What Lies Ahead For Digital Education

<p><em>The future of education is indeed being shaped by digital technology, says <strong>Rupesh Shah</strong></em><br><br>Digital Education, in the last few years, has facilitated the movement of the paradigm for education beyond hardcopy books and conventional chalkboard classrooms. Over the past decade, the education industry has gone through an array of functional changes in learning methodologies, teaching techniques and in the approach to education itself.<br><br>The efficacy of new tools and techniques used in education have been repeatedly proved in this time period. Researchers have found that performance of students using digital learning platforms outperforms those using conventional methods by 30 to 80 per cent. Apart from having an impact on performance of students, technology assists in reducing the cost of education. A study on cost effectiveness of digital platforms found a reduction in institutional cost by 10 to 35 per cent by using technological features.<br><br>The future of education is indeed being shaped by digital technology. Moving through the progression of technological developments, education is on the way to be truly universal. Digital learning has undoubtedly led to a revolution in the education industry and the era is dynamically moving to the next level. The emerging traits in technology will establish itself as the pivot of new age education.<br><br><strong>MOOCs – Learning over the Internet</strong><br>MOOC (Massively Open Online Courses) is among the premium offerings of technology to the era. It has rendered a new face to distance education ingrained with features such as open access to learning content, online interaction among teachers and students and most importantly, making education more inclusive.<br><br>The New York Times proclaimed 2012 to be the “Year of the MOOC”, as several top providers such as Coursera, Udacity and edX came to the mainstream. Open online Courses enabled distribution of innovative courses at a large scale. From inception itself, MOOCs have been using innovative pedagogies with distributed learning materials apart from conventional audio and video learning. The courses offered are more relevant to modern needs of the generation. For instance, course such as Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) was launched in 2011 by Stanford MOOC.<br><br>As of May 2014, more than 900 MOOCs have been launched by private colleges and universities in the US. More universities and education providers from both public and private sectors will launch their own open courses and set an established platform of education on the internet. Furthermore, an emerging trend is the partnership of education boards with MOOC providers.<br><br>In mid 2014, SAT, the Scholastic Aptitude Test which is widely used by college admission authority initiated collaboration with Khan Academy, an established MOOC provider. More institutions are likely to collaborate with MOOC providers to form an integrated system of online education. Hence, the shift of conventional education to the Internet will be more intense in coming times.<br><br>India, one of the forerunners in Information Technology, has launched a national initiative for online distance education. SWAYAM, the MOOC program initiated by Ministry of Human Resource Development is all set to roll out as the official portal for online education in India. SWAYAM stands for Self Webs of Active-learning for Young Aspiring Minds. The platform is a collaboration of top Indian educational institutions such as IIT, IIM and other central Universities. The Ministry of Finance announced a Rs. 100 Crore funding for online learning and virtual classrooms in 2014.<br><br><strong>Digital Classrooms – Connecting Students</strong><br>A new-age education trend is conventional classrooms transforming into digitally enabled ones. The advantages of digital classrooms are many in contrast to traditional classrooms. The teaching and learning methodologies aided by Information and Communication Technology support intensive, collaborative and interactive education.<br><br>Among other advantages, digitally enriched content and personalized learning are some of the major ones. These classrooms are enabled to deliver instruction through multiple forms of media suitable for different modes of learning. They facilitate gathering of immediate feedback and offer solutions to improve student performance. Digitally enhanced class rooms automate practice of basic skills and offer a collaborative way of learning by encouraging peer group learning.<br><br>In India, initiative such as Pratham, has been launched in partnership with Vodafone Foundation India. The basic objective of the initiative is to enhance teaching and learning in low income schools using technology as primary tool. The project aims to bring low cost digital learning solutions to 1000 schools in 12 states of India. It is projected that over 50,000 students will be benefited by the initiative.<br><br>Pratham is customized to fulfill the requirements of primary Indian education landscape. The program also encompasses conducting holistic training that enables teachers to integrate teaching with technology for optimal benefit of students. It will also provide ongoing technical and lesson planning support to teachers.<br><br>The integration of technology in the classroom, especially in developed countries has led to a blended teaching approach. For instance, new trends such as BYOD (Bring your own device) integrate smart devices such as tablets and phones featuring educational apps with the subject matter expertise of the teacher. Notable examples include initiatives by Google for Education such as Google Classroom and Google Computer Science First.<br><br>In fact EBooks could soon replace textbooks for an interactive and potentially personalized learning experience in schools. Assessment online platforms nowadays allow for creation of tests that focus on learning outcomes and quick feedback helping chart the progress a student is making. More importantly digital tools promote competency based learning which helps the student to be the focus in the education ecosystem and drive one’ own learning at one’ pace and according to one’s interests.<br><br><em>The author is CEO at InOpen Technologies</em></p>