My dad sent me a link yesterday. The
header is indeed an attention-grabber—(though perhaps not quite a tweethis):
“To become an economic powerhouse, India needs to educate as many as 100
million young people over the next 10 years – something never done before.”
Digital concept: information/connectivity/digital divide
This story touches on themes central to the future of
education, which I feel is at least implicitly, if not explicitly, a learning
outcome of the Digital Civilization course.
In a nutshell, the current Indian educational system cannot
supply the talent to keep up with the country’s economic growth. The article
briefly highlights some of the methods being used to confront the challenge:
educational institutions backed by corporations, the internet and distance
learning, and partnerships with established foreign universities.
Perhaps of greater value than the analysis of the Indian
Education dilemma, however, are the quotes which speak to our Digital Concepts:
"The way education is today in the global market is not
scalable," says Sam Pitroda, an education adviser to the government.
"The cost of education has really increased substantially, mainly because
IT has not been used effectively the world over in education."
Digital concept: information/connectivity/scalability
“As much as any of the attempts to solve India's higher
education crisis, the Internet may hold the potential to transform the system
the most. This is in part because the country embraces online learning more
than many Western nations. It's also because the technology is improving so
fast.”
Digital concept: information/disruptive innovation/education
"Ultimately, to my mind, we will be running virtual
universities and virtual colleges," says B.K. Gairola, head of the
National Knowledge Network. "This is 10 years, 15 years down the
road."
Digital concept: information/disruptive innovation/education
“Dr. Pitroda, an education adviser to the prime minister,
sees the Internet fundamentally reshaping how colleges function. "You can
begin to share teachers," he says. "If you have a good professor at
an IIT, he can be seen and heard by 600 other colleges." Eventually, he
adds, "the teacher as we know today will not exist."”
Digital concept: information/disruptive innovation/education
“Teachers, he says, will no longer be re-creating individual
curricula – that will be done by a few top scholars. Nor will they be
delivering it – that will happen by the most effective lecturers over the
National Knowledge Network. "The teacher will be the role of mentor,"
says Pitroda”
Digital concept: information/disruptive innovation/education
One valid issue raised in response to the shift towards
distance/internet learning is the potentially undesirable increase in the student-teacher
ratio. An exaggeration of the idea is that the value of having the best
professor lecture to the whole world on a subject is perhaps undermined by the
absence of one-on-one interaction and mentoring:
"I just feel doing [student-teacher ratios of] 1 to a
1,000, 1 to 500 is unfair to our students. They deserve better than that,"
Digital concept: information/disruptive innovation/education
What is the next
stage in mentoring and one-on-one interaction? A professor can’t, after all, even
video chat with individual students if he lectures to 1000 of them…
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