New Approach for Post-Covid Education

• 15 May 2021

Why in News

Due to a surge in Covid-19 infections in the Second Wave of infections, the education of students in the entire nation is affected.

Key Points

• Concerns:
  
  • Availability of Online Education:
    
    • Online education was envisioned as an alternative means of spreading education, but it too fails, given the Indian students’ conditions.
    • The availability and affordability of this system poses a barrier.
    • While e-education is a privilege for the students from an upper and middle class, it has proved to be a nuisance for students from the lower middle class and people living below the poverty line.
  • Long-Term Exposure to Internet:
    
    • There are also implications of longer exposure to the internet for these young kids.
    • This may create impediments to the development of the thinking process in the younger generation.
  • Decreasing Analytical Thinking:
    
    • The other important question is about the learning outcomes of online education.
    • Google is the prominent and only platform to all queries, and as a result of that, students are not thinking on their own.
      
      • Scientific outlook was the key parameter stressed upon since the inception of modern education in India.
  • Increasing Student Isolation:
    
    • Due to the pandemic and lack of physical classroom teaching, a peculiar feeling of isolation is developing in the minds of students. That’s a very serious issue. The trauma of the second wave will put a deep imprint on the student’s mind.
    • Physical interaction and activities have been entirely absent, and that may also be contributing to new problems.
• Possible Solutions:
  
  • Use of Infrastructure:
    
    • The whole infrastructure should be fully utilised, and if necessary, many more facilities should be invested in (and created) to impart education.
      
      • As classroom teaching gives us the opportunity to impart many more things apart from information.
  • New Content:
    
    • Institutions should contemplate new content generation for each subject to overcome the absence of classroom teaching within the framework of the existing syllabus.
    • This content would be of a new type, self-explanatory, and considering the lowest IQ of the class, it has to be attractive.
    • The content should produce the same effect on the minds of the students that the best book imparts on the thinking faculty.
  • Personal Supervision:
    
    • The teachers and non-teaching staff should visit the locality of the students (in and around the school area) on a weekly basis to supervise the whole work.
    • They should take notes on the problems faced by students in understanding the reading material and also whether things are reaching them on time.
  • New Evaluation System:
    
    • The evaluation should be based on the capacity of analysis, and the questions should be framed in such a way that students need to apply their minds to answer the questions on each subject.
  • Prioritizing Vaccination:
    
    • In addition, the government should take the responsibility to vaccinate the whole teaching community as fast as possible to advance this learning process.
• Related Government Initiatives for E-Learning:
  
  • E-PG Pathshala:
    
    • An initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to provide e-content for studies.
  • SWAYAM:
    
    • It provides for an integrated platform for online courses.
  • NEAT:
    
    • It aims to use Artificial Intelligence to make learning more personalized and customized as per the requirements of the learner
  • PRAGYATA:
    
    • The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) released guidelines on digital education titled PRAGYATA.
    • Under the PRAGYATA guidelines, only 30 minutes of screen time per day for interacting with parents is recommended for kindergarten, nursery and pre-school.
  • National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning:
    
    • The NPTEL is a project of MHRD initiated by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), along with the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore.
    • It was started in 2003 and its aim was to have web and video courses in engineering, sciences, and management.

Way Forward

• Covid-19 has shown the extent to which the Indian system of education exploits inequalities.
• Thus, there is a need for renewed commitments to the synergy between the private and public education sector. In this context, there is a need to make education a common good and digital innovation can help in achieving the feat.

Source:IE