January 21, 2015, by Varrtika Mudaliar
Digitisation – The Method, the Mantra!
The digital era is bringing in sweeping changes to the way Indians teach and the way Indians learn, from school classrooms to university lecture halls. Although there is still some way to go, this mode of education is fast permeating even first generation learners in Indian villages, who are increasingly using mobile phone apps and interactive and multimedia content. The time for ‘Digital India’, as announced by the present Prime Minister seems to have finally arrived.
Students and teachers are no longer confined to the limited means of their own institutions. Digitally recorded lectures distributed via the internet are being increasingly used by college professors, and dramatic innovation has come in the form of flipping the classroom i.e. providing lectures in recorded form to students so they can read them at their own pace before the lecture, and involving them in discussions, problem solving and peer collaboration within the classroom.
Alongside this, many universities are offering MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses on platforms such as Coursera, edX etc. opening up a global marketplace for courses developed by a teacher in a specific location, but offered and made accessible to anyone who has internet access anywhere in the world. Early experiments with MOOCs suggest that the physical distance between teachers and students can be effectively bridged by technology.
Although this is a good beginning, and leading institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are increasingly using digital methods, more effort is needed if India is to improve access to education in the same way that it has successfully improved access to mobile phone services.
Source: The Education Trends, Times of India (Dr. S. S. Balasubramaniam, Dean Academics, BITS Pilani’s speech and article)
Photo: Courtesy www.pixabay.com
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