COVID-19 has jeopardized the academic calendars of majority of the educational institutes across the world. In this study, we focus on understanding the perception and preferences of participants of distance learning Agricultural courses of ANGRAU (Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University) through online platform. The present study is conducted through an online survey of 400 randomly selected participants of the four online certificate courses - Organic Farming, Bee Keeping, Mushroom Cultivation and Terrace Gardening in telugu offered by ANGRAU in 2020-21 which would be helpful in designing an effective online learning environment. The study explores the effectiveness of online learning, perception and preferences of participants for various attributes of online classes. The results indicated that majority of the participants preferred online classes during the pandemic. The respondents who have completed the courses perceived high level of effectiveness (67.50%) about the two distance learning courses while 23.50 percent expressed medium level of effectiveness and a meagre 9 percent perceived the courses to be less effective. The findings of this study provide insights to academicians to redesign the courses to a hybrid mode complementing theory and practicals without shifting completely to online education as more number are interested to enroll for online classes rather than contact classes.

Keyword: Distance learning; Online education; Certificate courses