Since Lockdown started, education had taken a backseat. When it started, it did so at snail’s pace and then all of a sudden, a flurry of live classes propped up. Given cheap (in many cases free) availability of video calling platforms like zoom, google, Teams etc, education institutes, including coaching institutes hooked onto online classes and tried to salvage some of the losses, incurred during first phase of lockdown.
While schools and institutes were trying to cope up with the changes environment students were also coming to terms with the changing behavioral patterns. Mobiles, which parents wanted to keep away from the kids were the new tool of educating the kids. In spite of the concerns raised by doctors, parents and experts on impact of continual video watching on the eyesight online classes thrived. TINA (there is no alternative) factor played a big role and education sector seemed to be paused for a big leap. The marriage of classical education and modern technology was inevitable.
Unfortunately, the turning of wheel did not maintain the momentum it started with. Economic concerns, access to broader bandwidth and dependence on mobile hindered the pace. The unpaid due to the schools by the parents might also have led schools to lackadaisical attitude and stymied the transition to a full-blown education revolution.
The fact remains that the online classes alone do not constitute to the digital way of educating the students.
Apart from the live classes students need to be provided regular assignments and must be evaluated. The tracking of progress in terms of implementation of constructive feedback from the teachers/mentors is a must. Unfortunately, assignments channelled through whatsapp gets lost somewhere in the cyber junkyard – at least once the evaluation is conducted. So the ability to create a trace and utilize it for improvement is lost completely. Not that the schools have been using evaluation mechanism effectively for this purpose in pre-covid era, but now it is more so.
What is required in the education system is an integrated and transparent solution. Teachers and mentors must be empowered to use data, log files, historical records to plan the learning path of the students. The platform should help students to study at his/her own pace, beyond class hours, bolstering self-study habit of the students. There must be multiple ways to engage the students and reinforce their learning.
The assignment and test system should be flexible enough to help students appear for the test when they find themselves to be at the peak of their performance. At the same time, the exam results and assignment evaluation should be recorded, along with the suggestions provided by the teachers, This feedback should be compared with the next set of evaluations to ensure the feedback is applied by the students. If the feedback is not implemented, the system should be intuitive enough to point out the reason.
Of late, parent-teacher meeting, has turned into a routine event to take care of formality. It is high time the parents must be provided near real-time data of their children’s involvement and performance. The parents must not be asked to wait till PTM but should have access to the system to check the progress made by their child at a time they can.
While the pandemic has led us to behavioral change in obtaining education, there are many gaps yet to be filled. Once the schools reopen, the students will be back to the school and the life will go ahead as normal. But the learning in last couple of months must not go wasted. The modified approach towards education and technology should be retained and we must push the revolution further.
For now, the integrated transparent system is the need of the hour and teachers, students parents and experts must continue adopting that .