Asnani Pearson School has organised Yardstick Experiential learning Programme (YELP) as a step for achieving the vision of transforming education into a joyful and enriching experience. The programme witnessed very good response participation and was applauded by guardians.
YELP has been designed to provide students with relevant, engaging and practical learning experience in science education, beyond the classroom. Yardsticks designs and implements learning programs for children, engage their keen, inquisitive and imaginative minds via hands on educational activities.
Dr Bhavna Gupta, Principal, Asnani Pearson School says, “Learning and development of children in their school is their main goal and they tend to establish activities in a way that helps the students’ intellect grow. Learning at school should be an enriching experience. At Asnani Pearson School, we believe that localization of content is necessary to create relevance. We advocate for individualized learning instead of mass production of education. We try to impart individual attention to the child’s needs as far as possible.”
Jaisooraj Nambiar, Chairman, Asnani Group trust said, “We believe that children should have the right to correct knowledge and by organizing learning sessions for the kids, they aim to achieve the children’s attention as well as keep them entertained. This is a great way that we have managed to educate the kids and the students seem to be doing very well so far. The trust believes that making learning wholesome, meaningful and constructive can help us to achieve our vision.”
The learning programs focus on guiding the child on the right path of education. They keep in mind every child’s interest and motivate them to pursue their own dreams and not be influenced by what people tell the kids. At such a young age, children tend to be persuaded by many people, but the key is to help the kids gain confidence in his or her own abilities by guiding them to their ambitions.
Centre for Research and Industrial Staff Performance (CRISP) Bhopal and Symbiosis University Pune has joined hands to offer academic, professional and skill development programme and consultancy. CRISP, Institute for training and skill development has signed an MOU with Symbiosis.
Dr Swati Majumdar, Chairperson, Symbiosis and Mukesh Sharma, CEO, CRISP inaugurated the Skill Development Training Programme in Pune where 200 unemployed youths from rural places will be trained in skill areas and will placed in Industries.
Symbiosis is setting up a University in Indore & has signed a MoU with M.P. Government in Investor Summit 2014. Both Symbiosis & CRISP will bring expert resources.
CRISP has been established in 1997 as a society under the Indo-German technical cooperation agreement. Ministry of MSME, Government of India was the line ministry for this project where as the department of technical education and skill development, Government of Madhya Pradesh and German Technical Cooperation agency were the implementation partners.
Besides emphasising on traditional methods of teaching, it is also essential in this powerful new learning world that we make an effective use of digital education in our knowledge enhancement. Dr Vandana Gupta, Principal, Shreejee International School shares her views.
How important do you think is a tablet for curriculum in your school?
Tablet is very important part of the curriculum as it helps in enhancing knowledge retention, increasing stimulation and improving learning abilities. Moreover tablets are mobile, a feature that encourages students to be more active in the classroom enhancing kinaesthetic learning to make the lesson content more memorable and further a student’s choice of apps makes it easy to build a personalized learning environment. They can also carry it easily from class to class.
Is a tablet only way for the schools to help their students understand the concept better?
No doubt that tablets enhance an ease of learning and understanding but this is not the only way to help the students understand the concept. Interaction mode in the classroom with the teacher, group discussions, interactive videos and various other activities give better experience.
What can a tablet, e-Book and e-Content, not do?
Tablet, e-Book and e-Content are basically un-assertive in nature. They cannot provide learning experience that students get from interactive methods like classroom teaching, group discussion, interactive videos, lectures etc. Moreover, tablets cannot propagate values and ethics which are lacking in the modern world.
How do you evaluate, assess a tablet before selecting it for the curriculum in your school?
The device you choose should meet your school’s learning goals and needs. It should work with your curriculum management style. A school that wants central control over its devices is going to choose a different tablet than a school that wants to leave most of the management up to individual classrooms. However, the schools must emphasize on some of the essential features like wifi support, 3G/4G support, processing speed, memory, freeOS (Android) to get the desired app etc. But one doesn’t have to be so device driven that we lose track of the fact that we are going to be teaching students.
Introduction of digital tools into the classrooms has brought the narratives alive. The traditional tools of teaching are slowly losing their relevance. Do you see any inherent contradiction between the two?
Well you cannot rule out the fact that digital tools have taken the education industry by storm and for a valid reason but I think main motives of education should be to build the overall character and to bring the all round development of the students. There is no point in discussing which teaching method is better than the other.
Although the private schools are far ahead of the Govt. Schools, the new government appears committed to bridging the digital deficit. How do you think should the government move?
Government schools neither have the adequate infrastructure nor the basic facilities. Even the teachers are also not trained properly to infuse ICT in education. This frustrating situation creates a digital divide. The government though has announced many new programmes to bridge this divide but the desired goals of the government can only be achieved through a strict execution and effective implementation of these programmes.
Must the e-content be regulated because it runs the risk of over exposure and doing more harm than good in the end. What is your take?
It is essential in this powerful new learning world that we make our pedagogy twofold; we must make an effective use of e-content to enhance knowledge and manoeuvre in this Information age but we are also bound to teach the ethical parameters within which students live and learn to navigate this space.
The massive open online courses (MOOCS) have brought closer the dream of digital equality in our country. However, the shallow internet density in our country is making a crisis out of an opportunity.
How do you think can the Government come to seize the opportunity?
In recent years the popularity of online courses has increased significantly because learning that is time-dependent and location dependent is not an option for everyone anymore.
Classle, a Social learning platform, is breaking all geographical and economical barriers as it brings students, teachers and professionals under one digital roof. Founder and CEO of Classle, Vaidya Nathan talks about overcoming challenges and future plans for Classle.
Vaidya Nathan Founder and CEO of Classle
What was the idea behind starting Classle?
Classle Knowledge Inc. is an India based start-up which offers social learning with specific focus on empowerment and success through education and learning, regardless of urban or rural setting. Established in 2009, the objective behind the company is to bring productive personalized learning experience to students, customers, employees or general learners.
Today over 100 education institutions have signed up for Classle Cloud Campus, bringing courses and quality learning to empower students. More than 25 companies are using the Cloud Campus and Courses to empower their employees and members of their ecosystem. There are more than 1,800 courses authored by experts and professionals from around the world in diverse range of subjects such as engineering, science, arts, finance, electronics, energy and spirituality.
How has the journey been for you?
The journey was very intense and interesting. There were contradictory needs of very high level of sophistication to bring the impact along with simplicity and low-cost to make it accessible, both geographically and economically.
Tell us about how Classle works?
Classle, the Social Learning Network, is a ‘One Step’ education solution and employment opportunity provider; touching students, learners and educators from schools and colleges, institutions and companies across India. Classle brings quality, engagement and experience to learning and talent transformation through the social learning platform. Classle integrates the power of technology and the social network bringing learning to every individual, on a cost-free platform.
Classle has an online platform at its core through which students and learners interact with their peers, teachers, professors and professionals through different courses and modules created online. The modules, features, courses and contents are accessed and delivered both online and offline and other means through mobile technology. The ability to use mobile devices, even low-cost ones makes the entire learning ubiquitous and accessible. Once the students register online, they can access content, attend online classes, review audio and video recordings, ask questions and consult experts on topics they choose. The registration is absolutely free, so cost is no longer a deterrent in education. Rural students can also seek knowledge, learn and compete with students in metro cities.
What are some of the unique features of Classle?
Headquartered in Chennai, Classle currently empowers 100+ institutions that have private Classle Cloud Campuses. With 300,000+ student members having signed up for Classle Cloud Campuses, we are poised to empower every student and learner with quality learning.
Today Classle works with over 100 educational organization and individual educators who share the common goal of bringing quality and relevance into education and learning. Classle is growing rapidly and increasing the volume of usage for AWS (Amazon Web Services).
Classle is working on multimedia apps and aiming at a target of 5 million learners in next 12 to 18 months. Recently, Classle expanded the focus into schools targeting grades 6-12, again with unique innovations to take the distribution to hard-to-reach places and bringing quality education there. Classle also moved into recreational and customer education areas making the portfolio complete into a ‘Lifelong Learning’ environment. Our seamless ability to expand the scope and grow in depth is already causing ripple effect and getting enquiries from the developed world.
As we consider that, since we chose AWS Public Cloud as platform, we know that infrastructure will be there as an enabler. It is only the business model that Classle needs to think about. So if Classle thinks about the scale needed for this rapid growth, we will require the foundation and architecture to be sound to handle all the traffic in a highly scalable manner – this is where the robust global platform of AWS comes in with the proven track record.
In another 3-4 months, Classle will be launching academic analytics based employment services as well as domain learning services to continue the relationship with the students and help them in the journey towards life-long learning. The interconnections in social networking and the analysis of how our customers interact with one another is an important development area for Classle and we are already doing prototypes using Amazon Elastic MapReduce to serve this purpose in supporting our long-term goal.
What are the major challenges that you faced as a start-up?
One of the biggest challenges faced in the initial set-up of the company was securing start-up funding, especially given that this was a new idea and no entrepreneur in the past had proposed a business idea for rural India. Most people believed that it was far stretched and difficult to implement as a scalable and sustainable business.
Another challenge is the nature of our customer base, owing to which, our services have to be extremely cost-sensitive. All our infrastructure and software is delivered at an extremely low price point. There are a lot of variations in usage as we deliver to the edges. This makes it essential to have a high degree of experimentation with an on-demand provision. The usage is never constant and hence extremely unpredictable. Our user base is growing to be more and more heterogeneous which complicates the levels of predictability. This makes elasticity based on actual usage at run time a necessity.
Classle’s need for experimentation is satisfied by AWS. The various services that Amazon constantly builds on and puts on the offering such as transcoding, search and big data make it easy from a go to market perspective. Classle can concentrate on taking the features to the market while Amazon works on the infrastructure requirements for the feature. This unique combination enables running on a low cost while ensuring a short span of time to go to the market.
Start-ups often face cash liquidity problems during initial years of operation. How did you counter this problem?
Reducing the time to market, cost of infrastructure and cost of failure were three factors that made our cash lifeline substantially longer than otherwise. Also AWS nurtures a very active ecosystem from where we were able to learn rapidly. This freed up our energies to focus on management and execution.
What business and IT challenges compelled you to move to the cloud and what made you choose AWS? What is the scale of your deployment on the Cloud?
As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest challenges faced in the initial set-up of the company was securing start-up funding. One of the most important things for me was to find a technology solution that was very cost-effective and yet highly scalable. AWS met all our requirements.
The factors that led us to choosing AWS include:
AWS’ robust global technology infrastructure and its years of experience in handling different scenarios across business sizes and industries. The AWS cloud platform is trusted by its customers across the world.
The fast pace of innovative services that AWS rolls out worldwide is important for any company that works with a cloud provider.
The way AWS works with its customers – AWS not only listen but is also able to innovate and execute quickly. The company has rolled out numerous services over the years including updates and new offerings that are useful for businesses across the board.
Which particular AWS solutions are you currently using?
Currently, we are using several solutions offered on the AWS cloud platform including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Auto Scaling, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS), Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) and Amazon Route 53.
We would especially like to talk about Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS). RRS is a new storage option within Amazon S3 that enables customers like us to reduce our costs by storing non-critical, reproducible data at lower levels of redundancy than Amazon S3’s standard storage. So, it’s beautiful how AWS enables customers to fine-tune their experience with different levels of service based on what the customers need, and pass the cost efficiency back to customers.
We are also looking to adopt AWS Mobile Services, including Amazon Cognito and Amazon Mobile Analytics, as we increase our footprint in that area.
Since the transition, what have been the specific performance indicators?
There is business sense in using the cloud because Classle is able to offer greater efficiency to customers. Customers can buy two years of cloud services and get one year free.
Cost savings: We have made significant cost savings by using cloud services. Classle saves on 30% – 35% of its costs by using the AWS cloud. The AWS services are available for us to use 24 X 7 X 365 days and we only pay by the hours that we actually use, which allows us to focus on our core business. This model is vastly different from the old world of maintaining your own on premise infrastructure whereby you have to worry about maintaining infrastructure, putting people and resources, spending time on all the undifferentiated heavy lifting that really does not contribute to the business. With the cloud, there’s no need for capital expenditure at all. Cloud computing is fast to deploy, with minimal start-up costs and predictable ongoing operating expenses.
Flexibility and availability: We also maintain seamless business continuity with the flexibility that the cloud offers. AWS ensures that servers are up all the time with negligible downtime, if any. The cloud enables us to be able to innovate and experiment a lot more, making our services more comprehensive, and accelerating our time to market, enabling us to reach more students with more innovative and relevant services.
Data security: The added business benefit is in the holding of personal data. Since Classle deals with a lot of personal data, protecting it and maintaining privacy was a concern. By choosing the AWS Cloud services, Classle was able to make it HIPAA compliant, ensuring the highest degree of privacy.
How are you reaching out to the students? What kind of partnerships have you done?
Classle currently empowers 100+ institutions that have private Classle Cloud Campuses. With 300,000+ student members having signed up for Classle Cloud Campuses, we are poised to empower every student and learner with quality learning.
Today Classle works with over thirty educational organizations including IIT, NPTEL, IUCEE, BITES, iCreate, Isha Vidhya and many other organizations that share the common goal to improve the quality of education. We also work with many companies which are committed to bring employment relevant education for the students.
What is your source of revenue?
We have three sources of revenue. First is Talent Analytics Services, second is through the paid courses and third is via subscriptions for Private Cloud Campus for companies.
Who are your direct competitors?
We don’t really have any direct competitors. We differentiate our services by developing our platform using AWS which has allowed us to innovate new features quickly and move much faster from concept to development.
What are your expansion plans in terms of geographies and product features?
We are growing rapidly and increasing the volume of usage for AWS services. Firstly, we are working on multimedia apps and are aiming at a target of 5 million students in 18 months. We expect the ripple effect to spread to the rest of the world. Also, we are growing rapidly as a Social Learning Network where we create a ‘Closed’ learning environment for many professionals and academic organizations. All these learning environments are based on Classle Cloud Campus, which runs on AWS services and plugs into the Classle Learning Bus. So if we think about the scale needed for this rapid growth, we will require a sound foundation and architecture that can handle the traffic in a highly scalable manner. This is where the robust global AWS cloud platform comes in, given its proven track record.
In another 3-4 months, Classle will be moving into ‘lifelong learning’ backed by robust academic analytics and domain learning services to acquire a learner at any point in their life and serve their learning needs at all their learning moments. This will be driven by a combination of predictive analytics and recommendation engine. The interconnections in social networking and the analysis of how our customers interact with one another is an important development area for Classle. To do this, we will leverage the cloud and are already doing prototypes using Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR) to serve this purpose in supporting our long term goal.
Geographically, over next 12-18 months, we are looking to rapidly expand across Pan-India, SAARC and APAC countries. Using AWS cloud platform enables us to go regional and eventually global. Feature wise, we will be adding access capabilities which will make it ubiquitous.
To make students job ready in the competitive market, and realising the dynamics of job market and need for employable candidates, Association of India University (AIU) has tied up with Wheebox, an online talent assessment company, LinkedIn, and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to implement Wheebox employability skill test (WEST) across universities in India.
The test is on the lines of GMAT, and the undergraduate & post-graduate students will take online adaptive test and thus will be provided with ranking that will be accessed to the influential network of professionals and recruiters on LinkedIn (partner for publishing India Skills Report 2015 as well). These rankings are the single metric that is consistent across the applicant pool. It provides a benchmark to the employer’s network to compare candidates against one another and against the student profile. This test will also help Universities to take preemptive measures to improve employability skills based on scientific data provided by Wheebox.
Nirmal Singh, Founder & CEO, Wheebox, “Today companies & universities are grappling with the concern of talent mismatch. They are devising strategies to counter this concern. He further added, “Thus, today there is a need to impart skills to the students and thus make them ready for the Job market.”
Dr Furqan Qamar, Secretary General, AIU said, “The percentage of employable students being low, which has been indicated from all the research reports, and this necessitated us to make the students employable and job ready that would be beneficial to both the employers & students.”
The exam is designed for 60 minutes that measures candidate’s English language proficiency, problem solving skills, numerical aptitude, computer literacy and soft skills viz. learning agility, interpersonal skills and adaptability for final year pass-outs. The test has been endorsed by CII that will measure critical competencies for employment of undergraduates and postgraduates.
Many organisations have shortlist the first round of candidates as per the scores of the test. Many professional and vocational training organisations have also used WEST to empower students to work on areas that might require improvement before they pass out and step out in job market.
On seeing the potential of Indian education system, UK has collaborated with India in area of education, and changes in the UK to ensure that schools, colleges and universities provide people with the skills they need in a globalised knowledge economy.
The British High Commission supports the cross government bilateral UK India education and research initiative (UKIERI), managed by the British Council of India. In the last five years, UKIERI has played a pivotal role in establishing a step change in the educational relations between the two countries in a range of areas, including schools, skills, higher education, research and policy dialogue.
Their work in India on education includes range of British organisations:
British Council: As well as managing the UKIERI programme, the British Council operates a wide range of education partnership programmes that link the UK and India, and Project English to provide quality English language teaching and training.
Department for International Development: DFID spends more than £70m each year on education in India, including supporting major initiatives like the Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhijan (RMSA – universal secondary education) and Mahila Samakhya (education for empowerment) programmes.
UK Trade and Investment: UK businesses have a long track record in a wide range of educational service sectors, including educational resources and vocational training. Service providers in India include a range of not-for-profit ventures and other businesses (not-for-profit ventures and other businesses).
Collegify, a team of young passionate educationists specializing in helping students achieve admission to top universities around the world has organized personal interactive session of Shumi Muinde (Director of International Admissions, Drexel University, USA) with students recently.
The session covered about integrities of the US admissions, how students can create stand out factors, Scholarships & Opportunities and frequently asked questions by students. While applying for study abroad in US, students are always confused on what are the top US colleges to look for. Apart from students with brilliant grades How does an average student maximize chances for a top class admits? These are common question barriers that students face while applying for study abroad.
Shumi Muinde said, “Every year we receive a large number of applications from Indian students. Students desiring to take admissions in US universities are enormous from India. The only thing some students lack behind is proper guidance in choosing a university that simply matches their academic criteria. Due to which they missed the deadlines of application.”
Adarsh Khandelwal, co-founder, Collegify said, “Since the inception of Collegify we have successfully helped more than 1000 students in getting admissions at various universities abroad. For us every student is unique. We work very closely with every student. We guide them/mentor them. We offer a team of qualified mentors who have a vast experience, mentors themselves have lived/worked abroad and is aware of every scenerio and local reality. In the past we have seen couple of students taking huge loans and going to tier-3 partner universities in Australia, Canada. Mainly, these students are from tier-2 and tier-3 cities and this are heavily misguided. Even today the statistics of total number of students going abroad to study is very high & according to what we have researched majority of them come back with huge debts and loans which they cannot pay.”
The 36th XLRI MAXI Fair, the annual disguised Market and Consumer Behavior Research Fair conducted by the Marketing Association at XLRI (MAXI) concluded recently with great fanfare at XLRI- Xavier School of Management. The event was conducted at XLRI Campus, Jamshedpur.
Coveted as one of the biggest marketing event in the B-school circuits, MAXI Fair 2015 was themed on the ‘Swachh Bharat’.
Keeping true to with its theme, MAXI kick started the activities of the 36thMAXI Fair on 16th January with the students of XLRI and Tongji University, China– XLRI’s partner institute in Global MBA Programme, in an attempt to spread the cleanliness message launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, organized a cleaning drive at Sonari, Jamshedpur to promote and spread the message of cleanliness in the locality.
The highlight of the MAXI Fair 2015 was the ‘Banega Swachh India’ campaign with support of leading hygiene product brand Dettol. The campaign also aimed to set the record for the most number of participants in a handwash relay. The record, previously created in Sri Lanka by 650 participants, has been shattered by the registration of over 1000 residents of Jamshedpur. The record will be officially confirmed by Guinness World Records after completing the verification procedures in 8 weeks.
Prof. Sharad Sarin, Professor of Marketing at XLRI and the pioneer of the event commented, “The event was started by MAXI over thirty years ago with a simple mandate in 1979 – to popularize the field of Marketing at XLRI. This is achieved through a mixture of competitive events, talks, interaction sessions, conferences and of course, the MAXI Fair. Since then the fair gives students a hands on opportunity to learn market research fundamentals and come up with marketing insights on live problems handed over by partner brands and corporates. This year’s MAXI Fair too has proudly upheld the tradition of conducting market research in a manner that is both illuminating for the researchers and entertaining for the participants.”
This MAXI Fair 2015 also witnessed the launch of a unique start-up venture by XLRI students – ‘Hobby in a Box’. A one-stop solution for your do-it-yourself ideas founded by Manveen (PGDBM student in XLRI), Sarthak (PGDBM student in XLRI) with Nishant (pursuing management studies at IIMB), ‘Hobby in a Box’ provides all the hobby supplies in the required quantity and with easy instructions as a Hobby Kit.
Till now operational through their Facebook page, ‘Hobby in a Box’ from now will be fully operational on their own website including COD delivery and free shipping and looks forward to add more hobby kits. They have recently launched a YouTube channel which contains our video tutorials of Do it Yourself Hobby ideas.
University College Dublin (UCD) has launched 2015 UCD Scholarships for Indian undergraduate and postgraduate students. The university is granting 4 full scholarships in recognition of V. V. Giri, the fourth President of India, who studied law in UCD from 1913 to 1916.
Students applying for post graduate courses under V.V. Giri Scholarships (Graduate) program will be entitled for 100% scholarship based on their grades in undergraduate courses. Graduate (Taught Masters) Scholarships will be given on the merit based to the students applying for post graduate courses. 100% merit based tuition scholarships worth €3,000 each specifically for Indian students applying for postgraduate courses (applied to applicants who accept offers in first come, first served basis).
UCD is also offering U21 Delhi University Scholarships worth €3,000 each specifically for Indian students graduated from Delhi University, UCD’s Universities 21 partner, applying for postgraduate courses.
The university is also offering undergraduate scholarships. These are:
Undergraduate Global Excellence Scholarship. This is a merit based tuition scholarship.
5 merit based tuition scholarships worth €5,000 each for undergraduate students
10 merit based tuition scholarships worth €3,000 each for undergraduate students
Despite education going digital fast at K-12 level, there’s a section that still favours the traditional mode of teaching. Nonetheless, heads at various universities still believe that live interactive sessions between students and teachers plays a crucial role in polishing the pupil’s mind.
The ICT integration supports number of policies in education but there is still variation in implementation of these policies. The access to ICT is still limited in Indian education plethora. Dr. Ajit Kumar N. Shukla, Director and Dean, School of Engineering, RK University believes, “Tablets for the curriculum is not much important but it could be linked to some courses as doable in practice. Our institution has more than hundred of that and using it for the same.”
The changing dynamics in education sector and shifting expectations for the learning environment require universities to examine teaching and learning practices. The forces of change in higher education system seem to be need of the hour. Believing the thought of using tablets as a medium of study Dr. M.K. Abdul Khader, Vice Chancellor, Kannur University, Kerala says, “With the widespread use of e-resources, irrespective of faculty/ topic of study, by teachers, students, research scholars tablets would be of great significance. Tablets are less expensive in its cost and maintenance which has replaced Laptops with lightening speed. It could be easily handled by everyone in class rooms and during presentation.”
Tablet being one of the portable knowledge base, students can retrieve information as and when needed from internet. It acts as a connecting medium with fellow students as well as the professors. So once the problem popped, it can be shared with all and can get an immediate feedback or solution.
The total number of schools in India is estimated to be 1.3 million out of which 20% of schools are privately run and only 10% of these schools have adopted multimedia. The market size for digitized school products is predicted to grow to $2 billion by 2020. The market for ICT is promising if government schools are considered too.
But is it the only way for the colleges and universities to help their students understand the concept better? Of course not, opined by Dr. Dharmender Saini, Principal, Bhartiya Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering. He asserts, “Tablet is not the only means to make students better understand the concept, Interaction with teacher/expert is must.”
Promoting his thoughts, Shukla adds, “There are many other ways it could be done and it is done extensively by using interaction mode in the class through various activities which gives better experience.” Coming from a different school of thought, Dr. Sraban Mukherjee, Director, Krishna Institute of Engineering & Technology shares, “Brains were nurtured and they did wonders even in the era of no electricity and modern basic amenities of living. So tablets are not mandatory, however, they do provide an ease of learning, understanding, connecting, discussing and communicating.”
An important aspect of M-learning, the technology is convenient which is accessible virtually from anywhere. But M-learning brings portability by replacing books and traditional methods of teaching with small devices filled with learning contents? “Definitely a tablet cannot replace the professor of the institution. It can serve the purpose of a physical book. As we know that different streams (medical, engineering etc.) of studies not only need textual reading but also pictorial understanding of the system. So in these cases we need a copy and pen to memorize and understand them,” shares Mukherjee.
E-book, e-content etc. are mostly passive in nature. They cannot provide learning experience that students get from interactive methods like class room teaching, group discussions, interactive video lectures etc. Tablets cannot propagate values which are lacking in the modern world. Knowledge disseminated from teachers would have lasting impression in the minds of the learner. Tablets provide knowledge indiscriminately. There are no barriers between good or bad. Conventional form of teaching builds unbreakable bond between teacher and the taught.
Universities are addressing this shifting landscape but still there seems to be little adoption. Online courses are growing in number and some universities are making it available free to everyone. To evaluate, assess a tablet before selecting for curricula the universities emphasize on its key features like portability, free OS (Android) to get the desired apps with an ease, WiFi support, 3G/4G support, capable of storing teaching learning material, processing speed, memory, support for external devices, power consumption, weight, durability, warranty and after sales support.
Use of technology to simulate everything has allowed students anywhere in the world to interact with professors and one another in real time rather than requiring physical presence. The introduction of digital tools in the classrooms has brought the narratives alive. They play a major role in the classroom teaching but the effectiveness of such tools depends on how they are incorporated into the learning process. Traditional teaching tools are to be modified so as to use along with digital tools. Though conventional teaching has its own relevance yet the optimum situation could be created by effecting a judicial balance between the two.
“This is era of digitization. So when we talk about our learning curriculum, ease to get information is the key. Every curiosity needs to be addressed quickly as well as correctly and our digital world supports it with abundance of information on internet and a tablet to harness it. However we cannot deny the importance of white chalk and black board based traditional form of education.The primary education system should always be traditional because writing alphabets is an art too which can be imbibed and enhanced in the budding mind only by a pencil in hand and not a key under the finger tip,” says Mukherjee.
The digital education is gaining momentum in education sector as the new Modi Led government has taken steps to bridge the digital divide and had launched new Digital India Campaign. Fortunately the institutions still believes that government should ensure that the in-house practices of public institutions should be improved and Government should ensure quality in teaching learning methodologies. Lack of fund is a barrier to the public institution. Specific initiatives should be taken by the government to strengthen the internet and other digital resources in public funded institutions.
“It is wrong to say that always private institution are far ahead public institution. Yes it is correct new government is committed to bridging the digital deficit and it is required also mostly using the mobile set or through android one. More so for financial transaction in this regard through PRADHAN MANTRI JAN DHAN YOJNA appears to be a turning point,” informs Shukla.
The digital road to smart education has its own share of potholes and infrastructure continues to be the bottleneck. The classrooms require modifications like installation of network link, large screen installations. To overcome this bottleneck, educational institutes should invest more on infrastructure and also ensure proper functioning of facilities so that students get services on time. The below formula can work to bridge this gap:
First strengthen the basic educational amenities in the depriving institutions
Educate the professors and the teachers about the positives of the digitisations
Support students for getting the modern educational aid (laptops, palmtopsetc).
The advancement of e-learning might have been good for the education institutes but it also comes with risk. E-learning do run the risk of overexposure doing harm than good. “Based on the temperament of the learner if he is exposed to the sensitive topics indefinitely than this might result in harming the society then actually benefitting it,” believes Mukherjee.
However, digital technology has the potential to change the phase of education in India and with the new model built around massive open online courses (MOOCS), it has brought closer the dream of digital equality in the country. But this dream can only take the shape into reality only if the infrastructure is placed judiciously. The shallow internet density is making a crisis out of an opportunity. Government should take steps to provide 3G/4G internet services not only in cities but in other rural places as well. Government can come to seize this opportunity by providing the dedicated lease line of internet facility as an outreach program to all the university, colleges and school throughout the state.
Asnani Pearson School has organised Yardstick Experiential learning Programme (YELP) as a step for achieving the vision of transforming education into a joyful and enriching experience. The programme witnessed very good response participation and was applauded by guardians.
