“Change is the end result of all true learning” Leo Buscaglia an American author made this statement much before the advent of online education. Schools, colleges & other educational institutions have been following the universal method in imparting education to the learners because it is a tried and tested methodology from as far as one can remember. Technology has brought about changes that we could not even think about and has made our lives easier over the years. With such rapid changes in the day-to-day lives and the functioning of the world, it is no doubt that every aspect of our life is bound to be impacted by technology in one way or the other. With the introduction of the internet and subsequent technologies, our education system has always adapted and derived almost all possible benefits from it. Since 2006, the government has taken up numerous initiatives to bridge the gap between education and digital technology which makes it abundantly clear that we see a lot of opportunities to expand education to every student across the country.
India has always seen online education as a boon because of its own rural landscape and the countless possibilities it can generate.
In 2000, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development along with IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University) & MIB (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) took the educational media initiative forward by starting Gyan Darshan, a Doordarshan channel for educational purposes.
In 2011, two friends started a not-for-profit organization called eVidyaloka with the passion to bring volunteerism and technology together. Penetrating the villages in India, eVidyaloka set up classes with monitors/Television sets to provide quality education to the village children.
In 2021, we are in the presence of education technology giants like Unacademy, Byju’s & others which have revolutionized the online education system in ways that nobody thought of during the start. With the pandemic affecting global educational institutions, we observed a huge transformation of every college, and school into an online system of learning.
We can see the massive change in these two decades and it is possible to extrapolate from the above developments that the future in online education is certainly bright and beneficial for everyone. All the ideas towards the expansion of the educational digital landscape are met with challenges that always seem difficult at first until somebody takes them up and finds a way around them after which everyone follows the lead.
The first problem with online education that everyone will relate to is the lack of digital infrastructure in most parts of the country which prohibits a major section of the rural population from accessing quality education. To solve a problem such as this which involves a hundred million poor uneducated people, there are two ways to go about it. First, you recognize you have to think through the problem, which means to look at the world around you, tinker with ideas, figure out what works best and then develop a cost-effective solution that eventually provides us with results. The second way is to look at how others in the world are trying to crack the problem and replicate the same model without having a clue on how to go about it. The AAKASH tablet initiative (MHRD initiative, 2011) from our government was more towards the second way of solving this problem, with complications in creating the Android-based tablet named AAKASH which would enable its beneficiaries towards e-learning. The initiative failed miserably and the one thing we learned from it was to come up with solutions from within the rural areas. eVidyaloka (https://www.evidyaloka.org/) took the challenge to bridge the gap between quality education and villages upon itself and has since paved the way for various programs in the same direction. Starting this not-for-profit initiative in 2011, with the passion to bring volunteerism and technology together, to enable quality in education for most deserving children of remote and rural villages of India, the founders of eVidyaloka set up digital classrooms equipped with Computer/television sets with the help of local communities and connected the students with teachers across the globe. They did not need a tablet or a computer for each student to make education accessible for all, a simple community center with a few devices was enough for the entire village where students could come and learn without any hindrance. With such organizations taking the challenges head-on in some of the most backward villages in the country, digital infrastructure cannot be seen as a hurdle to expand the online education system beyond its usual scope.
The second major problem which occurs in the journey of online education, both as a learner and a teacher is the student-teacher adaptation to this new method of teaching and learning. Since there are only two modes of imparting education presently, a direct comparison between online and offline teaching will always be of paramount importance to highlight the pain points, vulnerabilities, and challenges in both of these methods. College students seem to value the in-class physical learning experience much more than a virtual one. Many acknowledge that phones can be very distracting. In addition, science and technology programs often include hands-on laboratory sessions, dissertation projects, and field trips to complement theoretical studies. Education is not just about subject knowledge but also about developing social skills and sportsmanship among the students, which is built over years. All of these points clearly show that the physical learning experience has been playing an important role in building a considerable environment for the student to learn, grow, and create. It is clear that all these aspects are severely limited even in the present times in online education. On the other hand, teachers may not be well-versed with creating digital content and conveying it effectively online. A sudden expectation from them to upgrade, and from students to adapt, is unfair. For a teacher, body language, eye contact, and understanding of the topic are important cues that are difficult to perceive in an online class and eventually make it difficult to their jobs effectively. If we adopt our first method to solve this problem by looking at it, figuring out what works best, and eventually building a cost-effective solution, we come to a point wherein all of this becomes possible seamlessly and without much efforts to be put in either by the student or by the teacher, which in-a-way defines what technology does for the people: making lives easier and simpler. Unacademy which initially started as a youtube channel in 2015, provided free education to anyone visiting their channel, gradually realized, that by adding more features, making interaction easier, and by providing an environment that keeps the engagement of the students high, they could start charging for their services since it overtook the usual physical learning experience. Some of these features have solved the ever-persisting problem of adaptation to its very core by providing 3-Dimensional animated and realistic videos for better understanding, live interactive sessions to boost communication, easy to use interface for both teachers as well as students, and special checks for understanding. Within 6 years of its inception, Unacademy has shown a clear path to online education being the right alternative going forward. Byju’s, Tutorvista, Firefly, Toppr, Vedantu, Udemy, and Bluprint are only some of the education technology giants which are working towards creating a sustainable and consumer-friendly model to ensure that the level of quality remains unaffected.
The hurdles to achieving a sustainable model for online education across the country and the globe are many, more to come as we progress the journey towards this goal. Apart from the two major challenges of infrastructure & student teacher adaptation, various centralized problems arise out of communities, some resist the change based on their perceptions, challenges are faced in the assessment of student work, some find it difficult to manage time, and some lack motivation. However, the advantages of online education far outweigh these challenges.
Online education allows for learning something beyond the norm. A learner has access to unlimited topics and global experts in niche subjects, something otherwise not affordable or imaginable for many. Online programs allow people of a wide age group to learn at their own pace, without inhibitions, and without compromising on their other responsibilities. Not only does it guarantee quality learning, but it also provides much-needed exposure to the practical world which eventually prepares a learner to face the challenges in the ever-developing corporate/industrial world. From getting world-class teachers to the most remote village to establishing communities/forums with people across the globe engaged in the same subject is what education equality calls for and online education brings us too close to achieving this goal.
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