVIDE OF ONLINE LEARNING: AN INDIAN PERI-URBAN REGION EXPERIENCE

Social science

There are few references to the theory of cultural lag and the concept of digital divide altogether in an Indian peri-urban context in the existing works of literature. The cultural lag is based on the gap between material and non-material culture; whether the digital divide is based on the difference between haves and have-nots; and skills disparity. Our research aims to investigate the connection between cultural lag and the digital divide as well as the challenges faced by students at a higher education institution in a peri-urban area of India when engaging in online learning. The study was conducted in the midst of a pandemic and is cross-sectional in nature. It used a simple random sampling technique to choose 312 post-graduate respondents from 1652 total students at a peri-urban higher education institution in West Bengal, India, using the "Raosoft" scale. Due to social distance norms, 235 samples of respondents from 312 pupils were taken into account by telephone interviews. SPSS 22 has been used to analyse the data. The study findings reveal that students were neither interested nor motivated in pursuing online classes. It affects mental health and teacher-student interaction was not at a satisfactory level. Technological knowledge plays a vital role; online assignment submission was not given satisfaction; technological and infrastructural problems were there; and so on. The study offers a way forward to evolve with more inclusive digital learning while mitigating the issues of cultural lag and digital divide among the students in peri-urban Indian regions.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.