Digital Education
- It is remotely undertaken teaching on Digital platforms
- COVID lockdown has given distinctive rise to it.
Benefits—
- Less intimidating— Many student aren’t comfortable speaking in classroom env
- Focus on ideas— Eliminates physical judgments that can cloud rational discussion
- Self-paced (Learning at their own pace) & Student-centred learning—Flexibility to plan schedule
- Solves problem of teacher scarcity
- Makes it accessible for students of various disabilities & challenges
- 24*7 learning, E-books
- Can be critical in India’s journey towards Digitally empowered society & knowledge economy
- Can usher a new model of connected teaching—links teachers to students & to professional content, resources & systems
- Flipped Classroom— Students watch lecture videos as homework & discussion is carried on them in class-time by teachers—EdtechReview says—It can enhance student performance
- Interactive Gamification—to make Edu more engaging & fun.
- Active learner rather than passive listener
Issues—
- Reinforce a top-down teacher-to-student directionality of learning— w/o shared space to discuss, learning reduce to just gathering information
- Student not participant but only consumer of content
- Social Isolation due to absence of human communication
- Lack of communicational skill dev
Challenges
- Antithesis to equity & inclusion —Due to Digital inequality / Divide—
- NSS 2017-18 & NSO report 2020—
- only 23.8% households have internet access
- Gender divide— 16% women had access, Men— 36%—thus transitions to e-learning may compound the gender gap in edu.
- Rural-urban divide—R (15%), U (42%)
- lack of Digital familiarity
- REMOTE LEARNING REACHABILITY REPORT (UNICEF)—only 24% Indian households have internet connections to access e-education
- Student Diversity—Largely supports only English (not regional lang—Social exclusion & academic non integration)—Lack of vernacular content
- Lack of separate space for learning
Thus it exacerbates inequality & S-E backwardness due to information poverty, lack of infra, lack of digital literacy
- Lack of Practical Learning— Traditional classroom as social space are indispensable
- Indequate Teacher Training
- Logistical Issues—Requires uninterrupted broadband connectivity
- cyber security—“ZOOM-BOMBING”- hacking of e-class
- Digitally unequipped Govt schools
Govt steps—
- SWAYAM Prabha
- NEP 2020— Est of National Edu Tech Forum for advising inst on tech use, capacity building & providing directions for research & innovation
- VidyaDaan 2.0–Individuals & org can contribute to e-learning in education domain.
- e-Paathshaala.
- PRAGYATA guidelines on Digital Edu
- DIKSHA portal provides—supplementary learning material for Students and for upgrading the skills of teachers.
- PM eVIDYA—Aprog for multi-mode access to digital/online edu
Conclusion
- Opportunities provided by new technology can act as potential sources for promoting egalitarianism in education if access of tech is democratised & values of inclusion are institutionalised.
- IT cannot be seen as a silver bullet to remedy all ills in edu system, rather can be used in a balanced manner to Ensure that learning never stops
- Should supplement & not substitute classroom education
Way forward
- Address Digital divide— for inclusive e-learning
- Regional languages
- Est quality assurance mechanisms & quality benchmark for online learning
- Flipped Classroom—Students watch lecture videos as homework & discussion on them in class-time by teachers.
- REMOTE LEARNING REACHABILITY REPORT (UNICEF)— Democratize access to safe & secure remote learning for all.
- Hybrid model needed—Online edu cannot replace Chalk & talk methodology
Stuff
- Classroom offers social space for Social cohesion, eliminating discrimination, stage fear etc
- Online education has a differentiated impact across edu inst & student communities.
- This could also dilute norms of evaluation, whereby a “good lecture” might mean merely a lecture which “streams seamlessly, without buffering”.
- Essay Intro— For the child in urban HP, where Internet penetration is higher than 70%, it likely means online schooling, Zoom classes & digital textbooks. For the child in rural Odisha, where less than 6% of households have Internet facilities, such options are out of the question.
- Delhi High Court has directed both private and government schools in Delhi to provide gadgets and Internet packages free of cost to poor students for attending online classes.
Impact of COvid-19 on education
Closure Of Schools
Denied FR to quality, inclusive and safe education.
- Digital Divide
- Increase Dropouts
- Potential unemployment for recent graduates
- Denial of Food
- Unsupportive Family—Due to limited edu + scarce resources at their disposal.
- Gender Discrimination—Could be forced into early marriage, pregnancies
- Educational apartheid