The idea of education has undergone a vast change. A classroom is no longer thought of as a confined space with a lecturer and students. Today, with a high-speed internet connection and a willingness to learn, one can acquire degrees from top-notch universities around the world.
In recent times, education has slowly been making a move online. Universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford and many more the world over are offering specialised courses, giving their global community of students an online learning experience.
Skill crisis
“One of the reasons for the popularity of online courses is that conventional education has long been unable to deal with the skills crisis across the world, be it in digital marketing, programming, economics, data science, film making or even in language studies,” says Krishna Kumar, CEO of GreenPepper, a digital marketing and consulting firm, which has developed a platform called Tribr, which drives online learning on campuses.
With an aggregation of 3,000 courses, 50 learning platforms and over 50,000 hours of online learning content, the platform urges students to explore their possibilities. “The world needs new skills and not all of them are offered by universities and centres for higher learning. For instance, skills such as digital marketing, data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual reality, robotics, fintech or even programming can be learnt only through online courses and the fact that these are designed by reputed universities, corporations and experts, adds immense value,” Kumar says.
India has over 677 universities, 37,000 colleges and more than 20 million students, but not all the students who pass out are equipped to deal with the skill sets required to meet the new economy challenges. It is this skill gap that employers point to, when it comes to recruiting suitable candidates. Company structures are changing and there is a requirement for skills that are suitable to this changing environment.
Upskilling for professionals
This applies to professionals as well, who need to “upskill” in order to remain up-to-date or have an edge over the others. “One of the positives of online learning is that it affords a sort of self-assessment, which would help the candidate know where he or she stands in the competitive job market.” Employers too have started accepting online courses as a validation of the candidate’s skills.
Most of these online courses are so well-structured that it almost feels like a physical classroom. They are often short-term, but some of them even extend to three months. “They have video lectures handled by top people in the industry or university and quizzes, tests and interactive elements such as discussions with other learners, it almost makes the student feel he or she is in an actual classroom,” Kumar says.
Tribr is now focussing on making 10,000 students learn online courses in a year, by setting up Tribr Hubs on campuses across India. “We have spoken to engineering colleges and management schools to let their students experience a different kind of learning. We have also built a light mobile app which will give the candidates updates on a daily basis and nudge them to start learning online.”
Revolutionising college education
The platform also aims to start a Tribr Fellowship, as a graduate equivalent programme which would be a carefully curated learning programme list with around 400 hours of high quality online learning content, assignments, quizzes, peer discussions and capstone projects. “This can revolutionise the way we look at college education. Many youngsters across the world are learning courses online and working on practical projects. It is time we access world class learning resources online to give ourselves the edge. Employers have already started accepting such learning programmes,” Kumar says. One of the best parts of it is that it is affordable and does not require you to apply for an education loan.
