Shutting classrooms enables to bring remote learning closer

While countries across the globe with the Covid-19 outbreak are disrupted, it is the online world that is buzzing. The educational sector too is not unaffected by the lockdown. After the announcement of the 21-day national lockdown, educational institutions had to shut down, forcing thousands of students to trek back to their hometowns. But this also marked a change in academics.These are the times when online courses are gaining importance and the need for training teachers to adapt themselves to online lessons, increasing. It shows the ability of online education to stay updated. Here again educators and administrators of higher education cannot get too ahead of the curve. Online education has its limitations. For the system to be efficient, there has to be a proper match or sync between the message, medium and messenger. Not all teachers handling theory classes can be considered adept in delivering online content. It requires special training and efforts that educational institutions need to bear in mind. medium74962142In the past two decades the government has played a role in promoting online education. It started with satellite-based classrooms and later followed by National Knowledge Network (NKN), National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), related projects like National Project on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). Electronic access through Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), Aakash Tablet PC, Direct to Home (DTH) and virtual laboratories laid the foundation. In the recent past schemes like National Digital Library (NDL) and National Academic Depositories (NAD) have filled a certain void in education-related services. Now it is going to be a new domain of National Academic Credit bank (NACB) which is going to redefine the concepts of new generation degrees and student centricity in overall education. Emergence of education-related technology companies too played a major role in facilitating this transformation from the blackboard to the e-book.Though the present conditions are challenging, they are also opening avenues of experimentation with new services and products. At SRMIST, for instance, we have been slowly incorporating online methods such as publishing of books and journals electronically, use of Computer Aided Design (CAD), graphical tools, 3D printing and robotics to make learning more fun and easy to grasp. medium74962614Technology companies have supported resource sharing platforms to allow sharing of publications, journals, e-books and reports among its stakeholders across the world. The silver lining has also been that a large number of software vendors have begun offering innovative solutions in these areas. And benefits are trickling down to the smallest of institutions. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which are now a well accepted mode of teaching and learning is being promoted. Professional agencies like Coursera, edX, Future learn, NPTEL, Udacity and Udemy have aggressively contributed to it and are regularly coming up with offerings which are free or subsidized, modular and tailored to specific user’s needs.The Government of India’s efforts through SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active– Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) is a facility cutting across all major academic disciplines. Add to it efforts by major IT players with Google Classroom, TCS Glass room, Zoom and Skype to facilitate remote tutoring. These are further augmented by enabling use of graphical, statistical and other analytical tools alongside use of distributed computing and cloud services. medium74962126To make the circle of teaching-learning examinations complete, new technologies have come as a boon for conducting examinations across wider geographical boundaries with massive capacity expansion. What was initially developed for tests like GMAT, GRE, TOEFL and SAT are now being used for Joint Entrance Examinations, Common Admission Test (CAT) and now even for routine tests and exams at all levels. The result of such reforms is that it has better proctoring, easier and faster access to answer scripts for checking with higher degree of reliability, timely declaration of results, better transparency and of course the improved aspects of scalability and speed.Fortunately, these testing times have become defining times for educational institutes as here is the opportunity to move from technology supported to technology driven framework. In ways more, it can be argued, this change in the educational sector is now going to have a long-lasting impact, which may also become a permanent feature. medium74962114There may be downsides, but they would easily be outweighed by the positives. Ultimately with changing conditions, we have the opportunity to make the world of education omnipresent and undifferentiated. Add to all these the potential to make education anytime, anywhere, any age, any mode, any language and many other any combinations, the sky would be the limit. The future of universal education is getting reset, so let us redefine ourselves for the changing times. The writer is vice-chancellor of SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai. Views expressed are of the author