Education in the new era

Sometime in the second week of March, state governments across the country began shutting down schools and colleges temporarily as a measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. It’s close to a month and there is no certainty when they will reopen. This is a crucial time for the education sector—board examinations, nursery school admissions, entrance tests of various universities and competitive examinations, among others, are all held during this period. As the days pass by with no immediate solution to stop the outbreak of Covid-19, school and university closures will not only have a short-term impact on the continuity of learning for young learners in India but also engender far-reaching economic and societal consequences.

During this crisis, majority of the children in Indian households are on their laptops that too only for those who are privileged enough to access that. For most of their government school counterparts have completely shut down for not having access to e-learning solutions. The students, in addition to the missed opportunities for learning, no longer have access to healthy meals during this time and are subject to economic and social stress.

Over the next decade, digital is the way to go for majority of the industries, however, is our education system really up for the challenge?

Closures of universities and schools have both short and long-term impacts. There is a disruption in the continuity of learning. More than 285 million young learners in India are suffering the consequences of this disruption.

Is homework on WhatsApp and lessons on zoom really going to be the new normal going forward?

With the digital revolution, beginning to surface in urban schools, including urban government schools, it is likely that rural schools might miss riding the digital wave due to insufficient infrastructure.

However, it is believed that this infrastructure problem, gender disparity, and teacher shortage (India require 1 million teachers) can be curbed through smartphones and open access even from a remote location. Internet and Mobile Association of India report says that out of 500 million smartphone users, 66 million are aged between 5 and 13 years, suggesting that a significant number of India’s demographics on the internet are actually school children. However, this shows that out of 300million students only 22% gain access to the internet through smartphones. Additionally, these users do not have their devices and rely on devices of parents or other family members for their internet-related requirements.

But are we missing any far-reaching economic and societal consequences of the above scenario? Before moving on, we need to consider some important issues such as below.

The current structure of ensuring attendance, course, exams, doubt clearing, group learning is compatible to physical classroom teaching. Adopting it, as it is, for the digital platforms will weaken the foundation of digital education.

Secondly, the quality of content, delivery by teachers, and comprehension by students is still a major concern. We need to decide that with internet running side by side, will the learning become more comprehensive or will it become full of distractions. There are still unsolved issues regarding surveillance techniques and the ability to connect to various platforms at once.

Indeed, mobile phones can solve the problem of infrastructure in the form of classrooms, electricity, and sanitation facilities. However, will it create an equal opportunity or will it widen the gap amongst high, lower, and lower middle class. Not everyone can afford a smartphone and a large amount of 4g data.

Digital education is still a long shot but some efforts are the need of the hour to prepare ourselves for embracing this tide. 

We require a hybrid model that can leverage digital advancement to make up for deficiencies in the physical mode of learning. We need multilingual course in vernacular languages for better learning. This can only be achieved through collaborative efforts of start-ups with the government. New learning techniques through virtual and augmented reality tools can help to achieve practical skill training at remote and inaccessible locations.

We also need flexible school structures that can adapt according to the local demographics to provide quality education. One size does not fit all, this customization of course and teaching can be achieved only through the digital mode. For this, the teachers need to be given advanced level training. Some indigenous digital infrastructure needs to be developed at a very low cost that affordable for masses.

Last but not the least; we need to incentivize telecom operators to ensure a large amount of high bandwidth data at affordable prices for a longer time. It may also focus on constant quality of streaming to reduce pressure on the network and creating a repository of content that can be accessed from any part of the country. The government also needs to ensure that every geographic location has uninterrupted internet. There should be zero interference to the network so that education does not degrade from a necessity to a luxury.  

A synergistic effort is required to even dream of the Indian education system to become partially digital.

Resources:

1. https://government.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/education/covid-19-pandemic-impact-and-strategies-for-education-sector-in-india/75173099
2. https://www.livemint.com/technology/tech-news/india-has-second-largest-population-of-monthly-active-internet-users-report-1569500591581.html
3. https://www.financialexpress.com/education-2/why-rural-india-still-has-poor-access-to-quality-education/1393555/