Digital Education Based Learning

Digital learning is possible in schools, colleges, and all other fields. It is an online platform for learning that covers a normal classroom as a digital classroom and makes learning easy by pictorial and images representative of the subject or topic with lots of examples for students. For Digital Education, schools use digital devices like tablets and laptops to simply and speedily connect students with an enormous and ever-growing educational tool, resources, and content experts on the Internet.

Education plays important role in the development of a nation. This happens primarily because of the digital revolution taking place all across the globe. Digital Education means digital learning. Digital learning is supported by digital technology or by instructional practice that makes effective use of digital technology. It is a medium that includes the combination of modern technology and electronic gadgets.  It includes some unique ways of learning like

  • Game and fun-based learning.
  • Collaborating with other students locally and globally.
  • Blended fun and games with virtual learning.
  • Online communities participate in the activity.
  • Assessment of projects and reporting progress online.

Emerging Trends of Digital Education

  • Digitalized Classroom/Flipped Classroom.
  • Video-Based Learning.
  • Massive Open Online Course (MOOCS) & other Distance Learning programs.
  • K12 Sector: Game-based learning.

Important of Digital Education

Digital Education is the modern technology that facilitates us to introduce elements of gamification (learning through games and fun) into the education process. It helps to improve student concentration and information retention as well as their ability to do their research and work in teams. It also permits personalization of learning and encourages students to find the content that they like. Digital Education is important for students in all spheres of education.

Benefits of Digital Education in India

Several benefits show why Digital Education is important in India.

  • Digital Education helps the students to be more attentive and increases grasping power.
  • It helps to makes their education more effective and efficient.
  • It helps to make students pay more attention to the subject.
  • The active online screen helps students
  • Many students hesitate to ask questions to the teacher in the classroom, where they can easily attend the recorded sessions to clear their doubts.
  • The students can use exclusive online study modules of various subjects, which help in enhancing their knowledge even without a teacher.
  • Students can access online learning study materials and digital content through various tools.
  • Many distance learning programs can be covered with Digital Education.
  • It provides video-based education for better understanding.

 

Challenges of Digital Education

Lack of Proper Study Room

  • Census 2011tells us that 71 percent of households with three or more members have dwellings with two rooms or less (74 percent in rural and 64 percent in urban areas).
  • In such a situation how will the children avail education in an undisturbed ambience remain a huge question.
  • In this situation, online education has come to the rescue of the cause of education. However, there are several challenges of online education and the same needs to be fixed.

 

Inadequate Internet Penetration

  • According to National Sample Survey data for 2017-18, only 42 percent of urban and 15 percent of rural households had internet access, and only 34 percent of urban and 11 percent of rural persons had used the internet in the past 30 days.
  • These data suggest that 2/3rdof the children will be left out of the online education process.
  • The worst affected, as always, will be the rural and poor populations.

Slow Internet Speed

  • When it comes to online education, it is mostly about communicating with teachers directly through video calls or watching online video lectures, and both require high-speed with a stable internet connection.
  • In absence of adequate speed of the internet, the whole idea will fail. We can see the same from the UT of Jammu and Kashmir when there are regular protests by the students as they are not able to study in absence of a proper internet connection.

 

No Standard Policy

  • Digital educationis not about videos of lectures on blackboards by teachers on the internet.
  • It is about appropriate platforms, technology, tools, interactivity, curation, content, and a lot more.
  • We lack a proper policy on digital education, infrastructure, content, interaction, and multiple languages.

 

 

Lack of Social Cohesion

  • Public educational institutions also play an exemplary role in social inclusion and relative equality.
  • It is the place where people of all genders, classes, castes, and communities can meet without one group being forced to bow to others.
  • This is critical learning for life which may not be supplemented by online education.

 

Teacher Training

  • Teachers look after the mental, emotional, and social health of children in schools.
  • Schooling is supposed to look after the emotional, social, and behavioral health of children, which is diametrically opposite to social distancing.
  • Teachers are not adequately trained to inculcate these learning through online mediums.

Issue of Parenting

  • Another challenge is to keep thousands of children out of school when their parents return to their workspaces post lockdown.
  • Who will assume responsibility for a child’s safety and learning at home remains a huge problem.

Way Forward

Bharat Network

  • National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) now called Bharat Networkaims to connect all 2,50,000 panchayats at the cost of over Rs 40,000 crore.
  • Through Bharat Net, the government envisages providing a minimum of 100 Mbps bandwidth at each Gram Panchayat so that online services can be accessed by everyone, especially those in rural India.
  • This includes e-governance, e-learning, e-banking, e-commerce, and e-health services.
  • Once completed the Infrastructure will be a national asset and non-discriminatory access will be a game-changer in the method of service delivery and hence it must be fast-tracked.

National Knowledge Network (NKN)

  • NKNis a multi-gigabit national research and education network, whose purpose is to provide a unified high-speed network backbone for educational institutions in India.
  • The NKN was established as a high bandwidth network to connect all knowledge-creating organizations comprising IITs, IIMs, universities, research labs, and other e-governance institutions up to the district level.
  • It was aimed at encouraging collaborative development and building a repository of knowledge in all fields.
  • This network exists and is fully functional but only a few institutions take full advantage of it because of a lack of understanding, local facilities, funding, and technical expertise.
  • NKN is being expanded soon, which is a positive step. There is, however, an urgent need to also make it a core component of the Digital India initiative and leverage it to provide e-services at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Increased Financing

  • Governments will have to think very seriously about allocating more money in the budget for technical education in schools.
  • Increasing the education budget to 6% of the GDP is a welcome move in the New National Education Policy-2020unveiled a few days back.

Parents and Teachers Training

  • Most of the teachers and parents are not technically sound and many of them even lack basic technical knowledge.
  • They must be trained in that regard so that the fruits of their knowledge can reach the students.

Increase Accessibility

  • The pandemic has taught us a lot about adjusting to changes in new and creative ways. But taking the weaker sections along is equally necessary.
  • Inclusion in distance learning programs, especially for students coming from low-income groups or the presence of a disability is very important.
  • The government needs to provide support for digitalization to teachers as well as students by making such platforms and content available for free.
  • They must be assured of the required infrastructure for online learning such as smartphones, and laptops.

Conclusion

The education sector in India has seen a series of rapid expansions in the last couple of years which helped to transform the country into a knowledge haven. The study points that the development of education infrastructure is required for the development of Digital Education across the country. This will lead to a considerable increase in fracture investment in the education sector. The Government of India has also taken major initiatives for the development of Digital Education in India like the opening of IITs and IIM’s in new locations as well as educational grants for research scholars allocating in most government institutions.

  • Digital education is fun learning for all cadres and particularly effective for child learning as the innovative audio-video feature boosts the cognitive elements in a child’s brain.
  • The infotainment combination involved in digital learning makes it more practical, applicable, and relatable to our life and surroundings in an interesting manner.
  • Students view this as a flexible option allowing them to study as per their time and pace. Teachers too find it convenient to prepare their learning plans well aided by technology.
  • Teaching becomes a smoother experience with a perfect mesh of personalized packages having a blend of animations, gamification, and elaborate audio-visual effects.
  • So, online methods of teaching and learning deserve our highest praise but only when cast in their proper role, which is to supplement, support, and amplify the techniques of face-to-face education.
  • The transition from teacher-class-based teaching to digital education will need multi-pronged efforts over time.

References

  • Sharma, S., (2005), Advanced Educational Technology, Anmol publication Delhi.
  • Ramanujan, (2007), Globalization Education and Open Distance Learning, Shipra Publication, Delhi.
  • Chauhan, S.S., (2008), Innovation in Teaching-Learning process, Vikas Publishing House Pvt.Ltd., NewDelhi.
  • Website Visited

www.educationforallinindia.com

www.infodev.org

www.bexta.org

www.shambles.net

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327671945_A_Contemporary_Study_on_the_Flo …

https://www.slideshare.net/GunjanVerma14/digital-education

https://www.shiksha247.com/blog/importance-digital-education-india/

 

 

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