There has been a heated debate about the Tamil Nadu government splurging money on freebies. Critics have even accused it of emptying the State’s exchequer. The proponents of the government freebies, however, often pitch a convincing argument about students benefiting from such largesse. It is estimated that by mid-2016, about 30 lakh students in Tamil Nadu would own a laptop. While the intentions of spending the money are still debatable, some of the appropriate questions to be raised are:
a) How has the academia responded to a vast majority of students owing a laptop?
b) Have learners become smart enough to manage their own learning?
c) Have they become autonomous learners or are they still teacher-dependent?
d) Are they able to access open source material for updating themselves and enhancing their skills?
Teachers ought to have utilised the freebie laptop scheme to maximise learning opportunities, thereby enhancing the learning potential of students. Dr. Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, U.K., who is known for his revolutionary e-learning ideas, such as ‘hole in the wall’ and ‘building the school in the cloud’, advocates the notion of letting learning happen rather than making it happen. Now that learners have access to laptops, if teachers put enough thought into this process, they could make static words of textbooks come alive through visuals and other multimedia. Let us explore some of the ways in which the laptop can be put to effective use by teachers and learners.
Flipped classroomsTo start with, teachers need to identify interesting and relevant material in the form of audio and video files, PPTs with or without voiceover, blogs and podcasts which could be shared using external data space or posted on online forums or class wikis. Once the content is transferred, learners can access them without any limitations of time and location. The concept of flipped classrooms has shown us multiple ways to employ laptops out of class. Learners could familiarise themselves with the material provided in advance and turn up to class to engage in activities that put to practice whatever they have learnt theoretically. This way, the class virtually becomes a workshop or a laboratory to experiment their learnt material. Such a process becomes extremely critical for learning English — the simultaneity of language acquisition, that is, ‘using and learning’ and ‘learning and using’ becomes possible — unlike subject concepts which have to be understood prior to application. This shifts the responsibility of learning on to learners who are no longer teacher-dependent, and, in a way, make the teacher redundant. Further, this method emphasises on experiential learning as each learner is engaged with learning at his own pace, obviating the need to be synchronous with other learners or the teacher.
Synchronous learningFor those with Internet facilities, synchronous learning can be facilitated by having volunteers to form discussion forums where they can share additional material and ideas, get doubts clarified, post comments, debate controversial ideas, or anything else relevant to the task at hand. In the traditional set-up, teachers normally give no room for committing errors, and they are highly intolerant towards them. But in synchronous learning, allowing learners to falter is also a part of the autonomous learning process. In the West, synchronous learning is often augmented with guest lectures and video conferences with subject experts where learners interact and get their questions clarified in realtime. Our teachers should also provide similar opportunities and exposure to learners, wherever possible, for an enriched learning experience. This demystifies the notion that textbook alone is a source of serious learning as learning can happen from multiple channels.
Individual TutoringTeachers could undertake Individual Tutoring Plan (ITP) depending upon learners’ needs, interests and levels outside the classroom context as regular class hours hardly permit any individual attention. Instead of transferring identical content to all learners, teachers could transfer material based on specific requirements of each learner or at least a group of learners. As learning styles and strategies vary from learner to learner, some of them being auditory, some visual and others kinesthetic, diversity in material will allow them to leverage their characteristic learning style. Since tutoring focuses on an individual or a group of identical learners, the learning process can be accelerated.
These suggestions can be put into practice without more facilities. Rather than asking for smart classrooms or added features to the laptop, a lot can be achieved with just the existing tools.
If the laptops are sold in open market or if they remain unutilised or underutilised, don’t blame the freebie system but blame the academics who have failed to turn it into an opportunity for accelerated teaching-learning process.
The writer is professor, Department of English, Anna University, Chennai.
