Internet is revolutionising the education system in India. With the novel coronavirus outbreak that forced the entire country to shut down, e-learning and work from home, among others, have become new normal. Smart classrooms and mobile technology are not only transforming education in highly paid private schools, but it is gradually making inroads in government schools.
Every sector is grappling to deal with the unprecedented situation. While it has been slightly easier for corporate houses to adopt work from home and continue business as usual, the situation has been challenging for the education system as it is slow to adopt changes. With disruptions happening everywhere, several concerned academicians, politicians, scholars, and bureaucrats support the need for reinventing the education system.
The digital wave is transforming the traditional education system in India. Though the crisis is disastrous, it is making our educational institutes technologically advanced and equipped with new-age tools and techniques.
However, students and teachers have made bigger adjustments as learning has always been in classrooms and many of them are not well equipped with technology to avail of remote learning.
The crisis followed by prolonged lockdown has accelerated the adoption of digital technology by educational institutes and online education platforms and data management methods have been forced to work in tandem.
Many educational institutes are leveraging the situation as an opportunity to experiment and position smart tools to make education delivery possible and meaningful amidst the crisis. While there is uncertainty on when the schools and colleges will re-open, they are continuously striving to not let the crisis hamper the curriculum. With digital transformation, the focus is to be more productive and efficient while developing improved and innovative professional skills through online learning and assessment.
While we see a transformation from teacher-centric education to student-centric education, virtual classrooms are helping to continue and enhance the engagement between the teacher and learners as close to the classroom type experience. Moreover, smart classrooms provision everything from teachers-parent meetings to staff-management meetings.
In a move to aid the education system when colleges and schools remain shut, government at all level - central and state, as well as, private players are taking various initiatives to support and benefit the students. Also, the government has taken numerous efforts to ensure that the impact of the crisis on education is least. To make sure that students continue their learning during school closures, various e-learning portals, and apps like e-Pathshala, Swayam, DIKSHA portal and STEM based games have been launched by the government and education bodies.
Online learning is increasingly seen as a revolutionary experience in the education system. Major world changing events often become an inflexion point for swift innovation like the growth of e-commerce post SARS. Though it is not the right time to predict, there might be an unprecedented rise of e-learning post-COVID-19 wherein the best of faculty will be available from across the globe to students.
What came as a rescue from the crisis, is popularising because of improved attendance, competency-based learning, creating high calibre learning pathways for future, trackable learning, high engagement, fewer distractions, and quick assessment. The online assessment platforms are continuously making efforts to improve their products considering the limited bandwidth. A lot has already been planned and implemented and more improvement is underway. Quality of faculty and its familiarity with digital teaching technologies combined with the quality of IT infrastructure are important parameters foreseen in the future.
The writer is Kiran Dham,CEO, Globus Infocom Ltd