India is blessed with enormous technological talent; it is time for us to take advantage of this talent for bringing connectivity and efficiency in education
Dr. Prafulla Agnihotri, Director, IIM Tiruchirappalli | www.iimtrichy.ac.in
As These days it has become quite common for teachers to teach on VSAT. As far as I can remember I started using VSAT as a teaching tool in 2000-2001. This is an excellent tool, but it has some limitations. It is difficult to connect through VSAT when it is cloudy, stormy or when there is lightening. In such climatic conditions students and the faculty are unable to connect to each other.
These days many new technologies have emerged that are not impacted by the vagaries of weather. For instance, there is the cloud space, which continues to evolve at a really fast pace. The need of the hour is to adopt these technologies for bettering the quality of education that is being offered in our institutions. The IIM Tiruchirappalli has its eyes set on many of these new technologies.
I believe in continuous education. There are so many students who aspire to be an MBA, either from the IIM or from any other institute, but they are unable to quit their existing job and attend classes on a regular basis. Perhaps the new connectivity systems can be deployed to make it possible for such students to fulfil their ambitions.
The system of connectivity needs to be strengthened further so that the students living in most far-flung areas are able to reach out to us and take benefit of the knowledge and certifications that we offer. The basic purpose of education will not be fulfilled until education can reach out to the masses. The IIM is ready to perform this task of reaching out, and that is why we are adopting latest technologies.
We are being making collaborative efforts with TCS and few other companies to find out how we can explore this medium of new technologies. The system should be reasonably low cost and provide seamless and efficient connectivity between faculty, institute administration, students, corporates, masses and basically the entire set of stakeholders who are involved in the process of education.
It is indeed true that it might not be possible to find a technology that is perfect. There are bound to be demerits in every system, howsoever well planned and technologically advanced it maybe. But we have to focus on the best of what is already available.
