Piyush Agarwal, CEO of Aurus Network, tells why Indian?universities should embrace technology to make quality?education affordable and?accessible.
At a time when top universities are opening their doors for students across the globe, Indian universities are still hesitant to share their content through internet. Piysuh Agarwal, CEO of Aurus Network, which offers technical solutions for educational institutes like IITs, talks about the disadvantages of the traditional educational system and how Indian universities should embra?ce technology to make quality education affordable and accessible.
What are the major disadvantages of a traditional academic system?
Best universities are dependent on a high student to teacher ratio. There is also a severe shortage of highly skilled teachers and a divide between elite and non-elite institutes. Access to good quality education is limited by design. We conducted a survey at IIT-Kanpur and for the kind of interaction that is happening in a classroom, there is minimum interaction between the teacher and the student. Students have to move on irrespective of whether they really understood the topic or not. We allow teachers to assess how students are performing at multiple stages. They can take proactive steps rather than waiting till the end of the exam. Every learner is different. For some people, the lecture mode might work and for others it could be reading. The pace of learning varies from student to student. Technology can actually offer people two different ways to learn. For certain topics, you can offer animation tools.
Some educationists fear that technology might actually lower the quality of education? What?s your take on it?
Technology-based education will give recognition to good teachers and students. Today, students go online and watch lectures of Stanford professors if they are not happy with their teachers. One top management college in India introduced a video conferencing system, but it was never used by teachers as they did not want to change their teaching style. Technology cannot dictate ways of learning to teachers if they want to reach out to more students. Technology should also give more flexible solutions to teachers.
Can a smaller class size magically solve the problems?
Access to quality teachers is one of the biggest hurdles for attaining quality education. Technology alone cannot solve the problem. Empowering teachers to ensure that learning happens is extremely important.
What sort of measures should be adopted to ensure that students comprehend the subject completely?
There are multiple models, like virtual laboratories. A video lesson is the primary mode of learning used in our system. It could either be a live video or an on-demand lecture. Live lectures have the audio video component as well as an option for text interaction with the instructor. There are pop-up quizzes which give them hint about the topic or gives reference to other materials so that they can use it. The responses of students are automatically recorded, so that teacher can assess if students are struggling with a particular concept.
Why do you think Indian universities are not ready to take the plunge in to online education?
Even if quality content is available, there isn?t much demand for it. The sole motivation of most students is to clear exams. The reason why students are opting for courses offered by universities like Stanford is because of the brand value attached to it. Even if a tier-three university offers quality content, students will not consume it. In several premiere Indian universities, there is a lot of inertia. It does not take a lot of money to generate quality content, if our professors are willing to do it. Indian universities blindly follow Western ones. The classic example is the government?s initiative to upload MIT?s content on YouTube. However, there is no feedback mechanism integrated to the whole system, so the number of students who actually come back to watch the video lessons are very less.
We will see more universities offering online content for fee or for a certificate in the next one to two years. Teachers in US universities let students learn in their own way. But here, most universities are more concerned about attendance.
Category: India
Source: http://postnoon.com/2013/05/29/teaching-learning-will-benefit-from-technology-boost/127788
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