The immediate impact of COVID-19 is ubiquitous. Though colleges and universities shut down, exams were postponed, events canceled, and regular classes suspended, learning is not on hold everywhere. Online learning and offerings of education technology providers get broader and deeper among some sections of the society. The pandemic points out our educational capabilities, gaps, and few learning residuals.
Using alternative modes of educational delivery, including online education and alternative assessments on a large scale, in the coronavirus season can be the most massive experiment in remote-learning Indian education.
Institutional responses
Even if there has been a market drive and regulatory thrust on online learning and educational technologies for long, many institutions do not have the necessary mechanisms in place to meet such emergencies. Some are slow in incorporating the tools and methods. Yet, there are significant efforts from many responsive institutions. We can see four levels of responses in addressing the COVID-19 emergency in the sphere of teaching and learning.
At the bottom, all educational activities have differed, and the downtime period becomes a proxy vacation. At the second, videos are uploaded, mostly on YouTube, and assignments are collected via emails, which cannot be equivalent to active remote learning. At the third level, a combination of tools is used. It incorporates learning management systems (like Moodle or Google Classroom), conferencing tools (like Skype or Zoom), extensive use of MOOCs (like Swayam, Coursera or Edx) and assessment tools (like Quizlet and peer evaluation tools). At the fourth level, classes are conducted as per the timetable, with the only difference being they will be in synchronous online mode aided by Learning Management Systems with high levels of functionality of all the previous tools in the third level.
Tools
Obviously, most of our institutions fall under the first and second categories, and the challenge is to push them to the next levels. It is not hard to do so by selecting the right tools and co-creating with the students. The UGC has circulated more than two dozen resources to the academic community for online learning and self-paced learning.
The SWAYAM platform and edtech companies witnessed a surge in registration, usage, and completion rates. Conferencing solutions like Zoom saw a large number of downloads in the first week of lock-down. Most Indian and international content providers in education and MOOCs are offering free access and upgrades. This is an opportunity for our academics to experience, improvise, curate and contextualise the educational process for our students. Curating educational content and exploring methodology from multiple sources like books, videos, assessment components and MOOCs to match with the institutional context and student requirement can be done by teachers even without high technical knowledge.
Digital imbalance
Many national institutions and international schools have shifted entirely to online mode because of their preparedness and pre-existing privileges. Students from affluent backgrounds and premier institutions have a distinct advantage in learning during even this crisis. The inequity in real education is reflected in the digital space as well . It may be ironic, but true, that to bridge this digital imbalance; the cure may come from technology itself. Popularisation of low-cost devices like Raspberry and technologies like blockchain may allow the implementation of digital certificates, validation of educational contents, and credentials with better transparency and control. However, more research is required in these areas, with a particular focus on instructional delivery.
The inevitable transition
The emergency transition to remote learning is mostly by force. It may appear inconvenient and challenging for status-quo academia. And there are, as always, arguably so, debates that online learning cannot replace face-to-face learning. Yet, online learning, being an umbrella term, offers a possibility to shift and extend our understanding and practice from video classes to online interactive exercises. Non-‘Google’-able assignments and learning extensions are the new necessary reality of instructional design in the mainstream.
If one of the objectives of higher education is to prepare our students for the future, an emergency is the right time to rise up to the challenges of learning continuity. There are other global impacts, such as the impact on international student mobility and educational finance, which are yet to be clear.
Remote learning is not a distant future
Remote work and education are not reserved for emergencies, but in challenging times, Corona is a powerful reminder to reassess our modes of delivery and a wake-up call to overcome the vulnerability of academia. If flexible delivery and close social interfaces are the future of higher education, the period of lock-down is not a short-time to rethink and develop new teaching and learning models.
To make the shift happen, each institution can create a transition schedule in which expectations from tech support and pedagogical spaces are defined. Selection of forums of interaction, revamping IT policies, transferring and boosting the existing content, and designing interactivity are the cornerstones. COVID-19 demands us to imagine a collective educational future, which was unimaginable a few months back. Once the willingness and the basics of the educational change are correct, we can keep calm, and carry on.
G Srinivas is the Joint Secretary and Salil S is the Education Officer with the University Grants Commission.
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While digital learning platforms are currently substituting for regular learning methods, they can be used to complement traditional in the future as well
Dr. Kuncheria P Isaac
The COVID-19 outbreak, has made educational institutions adopt several of the following digital technologies:
Record video lectures of teachers and upload them on YouTube or similar platforms for students to view and listen at their own pace.
Provide notes and content related to the courses to students through email, WhatsApp, etc.
Lectures are delivered on digital platforms at scheduled slots when students join to listen and interact. These are called live lectures or webinars.
Ideally, the platform should have the following facilities to achieve the same or better feeling of a face-to-face classroom environment.
(i) Provision to see each other.
(ii) Presentation of slides and content.
(iii) Use of white board.
(iv) Discussion forum.
(v) Marking attendance.
(vi) Conduct of assignment and assessment.
(vii) Conduct of laboratory sessions.
Some concerns:
The first and foremost is the non-availability of desktop/laptop to participate in the online lecture. The percentage of students using Android mobile in the online classes is 75%. It is also appropriate for AICTE to think of a shift in the policy of insisting on a minimum number of computers in the institution.
The second concern is the transparency in conducting assessment online for which we should go by the “honour-code” way or limiting the time for closed book examination or encouraging open book examination.
The entire education system in the country is moving to Outcome Based Education and the Blooms Taxonomy levels of Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate and Create are applied to the learning outcomes. Several other innovative techniques that can be used to assess the learning outcome levels. The open book examination system of short duration and reports/projects requiring longer duration could make the assessment transparent and improve the knowledge and skills of the learners required by Industry 4.0.
The writer is, Vice Chancellor, Hindustan Institute of Technology, Chennai (former Member Secretary, AICTE and founder Vice Chancellor of APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University)
