EDUCATION'S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Some HEIs and Elite Schools Being Early-Adopters of Tech, Smoothly Transition To Online Education CBSEflags issues before hybrid model becomes a nation-wide reality; HEIs implement incremental tech capabilities

- Deepa Vaidya

FACTS

AS ON 5 MARCH 2021

• Around 1.5 million schools were closed in 2020 in India.
• This impacted the lives of 247 million children in the country.
• Only eight states/UTs have opened all classes from class 1 to class 12.
• 11 states have reopened classes 6-12
• 15 states have only opened classes 9-12
• Three states have reopened Anganwadi centers, with younger children losing out greatly on crucial foundational learning.

At a time when some schools are closing down as owners look to exit the business of education, some managed to go online, some are into hybrid teaching and online teaching is almost the norm, Prof. Biswajit Saha, Director, (Trainings & Skills Education), Central Board for Secondary Education, expresses concerns over the hybrid model. For the hybrid model to exist forever and promote the asynchronous model, says Saha, “This is not the time to shift curriculum transactions to online method. In the future, think of health issues and unless students come to school physically, other pillars of education will not be completed.” “Then there are issues related to data security, where content is stored in cloud; there is open source vs closed source. In open source, data quotes are freely available, schools’ management should create indigenous LMS based on freely available open-source s/w. Ultimately, cloud ownership could be in India to define future data safety and security. Also, the SOP for operating LMS of the teaching-learning process should be region-wise. How the existing platform is addressing these issues, how teachers are functioning need to be discussed.”