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Digital education: Boon or Bane
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- Pandemic hit hard: The Covid-19 outbreak disrupted children’s lives everywhere, pushed many out of formal schooling, and literally stalled classes and examinations across India. To ensure students do not miss out on studies, schools shifted the classes to online mode. But it's easier said than done.
- Upheaval: Many students were left clinging to their phones and computer screens, and many had no internet. The 2017-18 National Sample Survey suggested that less than 15% of rural Indian households have Internet as opposed to 42% of their urban counterparts. So the shift to the e-learning system has sparked a debate on whether it helped the students to learn or has impeded their progress, social and emotional well-being, and more importantly if this is indeed education.
- Digital education: It is the innovative use of digital tools and technologies during teaching and learning and is often referred to as Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) or e-Learning. Exploring the use of digital technologies gives educators the opportunity to design engaging learning opportunities in the courses they teach, and these can take the form of blended or fully online courses and programs.
- Government initiatives: Several initiatives have been taken to enable online education in India, such as (a) E-PG Pathshala: An initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to provide e-content for studies, (b) SWAYAM: it provides for an integrated platform for online courses, (c) NEAT: It aims to use Artificial Intelligence to make learning more personalized and customized as per the requirements of the learner, (d) National Project on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), National Knowledge Network, (NKN), and National Academic Depository (NAD), among others.
- Technology as a saviour: Online education enables both the teacher as well as the students to set their own learning pace plus provides the flexibility of setting a schedule that fits everyone’s agenda. Consequently, providing a better work-study balance. In a space as vast and wide as the internet, infinite skills and subjects are there to teach and learn. A growing number of universities and higher education schools are coming forward to offer online versions of their programs for various levels and disciplines. Lesser monetary investment is needed, with better results. With the online mode of learning, the money spent on study materials along with commute charges is considerably less. Online learning allows students to work in the environment that best suits them.
- Problems: Education is not just about classes but interactions, broadening of ideas, and free-flowing open discussions. Students learn more from each other while engaging in challenging collective tasks and thinking together. There is substantial learning that is lost when education goes online. Staring at a screen prevents them from using their mind and acting as remote receptors of what is beamed. Not everyone who can afford to go to school can afford to have phones, computers, or even a quality internet connection for attending classes online. Due to this, the mental stress that students have to undergo is very high.
- Contradictory to Right to Education (RTE): Technology is not affordable to all, shifting towards online education completely is like taking away the Right to Education of those who cannot access the technology. Moreover, the National Education Policy that talks about the digitization of education is also in contradiction with the right to education.
- Health issues: Younger students, especially in classes 1 to 3 were most likely to suffer from eye-health issues due to staring at the computer or mobile screen for extended periods. Other health issues like neck and back pain etc. due to bad posture and lack of movement have been noticed in older students.
- Road ahead: Flexible rescheduling the academic timetable and exploring options in collaboration with schools, teachers, and parents for providing access to education to a larger section of students. Staggering teacher-student interactions in physical mode with not more than 50% of the total strength attending schools on alternate days. Giving priority to the less advantaged students who do not have access to e-learning. Genuine efforts must be invested to ensure every child gets good quality equitable education as a fundamental right. Shorter but quality discussions rather than long hours of monotonous sitting and one-way communication, should be preferred. And finally, authorities must accept (and hence try to resolve) the problem that millions of students are left out of the mainstream of education due to the online shift.
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