‘Much to look forward as classrooms evolve’
Higher education is certainly going through churn. On the one hand, engineering is no longer as coveted a career, and the MBA in its current form seems to be heading for saturation. The need of the hour is to reinvent these courses and make them more industryspecific and relevant.
A significant change that we are seeing around us is the rapid emergence of skills-based courses in areas such as retailing, banking, selling, mobile repair, embroidery, fashion.
These courses are typically of short duration, ranging from three months to a year, and include a great amount of practical training.
They are skill-based and involve practical learning; exams are often based on practical and offline /online quizzes.
Many of these courses come with a job guarantee and this make them that much more attractive. The government, through the National Skills Development Corporation, has instituted a system to recognise some of these skills-based programmes to ensure academic rigor and standardisation.
More efforts are on in this direction and once this is institutionalised it will bring about a sea change in the employment patterns in the country. Another innovation that is needed is to allow flexibility in completion dates for a course, to allow for breaks and ensure that it is paced based on the comfort level of the student.
There is also the possibility of a system where students can acquire learning on a continuous basis and get certified upon completion of certain milestone... say a certificate after six months , a diploma after a year and a degree after two years, with the caveat that they should complete the degree within four years of starting.
This will allow for a good blend of theory and practical study and minimise dropouts.
This has also led to the establishment of new deemed and private universities and several college and institutes coming up all over the metros, mini metros and even smaller towns. I visualise that many more of these will come up in 2020 and we will see more skills universities being established.
Due to technology, the world is rapidly changing around us, and people worry that technology will replace human intelligence. Some educators worry that there will be need for teachers in the future as technology might take over teaching too.this is only a myth as technology could supplement but cannot exist in isolation. In fact, technology could be a huge enabler and facilitate the learning process as under:
1. Anytime learning and at any place is possible with the use of handphones & tablets and such with the use of high speed internet.
2. Personalised learning at one’s own pace, with the advantage that the learner could choose what he or she would like to study and set his / her own pace of study and assimilation.
3. Flexible paths and a greater choice of subjects. In a traditional system, we are bound by the modules existing in place and these tend to make the learning very strait-jacketed. Flexible learning systems enable more choice of diverse subjects
4. Blended learning, flipped classrooms and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) for learning. While we are used to various pedagogical tools, synergy focuses on blended learning, learning from peers and even learning from people across geographical borders.
5. Project-based and experiential learning. This serves as a dual tool as learning can be more engaging and also provides a basis for objective evaluation.
6. Increasing importance of data interpretation and data analytics. Today the emphasis has clearly shifted towards quantitive data and this forms the basis for various decision making tools and approaches .