COVID 19 AFFECTED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF INDIA by Nilesh Joshi, Jahnavi, Zarana (fb2 epub reader .txt) 📕

 

Covid-19:  

                                             

  4 negative impacts and                           

   4  opportunities created for    

      education        

The world today is facing the biggest public health risk which is leading to one of the largest and the quickest reorganization of the world order. By the end of March 2020, the epidemic had spread to over 185 countries and resulted in the closure of over 90 percent of all schools, colleges and universities impacting close to 1.38 billion students.

The speed of the spread of the epidemic, the closure of higher education institutions and the transition to online teaching was so swift that it hardly gave any time to plan and to reflect on the potential risks or the potential opportunities that such a sudden change could bring.

Given such a situation it is important to look at the impact and reflect on what has transpired and what is likely to happen as we move forward in the field of global education.

 

4 negative impacts of Covid-19 on education

There are a number of areas of potential risks for global education. Here are 4 negative impacts of Covid-19 on education:

Sluggish cross-border movement of students

Universities in many countries such as Australia, UK, New Zealand, and Canada are highly dependent on the movement of students from China and India.

It is becoming more and more clear that this cross-border movement of students will take a beating at least for the next two to three years and will lead to a major financial risk for universities in these countries who are already under financial pressure.

Many parents will avoid sending students abroad for higher education due to high risk from the pandemic.

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Passive learning by students

The sudden shift to online learning without any planning -- especially in countries like India where the backbone for online learning was not ready and the curriculum was not designed for such a format -- has created the risk of most of our students becoming passive learners and they seem to be losing interest due to low levels of attention span.

Added to this is that we may be leaving a large proportion of the student population untouched due to the digital divide that is part of many developing nations including India.

We are now beginning to realize that online learning could be dull as it is creating a new set of passive learners which can pose new challenges.

Unprepared teachers for online education

Online learning is a special kind of methodology and not all teachers are good at it or at least not all of them were ready for this sudden transition from face to face learning to online learning.

Thus, most of the teachers are just conducting lectures on video platforms such as Zoom which may not be real online learning in the absence of a dedicated online platform specifically designed for the purpose.

There is a risk that in such a situation, learning outcomes may not be achieved and it may be only resulting in engaging the students.

Changing format of student recruitment

Universities and colleges worldwide are facing a major risk in the area of student recruitment and retention.

The risk of losing students is so high that they will need to re-look at their admission practices, admission criteria and the overall recruitment process itself which will include, new methods of outreach and application process itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 positive changes in education due to Covid-19

Any change that is so disruptive is also likely to bring with it some new opportunities that will transform the higher education system worldwide and especially in a country like India which is planning to bring about a planned reform in this sector.

Some of the key areas of opportunity are the following:

Rise in Blended Learning

Universities and colleges will shift to a model of blended learning where both face to face delivery along with an online model will become a norm. This will require all teachers to become more technology savvy and go through some training to bring themselves to the level that would be required.

New ways of delivery and assessments of learning outcomes will have to be adopted which opens immense opportunities for a major transformation in the area of curriculum development and pedagogy.

Learning management systems to be the new norm

A great opportunity will open up for those companies that have been developing and strengthening learning management systems for use by universities and colleges.

This has the potential to grow at a very fast pace but will have to be priced appropriately for use by all institutions.

 

 

Improvement in learning material

There is a great opportunity for universities and colleges to start improving the quality of the learning material that is used in the teaching and learning process.

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Since blended learning will be the new format of learning there will be a push to find new ways to design and deliver quality content especially due to the fact that the use of learning management systems will bring about more openness and transparency in academics.

Rise in collaborative work

The teaching community to a large extent has been very insulated and more so in a country like India. There is a new opportunity where collaborative teaching and learning can take on new forms and can even be monetized.

Faculty members/ teachers can deliver online courses to even students from competing institutions. Collaborations can also happen among faculty/teachers across the nation to benefit from each other.

Finally, it is expected that there will be a massive rise in teleconferencing opportunities which can also have a negative impact on the travel.

A large number of academic meetings, seminars and conferences will move online and there is a possibility that some new form of an online conferencing platform will emerge as a business model.

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After all this, there is one certainty that we can envisage and that is going to change how higher education will operate globally and in India.

India is not just going through a reform in the higher education sector, but now it will go through a major transformation in general.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4 The Ardee School NFC uses Microsoft Teams to ensure learning never gets interrupted

 

The Ardee School NFC uses Microsoft Teams to ensure learning never gets interrupted

 

 

 

 

“Our mission has been to ensure that learning will never be interrupted, no matter what,” says Rashima V Varma, the head of The Ardee School in New Friends Colony (NFC).  

The school, which has been in operation for three years, had started with remote learning via Teams even before the schools were shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“In the beginning, we invested in a video conferencing solution but soon realized we needed to offer a lot more to our students than video conferencing. Keeping that in mind, we got an Office 365 subscription for the entire school at the beginning of the school session in 2019 as it provided many tools for teaching and learning,” she adds.  

The foresight proved beneficial in November 2019, when the Delhi government directed schools to close secondary classes as the city grappled with unprecedented levels of air pollution. The Ardee School moved its classes to Microsoft Teams to ensure that its students do not fall behind. 

“We had already mapped every student and teacher to their Office 365 accounts. Moving them to Teams according to classes and subjects was very intuitive from the Office 365 administration panel. That enabled us to move very quickly,” adds Amit Gupta, head of IT at The Ardee School, NFC. 

The early experience enabled the school to swiftly deploy Teams for the entire school in the current COVID-19 situation. 

“We are considering how we can reconfigure learning for secondary students. Teams also gives us the opportunity to include students who are home-schooled for various reasons. I think it’s a paradigm shift in teaching and learning.”

– Rashima V Varma, head of The Ardee School, NFC 

Deploying Teams in schools was the easy part. But it meant a mindset shift for teachers, students, and their parents. Schools had to relook how their teachers planned and conducted their classes.  

“When you are teaching in a classroom, you can look at your students and get a sense of whether they are engaged or not. In online classes, teachers cannot control the environment—students can log off from the class. Teachers needed to completely reimagine their classes. They have to build in a lot of interactive elements to ensure that the students are engaged in the teaching learning process,” explains Varma. 

“Students do not have the same attention span online as they would in a 20-minute class. We are introducing new activities by using other tools on top of Teams like Microsoft Forms and document sharing, to get students to participate in the lesson and to collaborate. The teachers have used the virtual whiteboard in Teams as a handy tool,” adds Shaistha P, the academic facilitator for Grade 6 to Grade 12. 

Deepika Bhatia, the ICT mentor for students from Grade 9 to Grade 12, viewed it as an opportunity to collaborate with her students the way she could not earlier.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

A student from The Ardee School attending a class over Teams. The school had transitioned to remote classes over Teams in November when they had to stop classes due to pollution in Delhi.

“In my classroom, I would demonstrate how to do a task and we could go back and forth. But that process gets elongated in an offline environment. On Teams, I share the document I am working on with the class so they can work along with me and ask questions in the chat window simultaneously,” she says. 

Parents too are echoing the sentiment. 

“Our children are facing frequent disruptions to their education, but by moving to Teams the school is ensuring they do not lose their momentum. One of the biggest benefits is that in these times of uncertainty, the children continue to follow their routine. They know they have to be ready by 8 AM and attend all classes like they would have done in school,” says Sayma Ansari, whose son studies in Grade 5 at the school. 

Other parents, like Bhavna G Bali, whose daughter studies in Grade 6, are also noticing a change in how children are collaborating with each other. 

“Our children are using tools to collaborate that I didn’t even know existed. I see my daughter and her classmates work on the same document on Teams where one person is typing on the document and others are giving their inputs. This enables them to work on projects irrespective of their location. Earlier they would create groups for projects depending on where students lived, Teams has helped break those barriers,” she says. 

“I see my daughter chatting with her classmates on Teams in the evening where they discuss their assignments and other projects. This is far better than other messaging apps because they continue to be in the school environment,” she adds.  

The school is taking virtual interactions and collaboration beyond the students as well. Apart from moving its classes to Teams, it conducts parent-teacher meetings on Teams. It is also considering recording classroom sessions so that absent students can revisit the class and teachers can also do self-assessment after the class is over.   

“We are considering how we can reconfigure learning for secondary students. Teams also gives us the opportunity to include students who are home-schooled for various reasons. I think it’s a paradigm shift in teaching and learning,” says Varma.