Teachers and Technology

Context: Covid induced education crisis and fourth industrial revolution can lead to a new ed-tech policy to maximise student learning.

Daunting challenges in India’s school education:

• Acute learning crisis: Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, with one in two children lacking basic reading proficiency at the age of 10.
• Closure of schools: The physical closure of 15.5 lakh schools has affected more than 248 million students for over a year.
• Technology disruption: As traditional brick-and-mortar service delivery models are being disrupted across sectors, the pandemic offers an impending need to weave technology into education.

Four key elements of ed-tech policy architecture —

1. Providing access to learning, especially to disadvantaged groups;
2. Enabling processes of teaching, learning, and evaluation;
3. Facilitating teacher training and continuous professional development;
4. Improving governance systems including planning, management, and monitoring processes.

Initiative taken to weave technology into education:

• National Education Policy (NEP) 2020: It envisions the establishment of an autonomous body, the National Education Technology Forum (NETF), providing a strategic thrust to the use of technology.
• Improved infrastructure: With increasing access to tech-based infrastructure, electricity, and affordable internet connectivity.
• Flagship programmes: Such as Digital India and the Ministry of Education’s initiatives, including the Digital Infrastructure for School Education (DIKSHA), open-source learning platform and UDISE+ — one of the largest education management information systems in the world.

Critical analysis of the use of technology in learning:

• Technology is a tool and not a panacea.
• Technology must be in service of the learning model. There is a danger in providing digital infrastructure without a plan on how it’s to be deployed or what teaching-learning approaches it would support.
• Technology cannot substitute schools or replace teachers.
  • It’s not “teachers versus technology”; the solution is in “teachers and technology”.
  • Tech solutions are impactful only when embraced and effectively leveraged by teachers.

Some grassroot innovations in ed-tech:

• The Hamara Vidhyalaya in Namsai district, Arunachal Pradesh, is fostering tech-based performance assessments;
• Assam’s online career guidance portal is strengthening school-to-work and higher-education transition for students in grades 9 to 12;
• Samarth in Gujarat is facilitating the online professional development of lakhs of teachers in collaboration with IIM- Ahmedabad;
• Jharkhand’s DigiSATH is spear- heading behaviour change by establishing stronger parent-teacher-student linkages;
• Himachal Pradesh’s Har Ghar Pathshala is providing digital education for children with special needs;
• Uttarakhand’s community radio is promoting early reading through byte-size broadcasts;
• Madhya Pradesh’s DigiLEP is delivering content for learning enhancement through a well-structured mechanism with over 50,000 WhatsApp groups covering all clusters and secondary schools;
• Kerala’s Aksharavriksham initiative is focusing on digital “edutainment” to support learning and skill development via games and activities.

Advantages of technology use in education: Conditional on good learning design, technology holds promise -

• Improving rates of learning, reducing costs of instructional material and service delivery at scale, as well as better utilisation of teacher/instructor time.
  • This will enable greater personalisation of education and enhance educational productivity.
• Potential for innovation in Indian ed-tech: With over 4,500 start-ups and a current valuation of around $700 million, the market is estimated to a size of $30 billion in the next 10 years.

Way Forward:  Action on multiple fronts is required -

• Thoroughly mapping the ed-tech landscape; their scale, reach and impact. (in short term)
  • The focus should be on access, equity, infrastructure, governance, and quality-related outcomes and challenges for teachers and students.
• Planning should enable convergence: Across schemes (education, skills, digital governance, and finance), foster integration of solutions through public-private partnerships, factor in voices of all stakeholders, and bolster cooperative federalism.- (in short to medium term)
  • Lessons may be drawn from the Government of India’s Aspirational Districts Programme on tech-enabled monitoring and implementation.
• Address the digital divide in two levels: Access and skills to effectively use technology and leverage its benefits.
  • This could be achieved through infrastructure and connectivity, high-quality, relevant, proven software and content, and rigorous global standards for outcome-based evaluation and real-time assessments.
• Build a repository of best in class practices: The NITI Aayog’s India Knowledge Hub and the Ministry of Education’s DIKSHA and ShaGun platforms can facilitate and amplify such learning.

Conclusion: With NEP 2020 having set the ball rolling, a transformative ed-tech policy architecture is the need of the hour to effectively maximise student learning.