The pandemic has tested all aspects of education from delivery of classroom lectures to conduct of examination to internships and admissions. Ashwani Awasthi analyses how the year has been for the sector
The year 2020 can be termed as a year of two major paradigm shifts for the education sector. While one forced the teachers and students to adopt and adapt to sudden change for the very continuance of education, the other is a welcome announcement of a change long overdue in the Indian educational system.
The educational institutes barring the research levels continue to be in a veritable lockdown since March 2020 following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost overnight, the education institutions had to shift their delivery model from on-campus face-to-face to an online one. They had to quickly shift from a classroom setup to a virtual technology driven setup. The forward-looking institutions were better prepared with having some technological systems in place and could quickly adopt technology solutions such as Zoom, MS Teams or Google meet and onboarded their audience to the platform.
However, many institutes which were already lagging in technological adoptions due to paucity of time, effort or budget constraints, struggled and their students suffered as well. Knowledge sharing at such places was severely limited and remained restricted to monologue/non-interactive modes limited to messaging, sharing scanned sheets and texted instructions.
The pandemic has tested all aspects of education from delivery of classroom lectures to conduct of examination to internships and admissions. New formats of conducting the student assessments like online Open Book Examination or Multiple Choice Question based examinations were tried out. However, a large section of the student population living in non-urban areas had internet bandwidth concerns and faced huge challenges while appearing in examinations.
Similarly, industry internship is an important part of the professional degree in higher education. Visionary education institutions converted the site-based industry internships into desktop research-based internships but still could not completely fulfill the onsite practice-based learning requirement.
The pandemic also had a huge impact on the student acquisition activity in the education sector. The admission processes changed from on-campus examinations and interviews to virtual campus walks, video interviews, online evaluations and selections. There is a growing feeling that the pandemic will continue to impact education and admissions are never going to be the same again. There has been a decrease in international student enrollment. Also, students are unsure about opting for technical programs which need on-campus practice-based learning. It is anticipated that in future the student preference on college admission would shift focus to college as an experience rather than as a brand.
This period has also provided us with the time to reflect upon where our limitations lie in terms of our personal digital skills and technology. Training faculty on technology usage, preparing content for online learning, internet connectivity, bandwidth, digital etiquette remained a challenge. Different types of health concerns related with screen time, body posture related health concerns, depression in isolation have surged amongst the students this year.
But there has been a big welcome announcement for the education sector in India this year. The greatest gift for education sector in 2020 was the launch of the new National Education Policy (NEP 2020), which was launched on July 29 superseding the last policy that was released 34 years ago. The NEP 2020 is a visionary policy which aims to bring many relevant changes like universal access to schools for all children in the next decade and stresses on increasing the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), putting a stop to the spiraling drop-out rate in India.
The NEP also proposes sweeping changes including opening of Indian higher education to foreign universities and focuses on overhauling the curriculum, easier board exams, a reduction in the syllabus to retain core essentials and thrust on experiential learning and critical thinking. However, a strong need for developing good number of trained quality teachers is needed to meet the challenges of the industry. Many believe that if the new policy could be implemented sincerely with a careful designing of syllabi and curricula, it has the potential to transform India into a self-reliant knowledge superpower.
Finally, it is felt that future will witness phenomenal change and disruption in the field of higher education. Technology will take a lead in shaping the delivery, teaching methodology and the evaluation process. One clear area of evolution could be a shift of focus from marks based academic curriculum to life based overall development.
Currently there is a huge gap between what the students study and what the industry requires. We are on the verge of breaking the barriers that exist between academia and industry. While there are few institutes which closely work with industry to customise their curriculum and prepare industry ready graduates, the need gap is huge. A closer industry-education engagement at the very grassroot stages can drive the development of curricula, teaching methodologies and applied learning experiences.
The writer is Managing Director, RICS School of Built Environment