In these times of uncertainty around exams, results, and the reopening of schools and colleges, students are constantly being asked to keep themselves occupied as they would be up against time once schools and college resume. To occupy themselves productively, online education platforms such as BYJU’S have stepped in and opened up their resources to students (from classes I to XII) for free, until the end of the month. Daily access to quality education is extremely important for students’ wholesome development. But what is the future of online learning, post the pandemic? Is it a supplement or a substitute to regular learning? How effective is it? Mrinal Mohit, COO, Head of Sales & Marketing Think & Learn Pvt Ltd (BYJU‘S), shares some insights.
Digital tools can be fun, interactive, and customised
Technology has shifted the way learning is approached by children, parents, teachers and education institutions. Studies have shown that children extensively use their senses to learn in which the sense of sight accounts for 75%. Hence, to make learning fun and effective, correct use of technology has become crucial. In fact, in recent times, technology in education has taken the concept of personalised teaching and learning to the next level. It has helped bring in innovation to the way subjects are being taught, and personalise it based on the capability of the student. Students can then learn at a pace and in a style that is most comfortable to them.
Gamification too has brought in some much-needed disruption to ensure that a student’s learning experience is simultaneously engaging, interactive and effective. It drives them towards achieving their goals and eventually leads to better learning outcomes. Over a period, it has been observed that clever integration of games has demonstrated higher engagement and increased motivation towards learning especially among younger students, making them truly fall in love with learning.
Great learning only happens when children feel happy, safe and secure. Students should fall in love with the idea of learning and not study merely for exams. While technologies will continue to disrupt the education industry, the key transformation will come in once the learning ecosystem adopts a ‘student-driven’ approach like how we have done by combining world-class teachers, proven pedagogical methods, data sciences and machine learning to deliver personalised instruction, feedback and assessment for each student, all through an easy to use mobile app. BYJU’S covers ICSE, State board and CBSE syllabus, besides prepping for NEET, CAT, JEE, IAS, Commerce and government exams.
Visual learning gives better clarity on the subject matter
Of all the information transmitted to the brain, 90% is visual as opposed to text. Our brain can even see images that last for only 13 milliseconds - a fact that indicates the power of visuals. When it comes to learning, most students struggle with subjects because they find them uninteresting and hence lack the motivation to put in the required effort. Another scenario is when they are unable to understand a concept because of the way it is taught, which leads them to either rote learn or convince themselves that they will never be able to grasp it. Captivating visuals, engaging videos, interesting infographics, and so on. help learners fight the boredom and motivate them to do better. They impact learners on a cognitive level and stimulate imagination, consequently enabling users to process the data faster.
We believe that visuals create quicker and stronger feedback than text. They help students in engaging with the material, and such emotive reactions impact their information retaining abilities. For example, at BYJU’S we use creative teaching methods such as using a pizza to explain fractions, a birthday cake to teach circles and cricket or a basketball game to demonstrate projectile motion which helps students understand the concepts better.
Make education more effective
The main idea is to make learning accessible, effective, engaging and personalised for everyone. In our system, children are still getting trained to solve questions and not ask questions. Learning happens because of a fear of exams, and not for the love for learning. We aimed to bring back the child-like curiosity back in them by creating products in a format that they will like, and hence, making them lifelong learners.
We believe that a unique combination of media, technology and content can help create a holistic learning experience for students. Imagine a biology classroom where students get step-by-step instructions on how to dissect a frog from a software that is watching and correcting their move!
This type of learning is made more effective when online learning programmes like ours are in-sync with the National curriculum framework as well as the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). At BYJU’s we also have all major boards on our platform to help students strengthen the concepts they learn in school.
