Virtual Computer Science Education in India: Challenges and Opportunities

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, institutes for higher education worldwide, including in India, were forced to migrate to fully online classes. A country like India, with limited internet connectivity and infrastructure as well as its socio-economic, presents unique challenges. In this article, we discuss how education in India, particularly in the field of Computer Science (CS), is affected, and where the challenges lie for students, faculty, researchers, and administrators. We share our experiences related to the migration of CS classes online in a reputed engineering institute in India with more than 15,000 students over three campuses. We also discuss ways to overcome the challenges posed by the digital divide. The main objective of this article is to generate interesting discussions that could potentially lead to advancements in information and communication technologies geared particularly towards CS education in developing countries.