VIJAYAWADA: Teaching in colleges across Andhra Pradesh will undergo major changes with the Government keen on integrating technology in a big way.
The stage is being set for effective online teaching and learning experience in a collaborative, vibrant environment by bringing into play Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). These aim at unlimited participation and open access to teachers and students through the web.
Swayam—a programme designed indigenously by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) with the help of Microsoft—is perhaps the first initiative being launched through MOOC platform in the country. The Chandrababu Naidu government is keen on lapping it up.
Swayam aims at ensuring access, equity, quality and best teaching learning resources to all students, including the most disadvantaged. It seeks to bridge the digital divide for students who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to join the mainstream of the knowledge economy.
Swayam will ultimately be capable of hosting 2,000 courses and 80,000 hours of learning: covering school, under-graduate, post-graduate, engineering, law and other professional courses.
“All the courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available free of cost. More than 1,000 specially chosen faculty and teachers from across the nation have participated in preparing these courses,” says K. Srinivas, Professor ICT (Information and Communications Technology), National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA).
Prof. Srinivas was here to address college teachers at a workshop on “Pedagogy and e-Content Development”.
Innovative methods
“Use of innovative methods in classroom teaching is imperative. The expectations of students are very high and there is a wide gap. We live in the age of Facebook and Twitter where students are socially connected. Simply uploading the new modes of teaching online is not enough. We need to start transacting,” he said.
He cited the “powerful and secure Open Educational Resources (OER) like Moodle, a free learning platform that helps one create effective online teaching and learning experiences.” Developed on pedagogical principles, Moodle is used for distance education, flipped classroom and other e-learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces and other sectors.
State Commissioner for Collegiate and Technical Education G.S. Panda has asked officials of the department to constitute a team of about a dozen experts who are well-versed in technology to start creating online ‘tools’ to make classroom teaching interesting by making liberal use of these online resources.
The teachers will have no choice but to gear up for a new mode of teaching which has technology as its cornerstone.
