Virtual schools: Towards the next stage of knowledge gathering
With the increasing use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTS), some commonly heard words like Virtual Education / online education / Virtual School / Virtual Classroom have become ever more prominent in the conduct of open and distance education.
National Institute of Open School, NIOS has launched Virtual Open School powered by Blended Learning, and Pedagogy. Learners willing to register for virtual open school can use this online learning platform. It has been introduced to make world-class education affordable to all. Virtual Schools will be focused on increasing the students’ learning outcomes and make them ready to face the digital age. The virtual school is created to facilitate holistic, integrated, enjoyable and engaging learning to benefit open school learners by bridging the gap between ‘education’ and ‘distance’.
Virtual schooling aims to bring a paradigm shift in understanding of ‘Open and Distance Schooling’ with the introduction of new technology. The objective of Virtual School platform is to inculcate conceptbased learning using LIVE interactive teaching-learning tools, interaction and assessment systems for various subjects and various standards of the school. It also strives to identify, recognize and foster the unique capabilities among the pupils/ learners and will be flexible to the learners’ learning trajectories and programmes. The highquality content for Class 9 to 12th offers chapters blended with games, revision notes, textbook solutions, Question bank, peer learning, on-demand video lessons, Live Interactive Classrooms and virtual labs. Furthermore, it also gives the opportunity for skill-based job-oriented courses.
In order to implement the Virtual school, NIOS shall set up a new studio to deliver LIVE lessons to the students; make the e-contents for LIVE sessions and recorded materials available to students; create live chatroom for every student for individual learning assessment. It shall also undertake operations and management of the studio and education services and create a Help desk. The system is reliable, robust and will enable LIVE interactive teaching-learning from studio to the beneficiaries. The solution shall be
a 2-way LIVE interactive model among students and course counsellor over secured network. The developed platform shall allow doubt clarification through remote online teachers and chat rooms. The content shall be low bit rate transferrable without compromising the quality of the output. The learners will be able to access the developed content at their own convenience. The virtual school also has an online monitoring tool. This online tool would provide information regarding the subject-specific live sessions, real-time information about the classes held, and a category and gender-wise dashboard for real-time data on the users from different regions. Moreover, a learner shall have facility of scheduling the personal contact programme, assignment submission, and examination on demand at this digital learning space with timely reminder calls and messages. It shall help the learner to keep a continuous track on his own performance. The virtual school would cater to the needs of distant learners across the country.
Moreover, the virtual learning space would be available for learners of Open school as well as formal schools. The system is based on the principles of Universally Designed Learning (UDL) to make it more accessible for Divyang learners and also for the learners belonging to different socio-economic background.
The Virtual School platform strives to meet the learning needs of young people in India who are not able to attend a physical school and thus mitigating the hurdle of ‘distance’ and making education more accessible and universal. In consonance with the Digital India Campaign, this initiative will work through two-pronged strategy. It is not just a screenbased education with limited focus on the social, affective and psychomotor dimensions of learning rather the thrust would be on experiential learning, including hands-on learning, arts-integrated and sports-integrated education, story-tellingbased pedagogy, gaming, Digital toys, virtual games, learning through animations and use of AI at large as standard pedagogy within each subject, and with explorations of relations among different subjects. It will also minimize the dropout rates by providing suitable opportunities to the learners to catch up and re-enter the education system through various capsule courses, short term and bridge courses. Inclusion of those subjects at the middle/ secondary level which could be further taken up as vocational subjects.
NEP 2020 envisions an education system rooted in Indian ethos, transforming India, that is Bharat, as sustainable, equitable and vibrant knowledge society, by providing high-quality education to all, and thereby making India a global knowledge superpower. The Virtual School aligns with this vision by bridging the gap between ‘distance’ and ‘education’ through technological interventions.
Through this project the top priority is to bring the children back into the educational fold and to retain them, with a goal to achieve 100% Gross Enrolment Ratio in preschool to secondary level by 2030. In view of the same, this virtual school platform will provide opportunity to the learners to be more interactive, creative and collaborative.
NEP, 2020 is paving the road ahead towards attaining its inherent goals by ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education. Virtual schools can be an important instrument to achieve the vision.