The goal of India’s new educational system is outlined in the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), which was introduced in July, 2020. In order to ensure ongoing learning, NEP 2020 focuses on five pillars: affordability, accessibility, quality, equity, and accountability. Even in a post-covid world, online learning is anticipated to become the new standard, despite the fact that the future is unpredictable. This development came along at the proper moment since the New Education Policy gave e-learning, digital literacy, and new-age technology significant attention. Technology will be infused into every element of schooling due to the growing digitalisation. Education systems embrace technology in ways that boost teachers’ roles as co-creators and designers of cutting-edge learning environments. Digital learning tools go beyond merely imparting knowledge; they also monitor our cognitive processes to identify the tasks and ways of thinking that we find interesting as well as those that we find tedious or challenging. Here is an exclusive conversation from the panel discussion that happened recently at the World Education Summit organised by Elets Technomedia. Edited excerpts:
Prof. B.S. Murty, Director, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT Hyderabad), Hyderabad, Telangana said, “ Pandemic has forced us to venture into digital learning. It is all about learning beyond classrooms while before covid, it was all about learning in classrooms i.e Physical learning.”
Due to covid more or less the whole world has moved towards digitisation direction, and in IIT Hyderabad, we are converting every classroom into digital. Our aim is to make our courses available for anybody in the world, Prof Murty further explained.
Prof. (Dr.) Raj Singh, Vice-Chancellor, JAIN (Deemed-to-be University), Bangalore,
Karnataka said, “ While we switched to blended learning, third-party content like
LinkedIn course, Coursera were not enough to differentiate us from others. So, we
launched 160+ in-house mock courses for our students.”
The whole national education policy in the context of which we are talking focuses on higher order learning outcomes, and more important is how do we expand learning opportunities, added Prof Raj.
Navin Mittal, Commissioner, Collegiate and Technical Education Department, Government of Telangana said, “With the NEP 2020 and UGC’s new regulation of Dual degree and training programmes, has opened an entirely new spectrum for international education or education abroad.”
Increasingly we have to position India as a destination for International students and some of our universities definitely fit into destinations of choice globally, he further added.
M Nagarajan, Commissioner, Higher Education Department, Government of Gujarat elaborated that “Entrepreneurship, Research and Innovation, all three are interlinked. With good research, you reach an innovative idea which will make the base for your entrepreneurship journey.”
A mind to market journey is a long procedure, from idea to the product and then to the market. Thus, we encourage our students and fund their ideas.
If we empower 10 percent of our students to become entrepreneurs they will be able to engage the other 90 per cent of the students, he concluded.
Prof. Anil Kashyap, President and Chancellor NICMAR University, Pune, Maharashtra said, “NEP mainly talks about interdisciplinary aspects. It depends entirely on the curriculum, professional bodies, and the institutions which are the driving force of interdisciplinary actions”.
In Indian context, institutes and universities are already interdisciplinary, there are subjects which are cross functional. However, the importance of curriculum to be interdisciplinary is quite significant in the sense that cross learning is supporting various aspects, Prof Anil further added.
Dr. Shashank Shah, Jt. Adviser/Senior Specialist (Higher Education), NITI Aayog, Government of India said, “NEP 2020 is very similar to the 1991 industrial Policy that transformed the entire fashion of work. NEP 2020 will open the same landscape for the education sector”.
The skills that we need in the digital age are not just the digital skills but several other skills where digital tools and techniques will help us succeed in complex problem solving, negotiation, decision making and ethical orientation, Dr. Shah concluded.
