352 DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, Vol. 41, No. 5, Sept 2021, pp. 352-357, DOI: 10.14429/djlit.41.5.16205  2021, DESIDOC Received : 11 August 2020, Revised : 24 April 2021 Accepted : 02 August 2021, Online published : 26 August 2021 Online Learning and Teaching using Google Classroom during the COVID-19 Pandemic Preeti Sharda # and Maneesh Kumar Bajpai $,* # Post Graduate Government College for Girls, Chandigarh, India $ Dr. RML National Law University, Lucknow - 226 012, India * E-mail: maneeshbajpai@rmlnlu.ac.in ABSTRACT The ‘Google Classroom’ is one of the technologies used for the teaching and learning process. This paper explores the possibilities of how Google Classroom may be brought into use by educators for the efective teaching- learning process. The study’s main objectives are to understand ‘Google Classroom’ technology and fnd out the use of Google Classroom by the educators of India particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The study is quantitative research in nature. The data collected through Google form contains 18 questions. A sample of 1050 educators was collected to know the usage of Google classroom in the teaching-learning process. The result indicated that most of the respondents are using Google Classroom for teaching purposes which is good in terms of Ease of access, perceived usefulness, tracking the progress of students, communication and interaction between the teachers and the students. Results also show the efective use of google classroom by the librarians to provide e-library services to their users when physical access to libraries is not available. The study recommends that the Google Classroom may be used to enhance quality in imparting teaching and learning activities at all levels of education, especially during the Pandemic. Keywords: Education-COVID-19; Online learning; Teaching-learning; Google classroom; G-suit in Education; Google classroom and libraries 1. INTRODUCTION This pandemic has adversely afected almost every sector of life including the education sector, which has also been disrupted drastically.The education sector is facing unprecedented challenges in the given times. The teaching- learning process and research activities have been badly disrupted all over the world. According to United Nations Educational, Scientifc and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), more than 32 crore students in India are in the dilemma 1. Lockdown in India leads to the temporary closure of about 988 universities and 40000 colleges 2 . The education sector was not ready for handling the situation in terms of the application of Information technology. The three main reasons were the digital divide, teachers and students are not trained enough to use technology, and lack of a well-developed distance-learning environments in our country. In the present situation, students and teachers are using many Learning Management System Software (LMS) tools to manage teaching-learning activity on the virtual platform. Google Classroom is onesuch LMS, which is free to use and very easy to handle. It is very efective in tracking the progress of students, and communication and interaction between the teachers and the students. It has doubled the number of active users to more than 100 million in this pandemic period since the beginning of March 2020 3 . Google Classroom is a free web-based service, which ofers paperless communication to anyone with a personal It has been specially developed for educational institutions to create, disseminate and grade the assignment in a more user-friendly environment. The primary purpose of Google Classroom is to exchange seamlessly e-content/e-fles among teachers and students in a structured manner. An educationist, a teacher, or a librarian may make ‘announcements’ to the students to disseminate learning material to the students virtually. Google Classroom is compatible with almost all available LMS. Therefore, it is more like a Course Management Software that is free, user-friendly, and provides an organised platform for exchanging information resources. 2. BEGINNING OF GOOGLE CLASSROOM Google announced Google Classroom on 6 May 2014 and ofcially launched it on 12 August 2014 4 . Google developed Google Classroom under the motto “to help teachers create and collect assignments” and based on the principle “educational tools should be simple and easy to use.” Initially, it was slow and had some bugs too. In the frst version of Google Classroom, provision of interaction with students individually and share button was missing. It was introduced only in 2015 5 . The Calendar tool was integrated with Google Classroom on 24