India today aspires to emerge as front-runner among the knowledge-based societies. Thus, the benefits of ICT revolution in providing education and training of desirable quality can hardly be over emphasised. Focus has been to provide universal access, equity and ensure provision of quality elementary education. Universalisation of access has nearly been achieved. Investment in the sector has resulted in satisfactory outcomes. 94% of our rural populations have a school within one sq. kilometer. The gross enrollment ratio has improved to 108.56 in 2004-05 from 96.30 in 2001-02 at primary level, and to 70.51 from 52.09 at upper primary level during same period. The dropout rate at the primary level has reduced by 10.50% i.e. 28.49 in 2004-05 from 39.03 in 2001-02. Use of technology in the classroom transactions has gained impetus in the form of computer aided learning in many States.
Champak Chatterjee, Secretary of School Education, Ministry of HRD Government of India, during the eINDIA2007 inaugural speech made a mention of creating a national ICT policy in education soon
The challenge ahead is to provide universal access, equity and quality at the Secondary stage. As educational indicators are not very encouraging at the moment, the responsibility is now to ensure substantial investment to improve the current scenario at the earliest. Use of technology by students at the Secondary stage pre-supposes their strength in terms of knowledge and skill development. As Internet has become more and more accessible, the world of information and innovations have become more accessible today.
Recognising the importance of ICT in education as early as 1984-85 Computer Literacy And Studies in Schools (CLASS) Project was launched. Today, exclusive Educational Television channel ‘Gyan Darshan’ has been launched to provide satellite based education across the country besides the interactive radio programme. In December, 2004, the ICT in Schools Scheme was launched to open a window of opportunity for secondary stage school students across the country in partnership with states/Union Territories. While the emphasis has been on the computer literacy programme, the advantage is now realised in use of IT tools for development of e-Content in the computer aided learning activities and self learning by students.
Need for a National ICT in Education Policy
While many States have developed their own policy on ICT in School education but at the national level there is a need for putting in place a coherent and enabling policy for use by all stakeholders. It has thus been felt to develop a set of policy objectives, guidelines, practices and knowledge tools to enhance the role of ICT in school education, particularly, by following a consultative and a participatory process with States, academia, NGOs, civil society organisations, practitioners and stakeholders. In this regard, Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative,(GeSCI) has offered its expertise and assistance to the Department of School Education & Literacy (D/SE&L), Ministry of HRD, Government of India in the formulation of the national policy.
GeSCI Initiative
GeSCI was founded by the United Nations ICT Task Force, and is a global organisation that catalyses, supports and convenes national and regional ICT in Education initiatives and provides strategic advice to Ministries of Education on the effective use of ICTs for education. In the recent past, it has facilitated development of ICT policy in education for a few countries, namely, Namibia, and Bolivia with on going work in Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda.
The International event of e-INDIA 2007, provided the right context to start a first level of discussion with the stakeholders and solicit recommendations from them.
The GOI has several National as well as State specific schemes that run concurrent to a large number of privately led ICT initiatives across India. In addition there are several ICT in education initiatives across the country and these account for a large degree of
understanding and awareness about the role that ICTs can play in enhancing the teaching learning process. However, the lack of a concerted, dynamic education policy has continued to hound the ministries of education, increasingly, this new tool – called ICTs and their incorporation has added to the challenge.
A well coordinated and structured policy can lead India to achieve MDGs
Ashish Garg, Programme Co-ordinator India, GeSCI in conversation with Digital Learning
What is the need to integrate ICT in education policy and how will it work for the Indian education system? How is India unique in its issues and concerns for integrating ICTs in education?
Integrating ICTs in Education is a relatively new turf and Ministries of Education across the world are trying to find the right balance to optimise educational outcomes. There is also a need to understand the key issues underlying the problems and to formulate sensible strategies.
Without a purposeful “End to End” policy driven by political will and authority, ICTs may remain a peripheral subject and an enormous opportunity for enhancing learning and subsequently creating an equipped work force and improved living conditions may be lost.
In the Indian context, a purposeful policy assumes greater significance in view of the complex challenges we face as a large nation with divergent requirements. Besides the size and spread of the school education system in the country, which is second only to China, we also have major issues of access, opportunity and gender discrimination. The deployment, and usage of ICT in Indian schools is also an aberration in many ways.
India has the distinction of being the country with the largest number of ICT in education initiatives, but these are primarily concentrated in six or seven states, where as others have little or no awareness about this new tool in education.
GeSCI works in Bolivia, Namibia, Ghana and Rwanda and we realise that India is unique not only in its challenges, but also in its approach on managing these challenges.
In emerging trends of e-Learning, where do you place GeSCI? What are the innovative e-Learning best practices or policies specific to the organisation, that can impact the education community?
Many developing countries seem to be simply “copying” the developed country approaches. Many Ministries of Education in developing countries are faced with systematic weaknesses and ICTs have not traditionally been their core competence.
If developing countries are to realise the potential and benefits of ICTs in Education in improving access, quality and efficiency in a cost and educational effective manner, then they urgently need to develop a clear understanding of the benefits and potential roles ICTs can play in education; develop, build and enhance the capacity within Ministries of Education to strategically plan for, set priorities and targets and effectively deploy ICTs for Education; assume clear leadership of and drive the ICT in Education agenda while cooperating with and coordinating the NGO and private sector stakeholders; move beyond “pilot programs” to well
thought out and planned, scalable, cost effective and sustainable national initiatives.
GeSCI was created specifically to respond to these urgent needs of the Ministries of Education in developing countries. GeSCI’s role to help Ministries coordinate the entire process according to its educational objectives is unique and has proven beneficial to its developing country partners.
What are the focus areas identified by GeSCI on the use and integration of ICT in education in India?
GeSCI’s mission, services and activities are defined in direct response to the needs of several developing countries.Designing and implementing policies and plans Building capacities within Ministries of Education;Utilising ICTs cost-effectively to achieve educational objectives.
A well coordinated and structured policy leading to a practical and dynamic implementation plan will enable the country to achieve the Millenium Development Goals faster.
What is your vision of the ‘future classroom’ in Indian schools in the digital age? How do you think the success of ICT use be measured in the school education system?
The Future classroom would be a place where all students have the opportunity to attend school and participate in a meaningful educational process.
As demonstrated by the Indian IT business, effectively using ICTs in Education can reduce the trauma on the socio-economic fabric of India. Education today must be linked to opportunities of economic improvement through better learning, understanding and exposure to a global environment. Success would be measured not simply by achievement scores, but by the level of learning, number of students opting for higher education, research and by the number of students taking up jobs in the knowledge economy, as opposed to an overall increase in the economic conditions of the people of India.
Co-Existence is the Key!
Dr M V Ananthakrishnan
Advisor
Media Lab Asia, Mumbai
manantha@it.iitb.ac.in
The author, with his varied experience as designer, developer, seller and user of ICT-based education, shares his experiences working with teachers, preachers and marketers of ICT-based solutions. The typical issues that crop up time and again include:
The article puts on record the typical experiences in each of the above critical issues and the author’s ways and means of handling them, based on a year-long interaction with administrators, teachers, students and parents of rural schools in Maharashtra
Teachers drive the technology or technology drive the teachers!
There has been a continuing debate on when, where, what and how technology should be integrated with education at various levels, primary to higher. But, should we be talking of “integration of technology” or “inclusion of technology” in education?
“Let’s step aside from this issue for a moment and think back a few
centuries when textbooks were first introduced into classrooms. At that time the initiative was not known as ‘textbook integration.’ The people in those days understood that the textbooks were conduits. Today we do not seem to grasp the concept that technology is liken to textbooks of a few centuries ago. If technology were viewed as a conduit, then it would be crystal clear that we are talking about curriculum development and not about technology integration” (Reilly, 2002).
Anthea Millett (Millett, 1999) talks about the misinterpretations of pedagogy: “I am always struck by how difficult teachers find it to talk about teaching. They prefer to talk about learning. “
So, in summary, we are left with the million-dollar dilemma: Do teachers drive the technology? Or does technology drive the teachers?
What aids better teaching and learning?
It is common knowledge that a child rarely learns in isolation. It is always in a group wherein the teacher and the group of students (varying between 20 and 40 in the same age-group) interact either as a monologue or in a dialogue. In most of the pre-primary classes in India, all children repeat in unison after the teacher. There is very little individual attention in the learning process. Herein come the critical factors that affect learning…for the good or worse!
This leaves us again in the same dilemma! How can technology mitigate these issues?
Curriculum vis-à-vis Technology
Early studies have indicated that in the realm of education, early technology adopters have been a mere 5%, primarily because the stress was on ‘technology’ and not on its applications to education. However, with the current thinking that technology is a mere ‘conduit’, the focus must return to curriculum development. Curriculum developers need to come upfront and take the lead as curriculum co-ordinators, and work closely with the technology co-ordinators/ directors, with a revised job description and mission statement. School authorities must look afresh at curriculum development in order to make technology inclusive and not as an add-on /extension to existing curricula. This may possibly bring the remaining 95% into the new genre.
The Indian e-Learning scenario: The Developers, Marketers and Users The author with his varied experience involving all the roles in e-Learning, viz., courseware design & Development, using courseware and evaluating courseware, has identified the issues that are crucial to the success of e-Learning.
(a)e-Books
A series of demonstrations-cum-discussions were carried out with the suppliers of the so-called e-Learning courseware in Mumbai and Pune for a Ministry of IT-IITB Project on creating a multi-modal repository (Classes VIII-X) for rural schools in Maharashtra, based on the Maharashtra Board syllabus. The findings were: a page-turner, Verbatim copy of the text book, Very few animations, worth the effort, Events/explanations, which could be done better using chalk-n-board or cardboard 2D models (say theorems in mathematics, solving algebraic expressions, etc.)
(b)Concepts complicated!
“Circulation of Blood in the human body” is the chapter in question. What is needed is just a description of the heart, its four chambers, the main arteries and veins, flow of blood from one chamber to another, the non-return valves and the heart-lung connections. A simple two-dimensional diagram with animation to show the pumping action is all that is needed. But, a multimedia package comparable to the movie, more suited to a student of medicine. Students of Classes VIII-X will be totally at a loss to comprehend this.
(c)The Advisors/Creators of Courseware/Curricula/Localisation
The story is no different for courseware vendors. They very often have luminaries on their advisory panel used to attract schools and teachers to their software. In the end, most of them, divorced from realty, come up with fastidious ideas and concepts and methodologies that are nearer to an urban locale and alien to a rural environment.
There is a misconception, among Indian CBT developers that a teacher is the best judge on the effectiveness or otherwise of ICT-based programmes. “If s/he ‘finds’ it useful, then the students ‘will’ find it useful” is the foregone conclusion.
The evaluation criteria invariably employed by the courseware vendors includes (i) number of computers installed; (ii) number of teachers trained and (iii) the schools/institutions who have purchased the courseware. The author is yet to find a vendor who has monitored the school/teachers/usage of courseware at regular intervals to assess the effectiveness and see marked improvements in the students’ performance. In addition, no vendor has produced documentation from a satisfied “customer”. In short, therefore, success is seen in numbers and not effectiveness, something that will not hold water when the vendor tries to “prove” the effectiveness of his/her product.
d) Blended Learning
Blended Learning is learning that is facilitated by the effective combination of different modes of delivery, models of teaching and styles of learning, and founded on transparent communication amongst all parties involved with a course (Heinz et al, ). “At a recent conference, a practitioner was overheard saying, ‘I can see why blending makes sense. But what do I put with what? We have a hundred instructors & e-Learning modules. If we put them together, is that a blend?” (Rossett et al, 2003).
The dilemma still remains – What is Blended Learning? It is not a direct outcome of a planned pedagogy, wherein the teacher decides as to when introduce examples, demonstrations, hands-on, self-learning, etc. “Blended” in its true sense would connote a homogeneous medium, where one would be unable to separate the constituents. So a better term would be integrated teaching/learning, where the parts are combined to make an appropriate mix.
The Indian Challenge: Making the courseware co-exist with the teacher experiences of using CBT courseware and observing students at work with such resources is disturbing. Since they are not a part of the need analysis process, they have to accept or reject the medium. The result- the courseware becomes electronic blackboards, with the student reading off the screen, akin to reading off the book or the traditional blackboard.
a)The Phases of development
It is, therefore, essential that the Requirements Gathering Phase should be done as shown in Table. Phase 1 is critical to the acceptance or rejection of the ‘medium’.
b)Prototyping: An essential step
The author has found the “prototyping” stage as the most critical to the acceptance of CBT/e-Learning as an instructional medium, because it clearly demonstrates the use of the client’s content in zeroing in on the pedagogy to be used and how. This eases the following steps and makes the development process more participative and fruitful.
c)Experiences with the rural schools
An experiment on easing adaptation of e-Learning/CBTs was done through a disciplined process. It involved the following stages:
workshop