EDUSAT can help bridge India’s learning gap
Giving the learners an opportunity to interact with the instructor is crucial for effective education and training
We have been hearing the good news – 2020 will see India emerge as the world’s youngest nation, with a median age of less than 29. With 64% of its population in the working age group, it offers India’s growing economy an unprecedented edge that economists believe could add a significant 2% to the GDP growth rate. Can the country turn this potential to an actual dividend for itself? Much depends on our ability to educate young people consistently and competitively, in a cost-effective way, and at this large scale.
The government has a clear focus on skill development. Expect a greater push around that in the new National Policy on Education (NEP). In a fascinating talk at the Shiv Nadar University, I recently heard BN Suresh, former director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, recounting the glorious launch of India’s first full-fledged educational satellite, Edusat, in 2004. Much earlier, in 1975, the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), designed jointly by Nasa and the Indian Space Research Organisation, had highlighted the role technology could play in improving the quality of education in India. Looking to address the shortage of qualified teachers at the school and higher education levels, supplement curriculum-based education and provide effective teacher training, India took its next big step towards integrated technology-based learning with the launch of the dedicated Edusat. Satellite communication technology using Edusat became a strong tool for the development of distance education with interactive learning using two-way audio and video communication channels. Even as the government sanctioned funds, the success from the Edusat initiative remained limited due to several challenges such as a delay in establishment of ground network, idling of network connectivity, disparities in the allocation and idling of satellite bandwidth, inadequate content generation and deficiencies in monitoring and evaluation.
But that was the past. Given the current realisation at the policy level, Edusat has the potential to bridge the learning gap. For this to be a reality, we’ll need to take care of hardware and management deficiencies as well as address deeper implementation blockades.
We have to move away from one-way satellite transmission to dedicated two-way interactivity. Giving the learners an opportunity to interact with the instructor is crucial for effective education and training. Even in the remotest corners of the country, educational institutions need to replace their receive-only terminals, get ready to tackle irregular power supply, and not complain of difficulties in fitting the ‘lectures’ into timetables.