Education A Necessity To Reduce Unemployment

A learning crisis in India seems imminent even as educational reforms surge ahead. Provision of schools does not guarantee the availability of necessary facilities in schools. The gap is still wide when compared to the enrolment of children in the school and learning outcome.

Captain Indraani Singh, Founder, and CEO, Literacy India talks about online education in India, technological advancements and Literacy India helping out students with the educational program. 

How can online education transform the Indian education sector?

Education in India is a dire need to help reduce unemployment and increase economic activity in the country. The setting up of physical schools is a time taking and expensive process, thereby slowing down the pace of eradicating education gap. While online education helps to reach more students in the least amount of time and is not expensive either. Therefore, online education can increase the speed of education in our country where digitization is spreading rapidly as well.

Besides, online learning enables students to engage with the subject matter, interact with course videos and learn at their own pace, which also reduces dropouts as its more engaging, interesting and makes students more familiar with using computers. On the other hand, it allows teachers to assign, monitor and evaluate coursework remotely, apart from highlighting the areas of students which need improvement.

 How does Literacy India help drop-out students in the transition to education?

Literacy India’s technology-enabled remedial education program Gyantantra Udbhav has helped mainstream thousands of drop-out students. The program essentially enables these drop-out students who do not respond well to the confines of traditional classrooms and experience lack of access to education. The education program combines practical, intellectual and social attributes to create composite learning modules to help students complete school curriculum till Class 5. Embedded with an interactive multimedia interface, the modules are designed with a systematic instructional approach that makes learning fun, even for those who lack basic reading and writing skills. The tool tracks minimum levels of learning based on assessments and outcomes. Once students complete the program, they are eligible to join any other government school. 

How AI is being used in the system?

Gyantantra Udbhav is an interactive multimedia interface, which includes modules designed with a systematic instructional approach that makes learning fun, even for those who lack basic reading and writing skills. The tool tracks minimum levels of learning based on assessments and outcomes. It leverages gaming technology embedded with cartoon characters thereby ensuring effective retention of the information. As such the program is customized to bridge the learning gap which is of common existence among this set of children, who either are out-of-school or in-school children faltering on fundamental concepts. Understandably, technology and innovation with its various verticals such as IoT and AI have the ability to ably support the education mediums and increase efficiency and productivity of those involved like these children. Thus, it is with the integration of such new age technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning or virtual reality that the learning experience will be more interactive and personalized thereby enhancing and improving access to education and learning.

Can technology improve engagement and result in better learning outcomes?

The most obvious benefit of technology run education is that it is subjective to the learner’s ability and level. Through virtual interactive engagement, it teaches students with different speeds depending on their backgrounds and more importantly different starting points. Also, technological education platform is cost-effective and time-efficient and is flexible to the needs of every single student— be it on-the-go, class of one, on-demand, gamified or crowdsourced.

 How can online education impact India’s education and development landscape?

Education is an important part of a country’s growth and development. It is not only about employment but also empowerment. Education serves as the front-runner in transforming the society, economy, and polity for better. Accompanied with technological advancements, that is online education, is then a game changer for a nation like India, which has an enormous population, with approximately 28 percent of children in the age group 0-14. Gyantantra program has been conceived to meet these very needs of the country, that is mass education and creating awareness about social and economic identity in a world marked by technological innovation. Ultimately, the future of education is to converge into the India’s new economy, which notably is fast on track to digitization. Online learning is then a natural step for the future generations and workforce in order to survive future technological disruptions.

Rajguru Tandon

BW Reporters The author is a correspondent with BW Businessworld with keen interest in HR and employee welfare.