When world-class educational content is available for free on the internet, we still use content which is not at par and with a pedagogy / delivery, which cannot be compared with the Khan Academy, online courses and free-validated content available on the Internet. So many times, the content has been made available by the Professors of the highly-reputed government institutions in their fields. What is the catch? Why are we not able to upgrade the mass-scale education to get wedded to this?
While the play of the internet is transforming our lives, the content-based education transformation of our young minds is still in a very nascent stage. The game-changer today lies only at two-levels. Either you innovate and create something out of the world or pick up a working-model and adapt it to your needs and make a success of it.
You may need complementary and supplementary support. That is where human ingenuity counts. How best can the public domain content be used to scale the standard of education?
Are you not able to scale the mindset of a classroom teaching, whatever may be the reason? The students flocking to the coaching centers seem to be telling another story; that the schools cannot take them through the public / or competitive exams and that there is no online support available. As we move into the Digital Age, finding solutions to hard problems of life would be valued as the most important learning. If the child is not able to study on a very standard global teaching platform, then what has been the educational enablement of the child?
The capability to transform the internet public domain knowledge platforms into learning models for mass schooling and also for individuals is the journey which ought to traverse immediately. It’s like a Linux put to commercial use, the support systems have to be put in place.
The teacher facilitators, the solution providers, the crisis managers, the preparation experts, the exam managers so to say, it might be one role and few of them rolled into one, to support Digital Learning.
The synthesis of physical / digital mix is a robust one. Though many branded schools and colleges, universities in India and in the west redesigning online courses, quite a few both off campus and on the campus in COVID-19 perspective thinking virus age has come to stay even if supposedly a solution has been found and approval for a few vaccines has been obtained, there is undeniable fact that in future viruses keep coming in different forms!
Still is a limitation in online learning off-campus. How can one learn emotional skills? And while children prefer venturing for higher studies abroad, cross cultural integration, information sharing add further value addition in on campus education!
Here again, online education has inherent limitations! Can the paradigm of education align with the digital age!
THE PROFESSIONAL VOICE IS THE VOICE WITH A DIFFERENCE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
Blog by- Dr. Parvez Hayat
Former DGP/ Advisor Centre for Climate Change and Disaster Management JMI -A-Central University