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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Thursday, March 28, 2024

The Age of Online EDUCATION

Ahead of Children’s Day on November 14, Shankar Kr. Turha explores the growing dependence on online e-learning platforms, a trend that countered the closure of physical classrooms as the world embraced the global lockdown in 2020. Speaking to parents and students, one gets a glimpse of the post-pandemic experience.

By Shankar Kr. Turha

The lockdown in India resulted in the shutting down of schools and educational institutions across the country, following which teaching changed dramatically across the country. The time paved the way for newer approaches to learning, with the rise of e-learning platforms. Leading platforms offered all kinds of courses online, allowing students to take up courses from the comfort of their homes.

Major players in the field such as Unacademy, Byju’s, Udemy, upGrad, WhitehatJr, Skillshare, and others became the most sought-after platforms for students, competitive exam aspirants, and working professionals to upgrade their skills during the pandemic.

What followed was a trend that will completely revamp the traditional way of teaching, allowing everyone to choose courses best suited for them and offered by the best universities in the country.

The craze to learn coding and programming also picked up during the time, when parents started focusing on teaching their children coding and other software tools, giving them the advantage of early exposure to such courses that are also a part of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020.

Online learning of various forms, including sought-after courses like programming, MBA, and others are no longer confined to metro cities – now even a small place such as Shillong has placed itself at the forefront when it comes to taking up online courses.

We look at how online educational platforms like these have become a boon for students seeking quality education in Shillong and other places, and how they have transformed the educational landscape everywhere.

Speaking to some students in Shillong who took advantage of such courses when physical classes were suspended during the lockdown, marking a transition towards them (post-lockdown period), proved to be eye-opening.

Rohit Paul, a resident of Jhalupara in Shillong, for example, took up a free course in Data Science from Udemy, a global destination for teaching and learning online, which offers close to 204,000 courses to 54 million students from around the globe.

According to him, it was of great help, giving him an opportunity to join Amazon as a software engineer.

“Subsequently, I took up other free and paid courses such as AWS, Python and others from not just Udemy, but upGrad, and other platforms. The course materials are amazing and the instructors, too, are good. I suggest students take advantage of such courses as Unacademy, Byju’s, and others are well-recognised brands now for the quality teaching they impart,” Paul said.

Likewise, Sulagna Sinha (a parent) experimented with WhiteHat Jr, giving her son, who is studying in class 10, a chance to learn coding from the best in the field.

“My son took up a free course in fundamentals of coding from WhiteHat Jr; it gave him an insight into what coding and programming are, as he will pursue Computer Engineering after Class 12. The courses offered by Whitehat Jr are meant for middle and high school students, which I think is in line with the National Education Policy, to allow children to pick up such courses at an early stage,” she said.

Yogesh Rai, who is now in his final year of degree, and aspires to be a civil servant says that he has enrolled for the required coaching via virtual mode from Unacademy, which is a start-up founded by ex-IAS officer Roman Saini.

“Unacademy has great course materials if one is serious about the civil services exam, or CDS, banking and others. I am taking up a foundation course from them for taking up the civil services examination from next year,” he revealed.

While all of them feel that the future of education will be very different with the advent of technology, most educators across institutions agree that there is a need to invest in creating standardised online education platforms, to balance the dependence on apps and Google hangouts; and to train both students and teachers.

Others highlight the necessity to introspect on the nature of these platforms and how students are taught using different online tools and methods while keeping accessibility and equity challenges in mind. There is also the need to understand this across academic disciplines and institutions.

The way ahead can be charted only if we consider the diverse views of experts, and incorporate all the lessons learnt from the summer of 2020.

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