Responding to the Pandemic in Tertiary Education: A Unique Case of Crisis Management

Abstract

The closure of educational institutes worldwide as a result of COVID-19 has led to an education crisis. The situation exacerbated the  learning loss in the developing countries as their educational institutes could not shift to e-learning quickly like their counterparts in  the developed nations due to different limitations. As the pandemic has created a unique situation, these institutes didn’t get the  opportunity to prepare or plan to manage the disaster. Jahangirnagar University (JU), one of the oldest public and the only fully  residential university in Bangladesh, faced different challenges during this pandemic. This paper aims to narrate the challenges the  university’s students, teachers, and authority faced and its initiatives to manage this crisis. The most significant challenge was  transitioning to online classrooms, which was a new experience for both teachers and students, resulting in various constraints. This  case can be helpful for the other public universities of developing countries to manage the COVID-19 education crisis or other  disasters in the future.