Can online education be a successful concept in India ?
As the days travel by with no immediate solution to prevent the outbreak of the corona-virus pandemic, we’ve seen a drastic shift from offline to the online mode of teaching. Be it for pre-primary or high schools or even colleges, e-learning platforms are emerging as the new, but not so normal method.
Let’s dive into some issues with online learning in India.
1. Infrastructure
We’ve been ignoring the fact that India has more than 285 million young learners, wherein students from tier II and tier III cities face the absence of infrastructure and deployment of internet facilities, resulting in limited or even no internet connectivity.
To say, there is an absolute devoid of high-speed internet services in Kashmir. With internet speeds as low as 2G, Kashmiri students have been facing a lot of trouble to access study materials, online classes or even write exams. While about 70 percent of private schools within the valley have started online lectures for students, there were reported problems of connectivity.
“Strategy for New India@75” report by Niti Aayog, highlighted the quality and reliability of the internet as a significant bottleneck. It focused on the fact that about 55,000 villages in the country are without mobile network coverage.
2. Digital Literacy
There are students as well as teachers with little or no understanding of technology. They still face issues in operating basic mobile phone functions. A large number of teachers have never taught online.
3. Affordability
Many individuals don’t have monetary assets to purchase PC’s, tablets, or a laptop. If a family has 3 youngsters, they will require 3 distinct gadgets for them and a decent internet as well. How is your home bandwidth? With 3 laptops seeking for bandwidth at my place, internet speed sometimes suck! A silent room for attending online classes at home is a luxury that many students cannot afford.
4. Monitoring students online
One of the key challenges in education, be it online or offline, is evaluating student performance. This includes giving special attention to students who fall short to understand a particular subject better than their counterparts. Subjects such as Physical Education, Mathematics, etc. are best taught in traditional settings. There is little or no supervision in the learn-from-home technique. In setups where students have the liberty to switch on/off their cameras, there’s absolutely no way to check on their activity. Online exams and group assignments can turn out to be massive failures, as they may include unfair practices.
These are the best of reasons that I quote for, online education cannot replace traditional education, at least in today’s India. What needs to be taken care of is that students have proper resources to utilize e-learning and learners belonging to the most humble dwellings should not be left out.
