Bracing for the Impact

Dr. Rajbans Singh Gill

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A gigantic educational crisis has erupted in education systems around the globe due to Covid-19 pandemic. Nationwide lockdowns are impacting over 89% of the world’s student population. In such a scenario E-learning platform are being used widely to minimise the effect of disruption in education. The government of India has initiated and directed to use numerous online platforms by engaging students with online learning through Information and Communication technology techniques. The Human Resource Development Ministry and other departments working under it are bringing out numerous initiatives. The University Grants Commission and its Inter University Centres (IUC) — Informational and Library Network (INFLIBNET) and Consortium for educational Communication (CEC) are part of this network. These platforms can be accessed by teachers, students and researchers.

Some of the Information and Communication Technology tools that students can check out are:

1. SWAYAM provides access to learning resources free of cost. a platform that facilitates hosting of all the courses, taught in classrooms from Class IX till post-graduation to be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. All courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to any learner. More than 1,000 specially chosen faculty and teachers from across the country have participated in preparing these courses. The courses hosted on SWAYAM are in 4 quadrants –

(1) Video lecture

(2) Specially prepared reading material that can be downloaded/printed

(3) Self-assessment tests through tests and quizzes and

(4) An online discussion forum for clearing the doubts.

Steps have been taken to supplement the learning capability by means of audio-video and multi-media and state-of-the-art pedagogy/technology.

2. UG/PG MOOCs hosts learning Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other online courses have been in India for over 10 years and the apprehensions attached to these courses have been shed over the years. This is an archived platform of learning.

3. E-PG Pathshala hosts high quality, curriculum based, interactive e-content containing 23,000 modules consisting of text and videos to more than seventy post graduate disciplines ranging from social Sciences to mathematics.

4. SWAYAMPRABHA is a group of 32 Direct-to-home channels providing high quality educational curriculum based course contents covering diverse disciplines ranging from humanities to engineering covering extensively. Every day, there is new content for at least 4 hours which would be repeated 5 more times in a day, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience. TATA SKY, AIRTEL DTH will also air three educational channels during the lock down.

5. CEC-UGC You tube Channel provides free access to unlimited educational curriculum based video lectures. Subject-wise lectures have been uploaded on You tube. 24,570,593 viewers have accessed to it till date.

6. e-Shodh Sindhu provides current as well as archival access to journals and factual databases in different subjects. Consortia for Higher Education e-Resources is to provide access to qualitative electronic resources including full-text, bibliographic and factual databases to academic institutions.

7. Spoken Tutorials is multi award winning educational content portal. Here one can learn various Free and Open Source Software all by oneself. This platform provides self-paced, multi-lingual courses ensure that anybody with a computer and a desire for learning, can learn from any place, at any time and in a language of their choice. This project has been developed by IIT Bombay.

Apart from these government-sponsored resources, there are other e-learning platforms which are interactive and can be accessed from home. In these Platforms, the teaching faculty has to first add their students to the list and then upload their lectures, course material, audio instructions etc. Most of the students who are on the rolls of higher education institutions have smart phones and other devices irrespective of economic health in urban areas, so e-learning methods can hold ground till the virus is contained.

Easyclass Learning Management System is a platform that allows educators to create online classes whereby they can store the course materials online; manage assignments, quizzes and exams; monitor due dates; grade results and provide students with feedback all in one place. Other resource is Zoom Classroom which helps teachers to Video Conferencing, collaborations, virtual classrooms and Increase student participation and learning retention with virtual and hybrid classrooms and micro-learning.

Faculty members and students may do video/audio conferencing through Skype, WhatsApp, Google Hangouts and other similar e-resources for discussion related to their course. There are numerous screen recoding videos like Screen Hunter, Camtasia screen recorder, windows screen recorder, etc. Using these tools, teacher can make tutorial videos.

Moodle, is another option, which is an Online platform with number of features for conducting online examinations. It can create and store a question bank on the Moodle platform. The test time slot and time span can be set for the particular test with which we can test students. Punjabi University is the pioneer in making full use of online platforms and connecting every student by every means available to deliver course contents.

While the present conversion to online courses is prompt and provisional, it may have long-term consequences on how education and learning are delivered. Mostly students in the rural areas suffer from network problems and lack of iPads or smart phones. Currently, major challenge is to lessen as much as possible the negative impact this pandemic will have on learning and education and construct on this data to get back on a track of speedier development in learning. As education systems cope with this disaster, they must also be thinking of how they can recover stronger, with a transformed sense of responsibility of all actors. Brace for its impact!

— The writer is Professor & Director, Centre for Public Policy & Governance, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab (gillrajbans@gmail.com)