dL December 2015

Asia’s premier Monthly Magazine on ICT in Education

volume 11

I issue 12 I december

2015

I ISSN 0973-4139 I ` 75

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

Thumbay Moideen Founder President Thumbay Group, UAE

SPECIAL FOCUS » IMPRINT Roadmap » Medical Education » NEP Consultations

R R R R R R R R R

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December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

Asia’s premier Monthly Magazine on ICT in Education Volume 11

Issue 12

December 2015

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Dr Ravi Gupta EDITORIAL TEAM EDUCATION Senior Assistant Editor: Garima Pant Assistant Editor: Bhawna Satsangi Senior Correspondent: Jessy Iype SALES & MARKETING TEAM: digitalLearning Project Manager: Seema Gupta, Mobile: +91-8860651643 Assistant General Manager: Ragini Shrivastava, Mobile: +91-8860651650 National Sales Manager: Fahim Haq, Mobile: +91-8860651632 SUBSCRIPTION & CIRCULATION TEAM Manager Subscriptions: +91-8860635832; subscription@elets.in DESIGN TEAM Creative Head: Pramod Gupta Deputy Art Director: Om Prakash Thakur, Gopal Thakur Senior Web Designer: Shyam Kishore WEB DEVELOPMENT & IT INFRASTRUCTURE Manager Web Development: Ishvinder Singh ADMINISTRATION Head Administration: Archana Jaiswal EDITORIAL & MARKETING CORRESPONDENCE

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December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

EDITORIAL

Technology: Panacea for Educational Fault Lines The recently held ruling of the Hon’ble Supreme Court to scrap quota in Higher Education Institutions in National Interest has created the much expected political furore and dilemma as to who shall bell the cat.

The twin challenges of access and quality have been the persistent fault lines of our education system which in the case of higher Education assumes the third challenge of directionality.

Technological Interventions in Education have, however, induced a silent but substantial transformation meeting out both the classic issues of access and quality as well as making a dent in the philosophical confines of directionality as well, a matter of great interest in the ongoing consultations on National Education Policy.

This lead story in this issue of digitalLEARNING wraps up the intellectual quest of this momentous year with a wider consultation cum inquiry into this impending Role, Relevance & Impact of Technology in Bridging the Educational Fault Lines.

Medical Education has find a special feature in this year end issue, with an elaborate commentary as to how technology is helping achieving the 1:1000 Doctor to Population ratio.

The existing higher education superstructure of the country has found little mention in the ongoing NEP Consultations. At digitalLEARNING, we have taken a stand to take due cognizance of the same. Creating Affordability of Higher Technical Education is yet another theme which has been captured in this year end issue.

We have introduced a new feature dLANALYTICS whereby we intend to analyse one or the other aspects concerning the spectrum of education in the digital era.

This issue carries a quick analysis of MHRD e-Content platforms.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to be an integral part of the exemplary journey of digitalLEARNING for the coming year.

Dr Ravi Gupta Editor-in-Chief Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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nEWS

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Da Vinci Learning Launches HD Educational Channel in India German TV Channel ‘Da Vinci Learning’ has launched its children’s education HD channel under a joint venture with Raghav Bahl-promoted Quintillion Media. The educational channel is owned by Berlin-based firm Da Vinci Media GmbH. Focussed on kids aged 6-12 years and families, the channel will offer programming that will give Indian viewers a horizontal digital multimedia educational platform spanning multiple screens and devices.

Ferdinand Habsburg, Founder &

CEO, Da Vinci Media Gmbh, said, “India is an important market for us and has potential to be among our top markets. We believe the mindset of Indian parents, when it comes to education, is significantly different; they are much more concerned about education than parents in some of the other markets. They also spend a higher percentage of income on education. So there is a big potential to offer an education product.”

He further said that given the size and diversity of the country,

the company could also consider launching in other Indian regional languages.

Aldar Academies to Open Two New Schools in Abu Dhabi

Clarion School to Open in Dubai in September 2016 With demand for quality education in Dubai at an all-time high and heeding the call from Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) to invest in delivering high standards of education to support UAE Vision 2021, the Clarion School is set to open in September 2016.

Developed by Scholars International Group (SIG), in partnership with the Bank Street College of Education, Clarion School is first to affiliate with a famous US education partner in Dubai.

For the last 40 years, SIG has been a leading education provider and founder of two established schools of note in the region.

The approach to education of Clarion School is based on the progressive education model, employing constructivist, experiential, and place-based learning.

The new Clarion School will offer classes starting from pre-kindergarten to grade two in the first year, with upper classes to follow in the second year, and will be staffed with highly qualified educators, who will hold Master’s Degrees, a unique feature of the school.

In collaboration with Bank Street College of Education, Clarion School’s rigorous academic programme will offer a clear and effective pathway for students to transition into top US colleges on graduation.

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December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

As part of its expansion, Aldar Academies is to open two new schools – an all-girls secondary school and an American-curriculum school – in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital, in 2016 that will take its pupil population from 5,000 to 9,300.

The all-girls’ secondary school will offer the English national curriculum in the primary and the international baccalaureate diploma programme for years 12 and 13.

The American school will teach co-ed kindergarten to Grade 12 and follow the Massachusetts State curriculum.

The fees in both schools will be in the medium-to-high range, starting from Dh40,000 annually, although tuition has yet to be decided.

The girls school, including the co-ed primary section, will have room for 1,800 students, while the American school can accommodate the equal number of students.

To facilitate the increased number of pupils, Aldar Academies will hire 150 more teachers and staff, taking its total number of employees to about 950. The two schools are to open in September 2016.

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Tata ClassEdge and CMS Partners to improve Students’ Learning Outcomes TATA ClassEdge, a leading provider of innovative technology-based learning solutions for schools, announced a partnership with the City Montessori School (CMS) Lucknow, one of the most prestigious schools in India. An agreement has been signed for 877 classrooms of CMS, which is by far one of the largest implementation of technology in any school globally.

This partnership is aimed at improving students’ learning outcomes by enhancing the teaching learning experience, through innovative use of technology. TATA ClassEdge’s proprietary instructional framework, using the multiple learning experiences model, makes use of distinct types of activities that promotes social and thinking skills in students. Additionally, the lesson planning approach and an assessment platform helps teachers; while ClassEdge Connect lets them

contribute and share their own content, within and across the schools too.

Nirav Khambhati, CEO, Tata ClassEdge, said, “We take great pride in partnering with the best schools in India and it is nice to

receive this vote of confidence from CMS. We learn a lot by working with progressive schools like CMS, and that helps us stay at the forefront of introducing new technologies and innovation in classrooms.”

Commenting on the partnership, Prof Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, President and COO, CMS, said, “CMS has always striven to harness the power of educational technology, and is careful to adopt only appropriate technology.

Today, we are proud to have partnered with Tata ClassEdge as the availability of textbook mapped interactive media, worksheets, quizzes and labs, lesson planning and activity based learning methods in the ClassEdge content will further enhance the engagement levels of students.

ClassEdge Connect, the collaborative aspect of Tata ClassEdge platform, makes use of our biggest asset, the collective wisdom of our teachers, by enabling them to share best practices and resources across our different campuses. We look forward to a long lasting association with Tata ClassEdge.”

3 New Master’s Courses at JNU The prospective candidates looking to enrol themselves for a Master’s Degree at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) will now have three new programmes to choose from the next academic session, 201617. The three new MA courses are in the field of film and television, art history and theatre.

SK Sopory, Vice-Chancellor JNU, made the announcement after the University’s Academic Council cleared the introduction of the new courses.

“The University will be offering three new MA programmes from the next academic session. The courses will be MA in Art History and Visual Studies; MA in Film, Television and New Media Studies; and MA in Theatre and Performance Studies,” Sopory said.

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The Vice Chancellor said the proposal had come from the Board of Studies of the School of Arts and Aesthetics in July and the preamble as well as the courses to be taught and credit requirements for the three

programmes have been worked out.

JNU had recently proposed a course in Indian culture and yoga as well.

There was a proposal to introduce three short-term courses in yoga, vedas and jatakas.

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Afghanistan seeks Support from India on Skill Development A delegation from Afghanistan led

by Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai met Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Indian Union Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, to explore possible collaborations between the two countries to strengthen the skill ecosystem of Afghanistan.

Highlighting a major concern of unskilled workforce and the migration of trained individuals from other countries to Afghanistan, the Deputy Foreign Minister informed that Afghanistan is undertaking significant reforms to structure its labour markets and develop a skilled workforce for its economic development. In this regard, the delegation sought support from the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to undertake a skill gap study of the workforce in its country to

identify the potential sectors where skill development courses could be initiated.

Sharing his keen interest in providing full cooperation to Afghanistan, Rudy informed the

delegation about the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) that provides the approach to skill development trainings in the country. He invited the delegation to nominate students from Afghanistan

who could come and undertake one-year skill development courses in India.

Expressing the need to build enterprises in both the countries, Rudy further offered Afghanistan with a platform where students could be enrolled in entrepreneurship development courses through the International Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme of the National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business D e v e l o p m e n t (NIESBUD).

The Indian Minister also proposed the delegation to visit some of the premium skill development institutes of India to have a holistic understanding of the approach for training adopted in the country.

LSAT-India 2016 is on May 15 The examination date for the prestigious Law School Admission Test – India (LSAT-India™) has been announced. The reasoning-based test will be conducted on May 15, 2016 in 16 cities across India.

LSAT-India™ is one of the leading law tests for undergraduate and postgraduate law admissions in the country. More than 60 law colleges accept LSATIndia™ scores as one of their admissions criteria.

Dan Bernstine, President, LSAC, said, “On behalf of the Law School Admission Council, I am pleased to announce the 8th annual administration of the LSATIndia. This programme has grown each year since it began, and is now firmly established as a key element of law school admission in India. It is a privilege for LSAC to provide this service in partnership with Pearson VUE.” “Year-on-year, we are seeing more law colleges in India associating with LSAT-India™ which is a testimony of the credibility of this law exam in India.

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December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

More candidates are opting for LSAT-India exam as the preferred law exam in the country,” said Divyalok Sharma, director of client development at Pearson VUE India.

Offered by the global Law School Admission Council (LSAC), USA (LSAC.org), in conjunction with Pearson VUE, The LSAT-India™ assesses the critical reading and verbal reasoning skills that are needed to succeed in law school.

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HRD Minister Stresses Use of ICT to Strengthen School Education Smriti Irani, Union HRD Minister, said that use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) would strengthen school education system in India.

Speaking at ‘edNEXT – National Conference on ICT in School

Education’ held in New Delhi on November 7, she said, “Education ministers of some of the states are working to reduce burden of exams on students.”

The minister also felicitated education ministers of all states

e-UGshala: An X’mas Gift to Graduates Come Christmas, and the Santa will bring in goodies for aspiring graduate students this year, as per the Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Smriti Irani.

A technological tool called e-UGshala initiative, which will help enable access to the digitised contents to the higher education institutions, will be launched during the merrier time of the year, December 25.

“We have 29 undergraduate texts, visuals self-assessment sheets and books in social science, science and languages.

I will dedicate e-UGshala to the nation on December 25,” informed Union Human

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Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani.

After digitisation of the undergraduate level content, the next step is a e-PGshala for post graduate education, she said.

The minister also talked about making the e-pathshala available on mobile phones to enable access to children in remote areas.

Talking about ‘Swayam’, India’s maiden indigenous massive online open courseware (MOOCs) for students, Irani said that after students attain certificates in the chosen virtual course, they will be eligible to enroll in physical universities and institutes.

December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

for their efforts in fulfilling the PM Narendra Modi’s vision of having toilets in each government school under the Swachh Bharat campaign.

Focussing on the need to recognise ICT initiatives to be taken in the education sector, she asked every citizen to come forward and contribute towards technology innovation for the benefit of education.

The Minister said that the concerted efforts of people across the country could find solutions to varied problems, and stressed upon the need of digitalisation in school education. e-Pathshala, a web portal, which hosts educational resources for students, teachers, educators, researchers, and parents, is available through especially-developed mobile app interface compatible for Android, iOS and Windows platforms for wider access and contains textbooks and other e-books as EPUB 3.0 and Flipbooks in English, Hindi and Urdu.

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

Ministry launches SATYAM to Strengthen Research Ministry of Science and Technology has launched a new programme called SATYAM“Science and Technology of Yoga and Meditation” to strengthen research in the areas of yoga and meditation.

The objective of SATYAM is to harness knowledge obtained in academic institutions and other related agencies for finding Science & Technology-led solutions that would enable us to cope with stress and strain associated with fast changing social, economic, environmental and professional circumstances. Cutting-edge research under SATYAM will seek to identify various issues and challenges related to human well-being and address them.

The programme will encourage research in two major thematic areas: (1) investigations on the effect of yoga and meditation on physical and mental health, and (2) investigations on the effect of yoga and meditation on the body, brain and mind in terms of basic processes occurring therein.

Given the ever increasing prevalence of physical and mental health problems, the holistic approach of yoga and Policy NEWS is believed To read latest news, log onbeneficial to education.eletsonline.com meditation to have the potential to find treatment that is relatively safer and more cost-effective.

News

investment cellStructure to attract foreign CEP recommends MajorOpen Changes in JEE’s from 2017 investments in education

admission in IITs The Committee of Eminent Persons The Human Resourse Development (HRD) Ministry is being pushed by and the NITs based Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) open an investment on a to common counselling.

(CEP) constituted by the IIT Council cell to attract foreign investments in the education sector. in the  The IITsThis willcomes be requested to set under the Chairmanship of Prof Ashok backdrop where the Foreign Education Providers Bill that could have resulted in up a system for developing mock Misra submitted its report to the setting up of campuses of foreign universities remains shelved.

JEE examinations which will help Government of India. The Committee DIPP secretary has asked departments of school education higher for edu-the JEE students to and prepare made the following recommendations cation to set up their own investment cells. The proposed cell will provide necessignificantly and wean them away in the structure of JEE that shall be sary information on a vast range of subjects, such as policies of the ministries, from the coaching industry. The effected from 2017 onwards: and state governments, various incentive schemes and opportunities available to possibility of using the MOOCs Based on this performance,  A National Testing Service shall be  make it convenient for investors to take decisions. can alsosetbeupexplored. about 4 lakh candidates shall be set up by early 2016, mandated Foreign education provider (FEP’s India) is the initiative of the Government of India to allow the platform foreign universities their  MHRD may take measures shortlisted for taking the JEE. to conduct an Aptitude Test, educational campus (colleges and universities) in India. The foreign institutions must have to clear certain parameters financially and for the improvement of school education  The JEE itself will be on the lines which should test the scientific academically, before they can establish education in India.

HRD Minister Smriti Irani has decided to focus onof a legal allowing foreign universitiesand to set the up campuses and methodin India of examination theframework currentfor JEE (Advanced) aptitude and innovative thinking curb unfair practices by education of the human resources agenda. of the Boards, so that students and designed to ministry’s test legislative the ability.

The Aptitude Test institutions may be as part It may be mentioned that as atimes policy decision, in India in is considered the issue of profit in education with the Science aptitude will be knowledge Physics, ‘not-for-profit’.

Chemistry In fact, offered two or more in a education is one of the components of the proposed new education policy currently being discussed. The HRD ministry wants the issue of profit well prepared in the concepts and Mathematics; and will be year and would be an online test. in education to be settled before the new education policy is finalized. by the time they reach 12th conducted by the IITs. The testing shall test the scientific “Successive governments have played safe on profit in education. While the private sector investment in higher education has without on  From this, ranks will be issued to thinking and cannot be gamed increased with clear profit motive, the government is still holding on to the Supreme Court order thatgrade, said education is notdependence for profit. coaching institutions.

40,000+ students who can seek through coaching.

Clarity is needed for the idea of investment cell to work,” a media report said.

Logo forProposes the New Education MHRD to make Policy finalised Schoolcampaign Bags Lighter

Nawaz Shaikh, the winner of the logo competition for the new Education awarded

by Union HRD Minister The Ministry of Policy Humanwas Resource Development (MHRD) plans Smriti Irani.the Thebulky competition designed to give logo, to lighten backpacks children carry to slogan school by and tagline for the New Education Policy was held through proposing to split their books according to specific semesters, MyGov platform. with a slew of studies pointing outthe thatwinner the backbreaking The minister while introducing of the logo bags are too heavy for the fragile bones and muscles of(NARI), children. competition from National AIDS Research Institute Pune said that this was the first time that a common The proposal came up at a meeting of the MHRD and man of the country hasnext designed a logo year, and if could be implemented from the academic not any advertising agency or a corporate approved by states. house.

The children aged Through betweenthis 8-15 yearsthe carrying school initiative Ministry of HRD has a step towards bags weighing between 5-10 kgtaken is common in India as most making a common man directly schools insist they bring about a dozen books and notebooks engage and participate with the Government through MyGov Platform.

Nawas Shaikh, winner of the logo competition was of the view that one must have education which makes

MHRD

Government of India

Ministry of Human Resource Development

daily, with the added load of lunchboxes and water bottles triggering back and neck strains and sometimes lifelong orthopaedic damage.

The idea is to ensure students don’t need to carry Union Ministry of Human Resource Development heavy bags to school that puts pressure on their young issuedThe a notice to make amendments in the National spine. suggestion to bind specific chapters that Council Teacher Act semester (NCTE) 1993, would be for taught in Education a particular is practical and which came into force in 1995. The main objective can be implemented easily.

MHRD proposes changes to NCTE Act

of the NCTE was to achieve the development of the teacher education system and ensure proper maintenance of norms and standards. digitalLEARNING / December 2015 The MHRD Ministry has proposed amendments in 1993 NCTE act, based on the recommendations

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Special Interview

Reinventing Excellence in Medical Education Thumbay Moideen, Founder President, Thumbay Group, UAE has expanded the Group’s business to new areas and under his guidance, the group has established the first private teaching hospital in UAE. In an interaction with Ravi Gupta, CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Elets Technomedia, he shares about his journey in the medical education space, how medical education has evolved, best practices adopted at GMU and more Please share your journey in the medical education space.

The journey so far has been exciting.

Immediately after my graduation, I was involved in our family business. At a young age of 21, I became the Managing Director of our business. I worked hard, implemented many innovative ideas and expanded our business to new areas. I have travelled extensively to Africa, Far East to develop business partnerships.

Very soon, our business turnover grew manifold and we started venturing into new areas.

Gulf Medical University (GMU) was established as Gulf Medical College in the year 1998. Ever since the college was established, we focused all our efforts in making the institution one of the best in the region, and we succeeded.

Today, students from over 74 countries pursue their career at our university in Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Physical Therapy, and Biomedical Sciences.

We also offer masters programmes in Clinical Pathology, Toxicology, Human Reproductive Biology, Public Health and Physiotherapy.

Research is the main focus area at GMU, along with education and healthcare.

The University has established Center for Advanced Biomedical Research & Innovation (CABRI) to pursue excellence in biomedical research that shall have an impact on the education and the outcome of clinical care and Center for Advanced Simulation in Healthcare (CASH) - a multidisciplinary educational facility that provides high-tech

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December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

simulated and virtually created hospital set-up for clinical and communication skills teaching and training for students and healthcare professionals.

The Summer Training Program (STP) which is a special feature of our university, is a unique concept introduced by us to enable students to get international exposure and experience in clinical settings. Every year the University sends students to participate in STP, which helps them understand the methodologies in healthcare and research, and expose them to various nuances of medical advances, which helps in carving out their own future.

Training is conducted in leading hospitals in several countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Sweden, Switzerland, India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan.

Later, we were the first to establish the first private teaching hospital, today known under the banner of Thumbay Network of Teaching Hospitals, in the region. Even establishing a hospital was a big challenge as we did not get enough support from the existing government hospitals and facilities. But, due to our perseverance and hard work, we are today one of the biggest healthcare providers in the country. We treat patients from 175 nationalities. We are accredited by JCI International which is an international recognition of our high quality affordable healthcare services.

How Medical Education has evolved over the last decade?

The strength of any university is its committed and dedicated faculty and staff.

The faculty at GMU is constantly attending professional development activities to improve their skills at teaching and facilitating learning.

For the past few years, the faculty has taken initiatives to review and revamp the curriculum as per the changing trends in medical education Medical education has undergone major changes over the years. Especially in the last decade, medical schools increasingly have incorporated technology and expanded instruction to simulated exam rooms, clinical facilities and clinical training. There’s an increased focus on community-based care, patient safety and global health. We feel that the educational standards need to be refreshed, refined and improved as technology changes.

What have been the best practices being followed at the Gulf Medical University?

The focus of the GMU is in three core areas: Medical Education, Healthcare

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

and Research. The University strives to develop these three core areas as spotlights of medical excellence. The strength of any university is its committed and dedicated faculty and staff. The faculty at GMU is constantly attending professional development activities to improve their skills at teaching and facilitating learning. For the past few years, the faculty has taken initiatives to review and revamp the curriculum as per the changing trends in medical education. The products of these efforts are incorporated in the curriculum that is being taught presently in the University.

GMU is the first medical institution in the region, which offers admissions to both boys and girls of all nationalities. The University has infrastructure and facilities, which is on par with some of the established medical institutions in the world. GMU aspires to attract the best of students by offering a variety of excellent programmes supported by quality administration and student support services.

Apart from academic programmes, GMU is in the forefront of Continuing Medical Education (CME) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programmes. The University has been organising well-acclaimed International and Regional conferences and symposia. The University also publishes a bimonthly Health magazine as part of its commitment to informative medical journalism.

What best practices have you seen during your rich and expansive journey?

One thing is that the education and healthcare are a must at any time. We grew due to our concrete plans and innovative approach. We can succeed only when our vision and the means to attain our goals are clear, strong and remain as our main focus. We have developed a very strong value system in our organisation.

We have always supported integration and a sense of belonging. We concentrated on Excellence, Trust, Knowledge, Innovation and Integrity as our main pillars of the organisation.

It is easy to gain the confidence, as long as we as promoters are clear in our ideas and involve the team in decision making. Similarly, we developed great confidence in our clients by offering them the best of education and healthcare.

What can the Indian Medical Education adapt from global best practices?

In realising the dynamics of medical education, relevant authorities must initiate procedures for regular review and updating of the structure, function and quality of training programmes in India and must rectify identified deficiencies.

The process of renewal should be based on prospective studies and analysis and should lead to the revision of policies and practices of medical training programmes in accordance with past experience, present activities and future perspectives.

Thumbay Moideen Founder President, Thumbay Group, UAE digitalLEARNING / December 2015

17

Cover story

Role of Technology in Bridging the

Educational Fault Lines

T

he recently held ruling of the Supreme Court to scrap reservations in higher education institutions in national interest has opened the Pandora’s Box and created the expected furore and dilemma among all the stakeholders of education.

The opponents of reservation in education believe that it cuts down merit and propagates mediocrity, as it passes over those who have scored higher in an examination, for the reserved category who have scored lower. However, the problem is that the opponents of reservation mistakenly equate the number of marks scored, to the level of merit.

The examination system and entrance tests prevalent in India not just measures merit, intelligence or ability in the subject, but also aptitude for a certain type of questions.

In his book “Competing Equalities: Law and Backward Classes in India”, Mark Galanter spoke of three kinds

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December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

The recently held ruling of the Supreme Court to scrap the reservations in institutions of higher education has created a new uproar among all the education stakeholders. But the major challenges of ‘access to all’ and ‘quality of education’ have been the persistent fault lines of our education system. Nevertheless, technological interventions in education have induced a silent but substantial transformation in meeting out both these issues. Elets News Network (ENN) delves into the role of technology in bridging the educational fault lines and how academia-industry association can transform the higher education in India of resources to produce results in competitive exams: yy Economic Resources: For prior education, training, materials, freedom from work, etc; yy Social and Cultural Resources: Network of contacts, confidence, guidance and advice, information, etc; and, yy Inbuilt Ability and Hard Work.

What SC ruling says?

In October 2015, the Supreme Court held that national interest requires doing away with all forms of reservation

in higher education institutions, and urged the Centre to take effective steps ‘objectively’. Regretting that some “privilege remains unchanged” even after 68 years of independence, the Court noted that despite several reminders to the central and state governments to make merit the primary criteria for admissions into superspecialty courses, the ground reality remains that reservation often holds sway over merit.

“The fond hope has remained in the sphere of hope…The said privilege remains unchanged, as if (it is) to

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

compete with eternity,” the top court remarked, adding that it concurs completely with what it had ruled in 1988 in two judgments. In these two judgements, while dealing with the issue of reservation in super-specialty courses in medical institutions, the apex court had said, “There should really be no reservation” since it is in the general interest of the country for improving the standard of higher education, and thereby improving the quality of available medical services to the people of India. “We hope and trust that the Government of India and the state governments shall seriously consider this aspect of the matter without delay and appropriate guidelines shall be evolved.”

The top court also referred to a body of judgments, asking government authorities to abstain from relaxing the eligibility criteria based on various kinds of reservation, since it would defeat the very purpose of imparting the best possible training to selected meritorious candidates.

Reservation in India: An Overview In India, reservation, a form of quotabased affirmative action, is the process of facilitating the citizens in education, scholarship, jobs, and in promotion

who have category certificates. The reservation in India is governed by constitutional laws, statutory laws, and local rules and regulations. The major beneficiaries of the reservation under the Constitution – with the object of ensuring a level playing field - are Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC).

Though the Article 15(1) of the Indian Constitution says that the “State shall not discriminate any citizen on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them”, it also provides for compensatory or protective

In India, reservation, a form of quota-based affirmative action, is the process of facilitating the citizens in education, scholarship, jobs, and in promotion who have category certificates.

The reservation in India is governed by constitutional laws, statutory laws, and local rules and regulations

discrimination in favour of certain sections of the disadvantaged people.

Article 15(4) of the Indian Constitution specifies that notwithstanding the provision stated above, the State can make “special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the SCs and the STs”.

The SCs and STs constitute approximately 22.5 per cent of the India’s population. Accordingly, a prorata reservation of 22.5 per cent (SC 15 per cent and ST 7.5 per cent) has been made for them in educational institutions which come under the administrative control of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and other central ministries.

Similarly, reservations have also been provided by the state governments and union territory administrations, directly proportional to their population.

In 1978, the second Backward Classes Commission, known as the Mandal Commission under the Chairmanship of BP Mandal was set up. In 1980, the Commission submitted its report and recommended the reservation of 27 per cent of the seats for OBCs in all scientific, technical and professional institutions run by the central and state governments.

The Mandal Commission further recommended that the states which have already reserved more than 27 per cent seats for OBC students would remain unaffected by this recommendation. The recommendations of the Commission was implemented by the Government of India in 1990. In this regard, the Supreme Court had ruled that the total percentage of reservation should not exceed 50 per cent of the seats.

Reforming Higher Education The higher education system in India is the largest in the world in terms of number of institutions and the third largest in terms of student enrolment.

India has remarkably transformed its higher education landscape over the last two decades. It has created widespread access to low-cost highquality university education for digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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students of all levels. With wellplanned expansion and a studentcentric learning-driven approach of education, the country has not only improved its enrolment numbers, but has dramatically increased the outcomes of learning. In addition, with the effective use of technology, it has been able to resolve the longstanding gap between excellence and equity in education.

India has also undertaken large-scale reforms to enhance faculty-student ratios in educational institutions by making teaching an attractive career path, expanding the capacity for doctoral students at research universities and delinking educational qualifications from teaching eligibility.

In the last few years, the country has undertaken massive structural and systemic reforms in higher education that have started to yield encouraging results.

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Technology: Bridging the Gap Globally, the investment in technology in educational institutes has increased hundredfold in the last two decades.

Most of the investment has been made based on the belief that technologymediated learning environment offers opportunities for students to search for and analyse information, solve problems, collaborate and communicate.

Therefore, equipping the students with a set of competencies to be competitive in the 21st century marketplace.

In the coming decade, technology will play a bigger role in transforming higher education imparted by universities, and taking it to the next level. The technological tools and innovative solutions can help in building a social, collaborative and personalised environment that will enhance the way students learn, communicate and collaborate, and

study both on and off campus.

In India, use of technology for promoting education has always been a part of policy and plan documents on education. Currently, the policy makers at central as well as state level are favouring inclusion of technology and Internet-based education, adopting cloud-based virtual classrooms/ universities and mobile learning initiatives. The Government of India has implemented various national as well as state specific schemes that run concurrent to large number of privatelyled technology initiatives at both school and higher education levels. The draft of National Policy on Education (NPE), framed in 1986 and modified in 1992, stressed upon employing educational technology to improve the quality of education.

On the other hand, higher education in India imparted by universities is facing challenges in terms of Access, Equity and Quality, which have been assumed as the persistent faultlines. In the 2011 Ernst & Young – FICCI report on higher education, it was noted that the following are some of the key challenges in terms of Access, Equity and Quality: yy Insufficient infrastructure to meet the growing demand for higher education. In 2011, 14.6 million students enrolled in higher education in India. By 2020, 40 million students will have to be enrolled if gross enrolment ratio (GER) target of 30 per cent has to be met. This implies an additional capacity of over 25 million seats that would be required within the next decade; yy There is wide disparity in higher education GER across states, urban vs rural areas, gender and communities that have to be bridged; yy Faculty shortage, deficient physical infrastructure, ill-equipped libraries and outdated curricula continue to be major concern in our higher education system.

However, the innovative use of technology, IT and ICT is believed to be a game changer that can significantly strengthen the higher education system

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and propel the country into becoming a ‘Knowledge Superpower’.

According to the report, the adoption of technology in higher education can facilitate the following: yy Improving the access to the system through online education; yy Improving the quality of teaching, especially across remote locations; and yy Increasing transparency strengthening systems, processes and compliance norms in higher education institutes; yy Measure students’ learning participation and effectiveness; yy Analyse student behaviour to maximise students’ involvement, optimise retentions and improve placements; yy Analyse students’ performance, placement, application volume, website analytics, and social media metrics for brand audit.

The private players and organisations in technological space are working towards solving the issues pertaining to access of education. The main role of technology is to make quality education accessible to everyone, anytime. The organisations working in education technology space focus on developing innovative products. The main target is to overcome the issues such as lack of sufficient teachers, reach in remote areas, lack of infrastructure, lack of government interventions etc.

These organisations are developing innovative and technological tools

which are helping the students in actively making choices about how to generate, obtain, manipulate or display information. They are analysing the information, making choices and executing skills — as compared to the traditional teacher-led classroom.

Not only this but students are now in a position to define their goals, make their own decisions and evaluate their progress.

Based on the technological interventions, success in the 21st century classroom has become far more dependent on students obtaining a well-rounded skill set as compared to reaching an academic comprehension level. Therefore, bridging the gap

With around 140 million people in the collegegoing age group, one in every four graduates in the world will be of the Indian education system.

The key to harness this demographic dividend is education. Currently, the third largest education system in the world, India is likely to surpass the US in the next five years and China in the next 15 years

between technological integration and the common core standards of imparting is the first step toward improving our education system.

The Way Forward By 2030, India will be amongst the youngest nations in the world. With around 140 million people in the college-going age group, one in every four graduates in the world will be of the Indian education system. The key to harness this demographic dividend is education. Currently, the third largest education system in the world, India is likely to surpass the US in the next five years and China in the next 15 years, according to some research estimates.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has contributed a lot in the growth and development of higher education in India, by designing educational programmes and implementing various schemes through academic, administrative and financial support.

However, in the current changing higher education landscape, entrance of private universities and educational institutions will be a game changer.

There is a need to introduce new institutions of medicine, science, technology and others. With GER of about 17.9 per cent, India has an ambitious target of 25.2 per cent by the end of 12th Plan (2012-17) and 30 per cent by 2020.

However, a major concern for India’s education system is the creation of employable workforce to harness the demographic dividend.

According to a industry report supported by NASSCOM. In India, only 25 per cent of technical graduates and around 15 per cent of other graduates are considered employable by IT/ITeS industry.

Therefore, there is an immediate need for a holistic and symbiotic association between academia and industry to make the graduates employable . There is also a need for moving from ‘traditional generic model’ of education to a ‘learner-centered skill-based’ model of education. The Indian students should be mentored to make their careers in the areas of their skills, strength and abilities. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Bringing Students Closer to Campuses Raj Mruthyunjayappa, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Talisma Corporation Pvt Ltd - a wholly owned subsidiary of Campus Management Corporation, writes to Elets News Network (ENN) on the role of technology in education, Talisma CRM challenges campuses are facing and the solutions thereof for Higher Education

H

igher education is transforming the lives of people all over the world. The impact of globalisation and the arrival of emerging economies on the global stage is set to herald changes in the sector that have never been seen or thought of before. As the segment expands with more students, better infrastructure and technology, the unprecedented growth is also exposing fault lines that were hidden before. The fault lines, unless addressed, may offset the benefits that the sector and participants gain from the unprecedented growth.

Let me contextualise the trend.

What we have seen in the last decade is expansion of participation. Thanks to improvement in technology and infrastructure, we have seen significant progress in enrolment ratios, learning efficiency and even pedagogies.

In addition, the student expectations have also changed forcing campuses to constantly rethink their approach towards engaging students. With every fresh batch, a new set of minds, schooled and prepped in diverse environments and having a new set of expectations enters campuses. This presents ready-made challenges for campuses in living up to their expectations and preparing them for a fulfilling career ahead.

Outlining the Challenges Having closely observed the sector for over a decade and a half, I can say that the challenges that campuses face today are a far cry from the 90s. There are five key areas that we can zero-in on as far as challenges go. They are competition,

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delivery, compliance and governance and outcomes. Each of these presents a challenge in itself while working in tandem with others to keep higher education planners and university/ campus leadership busy. There are disruptive forces centred on these areas that add up to a superstorm that carries a significant potential to derail the progress made by campuses so far. Institutions will need to re-visit their priorities.

From smart classrooms to measured learning, from one touch student services to e-libraries from MOOCs to dynamic and on-demand learning, technology is today at the heart of everything campuses are doing to improve learning and more As economies grow, so grows the appetite for trained, skilled and marketready workforce and campuses are ever adapting to ensure they prepare students who are relevant in the marketplace with the right skills and knowledge base.

One cannot and should not address such challenges in a piecemeal manner.

Few years ago, education planners used to look at technology as a partner in addressing these challenges. Today, however, technology has donned a more significant role and is in many cases paving the way for campuses to look beyond trepidations.

Tali revo ma

Kelly Li Assista Nat Univers

Technology is theCampaigns platform on Extend whichServices and C Personalize and Automate future strategies and tactics are rolled Talisma CRM is the leading Constituent Relationship Management Talisma CRM solutions improve (CRM) solution for higher education. The platform helps improve integrating the power of email, ph out.

From smart classrooms to measured recruiting and retention, automates services such as admissions, and portals with a robust Web enrollment, financial aid, and help-desk, and creates a truly services wide knowledgebase. The soluti learning, from one touch student exceptional experience for constituents. Students and alumni can Information Systems (SIS) and lev to e-libraries from MOOCs to dynamic andof education for traditio receive more personalized attention and on-target messaging, the quality while institutions achieve measurable results in the form of higher alike. From empowering regional r on-demand learning, technology is today graduation rates, enduring constituent relationships, and reduced tools to engaging prospects and s operational communications at thecosts. heart of everything campuses are channel, Talisma C the world. doing to improve learning and more.

The agility that technology lends gives campuses that extra room to innovate and grow. It also helps manage disruptive forces that emerge every now and then and present a new set of challenges.

In the background, technology is also bringing students closer to their campuses while helping them successfully address competitive pressures, compliance mandates and improving governance. Automation is only one part of the story. The other parts are convenience, improved efficiencies, better accuracy, faster transactions and improved student experience.

In the future, the contexts may vary and the challenges may too but technology will continue being a force multiplier for the campuses and the higher education segment as a whole. 速

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Increasing Educational Productivity A combination of digital platform-based services and physical services will serve the need of a large majority of customers who are looking for professional skills, tells Udai Singh, Chief Strategy Officer, NIIT Ltd, to Elets News Network (ENN) Use of technology has become an integral component of education.

According to you, what are the challenges Indian higher education system is facing with regard to implementation of technology? e-learning is not a new concept but is still developing. In the coming years, we are likely to witness dramatic changes in the space. Education industry today is battling several challenges like accessibility of quality education, expert teaching faculty etc. Even premier institutes like IITs and IIMs are faced with shortage of faculty. Therefore, technology in education should be used constructively and appropriately so that it has maximum impact. Technology should be used to resolve the challenges posed due to limited number of expert instructors.

The need of the hour is to embrace technology in education. If best institutes showcase their technology, it sets a trend for the rest to follow. This would require evolution in terms of pedagogy and education in design. The system has to evolve from teacher-centric to learnercentric with teachers becoming a part of the environment that fosters learning.

Online education can cover a wide spectrum of courses and curriculums from vocational courses, special skills training to degree courses and higher education courses. However, in a country where diplomas and degrees have greater importance than the actual knowledge or skill gained, a lack of accreditation and acceptance of online courses is an issue. With time, I think India will move towards a blended learning model.

NIIT is a blended player in the education space. We believe in a combination of digital platform-based

services and physical services at physical locations that will serve the need of a large majority of customers who are looking for professional skills.

With the help of technology, how can Higher Education Institutions play a pivotal role in imparting education to the public at large and serving the greater need of society?

We, at NIIT, believe that technology is becoming critical but pure technology delivery model can’t deliver the results. So, you need the combination of technology and people-based delivery. In India, and other developing markets, technology can be a potent force multiplier that can dramatically increase the impact of other scarce resources such as expert instructors and physical learning infrastructure.

Recently, NIIT has launched a digital learning platform NIIT.tv, an Internet TV portal that can be accessed on a computer, tablet or smartphone anytime, anywhere. In the initial phase, over 20 skill-based training programmes in IT, banking and finance, retail and management were made available, which scaled up to more than 50 ‘live’ as well as ‘on-demand’ courses.

can ensure access to quality education anytime, anywhere.

At NIIT, we have always used technology-enabled delivery models innovatively to impart quality education to our students. We launched Netvaristy. com, one of the first initiatives in terms of online learning as early as 1996.

Synchronous Learning Technology used in NIIT Imperia is another such example.

We have also pioneered the concept of Cloud Campus in India.

‘Access’ to all & ‘Quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system in India.

What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

The education space is evolving. Today, online learning opportunities and use of digital learning tools can help increase educational productivity by accelerating the rate of learning, reducing costs associated with instructional materials or programme delivery and better utilising teachers’ time. Technology

How technological transformations and innovative learning tools can change the education landscape in India in the coming decade?

Technology is enabling multimodal teaching, changing curricula and spawning rich forms of online research and collaboration. Online-collaboration tools, software that supports individually paced learning and learning-management systems are among the communication technologies most expected to improve academics over the next five years.

Udai Singh Chief Strategy Officer, NIIT Ltd

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Removing Barriers for Learners Use of technology will increase the flexibility of delivery of education to the students so that learners can access knowledge anytime, anywhere, tells Dr Surendra Kansal, Director, ABES Engineering College, Ghaziabad, to Elets News Networks (ENN) In the light of Supreme Court ruling, what would be the impact of doing away with all forms of reservation in institutions of higher education?

According to Supreme Court, the national interest requires doing away with all forms of reservations in institutions of higher education. In the past 68 years since independence and after the adoption of our constitution in 1950, the weaker section of our society was not able to achieve much, as compared to what our leaders may have thought while adopting the reservation policy. It has been witnessed that larger section of weaker society is still struggling to get the basic education facility in rural and urban areas. In this era of globalisation, where India has to compete with the world without compromising the quality output, we have to think out-of-the-box to bring changes in the policy. Leaders in collaboration with the intellectuals have to work towards revision, where policy can innovatively facilitate the weaker section with better education and at the same time able to tap best talents to compete globally.

To reduce the adverse impacts, we can make arrangements of special classes in the institutes to help and motivate weaker students to bring them to the same level where they can work on their improvement areas to compete with the world. After so many decades, we have realised that simply by drafting and implementing a reservation policy we may not be able to uplift the weaker section in the society. It requires a timely upgrade and we all together at various levels still need to work tirelessly to take India ahead by nurturing talents from

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Dr Surendra Kansal, Director, ABES Engineering College, Ghaziabad

all sections of the society. Anyhow, we should not de-motivate people with creativity, rationality and innovations on basis of class they belong to.

What are the challenges Indian higher education system is facing with regard to implementation of technology?

Today, the use of technology is touching almost every part of our lives and communities. This is the reason why use of technology has become an integral component of education as well. When properly used, technology will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledgebased economy.

There are certain challenges that Indian higher education system faces with regard to implementation of technology in the institutes: yy Lack of qualified teachers to teach ICT; yy Lack of electricity in institutes located in the backward areas of the country; yy Low Internet bandwidth due to the high costs involved in the connectivity; yy Lack of initiative by the community leaders as they do not see the need to purchase and subsequent installations of computers as a priority; yy Obsolete computers lower the morale of both the teacher and the student; it is very common to find

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some schools/colleges using very old computers running on obsolete operating systems; yy Internet pornography, cyber bullying and other antisocial behaviours is a worrying emerging problem.

With the help of technology, how Higher Education Institutions can play a pivotal role in imparting education to the public at large and serving the greater need of society?

Education in India performs certain functions for the society as a whole. It trains the individuals with the skills that are required by the economy.

Hence, it is necessary to work according to the needs and demands of the society. Since the population is increasing and number of schools and colleges are limited, we cannot deprive the future of our country from getting educated. Bringing in technology will help removing certain barriers between education and the learners.

The promise of educational technology is more important in Indian context because we have a massive deficit of access to high quality education at all the levels due to a number of seemingly insurmountable challenges, ranging from geographical distribution to socio-economic condition of the learners who attend a majority of Indian schools.

Implementing technology will help in creating interactive study material to engage audience effectively.

Technologies when implemented in the institutions, will help impart education to the public at large and serve greater need of the society. Students sitting at distant places can also avail the online classes, give exams, attend lectures, get access to study materials and interact with faculty as well as other students.

This will not only extend the reach of education, but will also reduce the cost incurred on setting up an infrastructure for any institute.

‘Access’ to all & ‘Quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system in India.

What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

Use of technology will increase the flexibility of delivery of education to the students so that learners can access knowledge anytime, anywhere. It can influence the way students are taught as now the processes are learner-driven.

The technology is changing rapidly and the growth has been exponential in the last decade. As technology is widely used in almost every sphere of life, it is influencing students’ expectations for it being used in higher education.

Online learning, in particular, is publicised as a key delivery mode in higher education that will address the majority of the drivers of change Through technological transformation, there will be a wider availability of content and best course material in education which can be shared with students easily, fostering better teaching. It will also allow the academic institutions to reach the disadvantaged groups and new international educational markets, enabling the democratisation of education. In developing countries like India, effective use of technology for the purpose of education has the potential to bridge the digital divide.

Use of technology will help in imparting higher education through various forms like multimedia, e-learning, educational apps. These forms of learning can be used on personal devices, thus, giving access of education to all.

How

technological

transforma-

tions and innovative learning tools can change the education landscape in India in the coming decade?

The technology is changing rapidly and the growth has been exponential in the last decade. As technology is widely used in almost every sphere of life, it is influencing students’ expectations for it being used in higher education.

Online learning, in particular, is publicised as a key delivery mode in higher education that will address the majority of the drivers of change.

People will now expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want. The world of work will become increasingly collaborative in near future, giving rise to reflection about the way student projects are structured. This growth is expected to create opportunities for new content-publishers to enter the textbook market and accelerate the formal adoption of open educational resources to supplement premium digital content.

It is expected that in coming decade, technological transformation will change the education landscape and has become necessary in following ways: yy It will open new opportunities that improve teaching and learning; yy Technological literacy is essential.

People without technical knowledge will suffer from a new form of the digital divide, which will impact their capacity to effectively operate and thrive in the new knowledge economy; yy Technology is an integral part to accessing the higher-order competencies often referred to as 21st century skills, which are also necessary to be productive in today‘s society; yy Technological transformation will open up knowledge and content that otherwise would be less accessible, through access to open educational resources. In this era of globalisation, implantation of technology will internationalise the curriculum which in turn help the students in getting admission in foreign universities, easily. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Opening Arms of Learning The advent of technology has reaped in lucrative options of digital learning in the higher education space, shares Dr Santanu Paul, CEO & MD, TalentSprint, with Elets News Network (ENN) According to you, is reservation in higher education defeating the purpose of imparting the best possible education to meritorious candidates?

Reservation in higher education has always been there but the percentage of reserved seats was small and the selection bar for those seats was still fairly high.

This scenario has been changed in recent times with increase in the number of reserved seats and decrease in the bar for selection. So, in a sense, we have drifted heavily towards a model where excellence and merit are no longer a prerequisite for higher education. Naturally, we are seeing a tremendous dilution in quality and skills at the end of the higher education. I am not making a case against reservation, I am simply making the case that we can still have reservation for socially deprived segments of society while still enforcing a threshold of merit.

Use of technology has become an integral component of education.

What do you think are the challenges the Indian higher education system is facing with regard to implementation of technology?

Even in the current scenario, where technology is touching every person’s life, several higher education institutions in India are only using technology to the extent that they have computer labs. That’s just like scratching the surface. Lecturers need to first upgrade their mindsets and then their skill sets with regard to technology. Most of them view e-assisted classrooms, live virtual classes, self-paced online courses, mobile learning and so forth with suspicion and perceive them to be a threat to their job

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security. Just like bank unions resisted the advent of banking technology in the 1980s, we are seeing, to some extent, the same thing happening now in higher education.

Ultimately though, the economics of technology wins in every field. The same will happen over the next decade or two as the next generation of teachers show up.

‘Access’ to all & ‘Quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system in India. What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

Technology is by far the only credible and likely answer to the twin dimensions of quality and access. I would even add the third dimension called engagement. This is already evident from digital learning platforms like Khan Academy, where the content is rich, deep, diverse, globally accessible, and most importantly, highly engaging and entertaining. Technology can lead us to edutainment, which I believe is the true future of education.

The days of drab classroom lectures are over. Higher education must deliver an enriching user experience or else it will not attract modern learners.

Being into the technology-enabled learning space, how can your organisation contribute/is contributing in bridging the education fault lines?

We, at TalentSprint, focus on skill and career education, which is a postscript to higher education and a precursor to employment.

Data shows that more than 90 per cent of college graduates leave campus without the basic skills required to get a wellpaying job. This is not just a fault-line, it is

Dr Santanu Paul CEO & MD, TalentSprint

a massive chasm. Deficiencies include hard skills and soft skills. We are addressing this space through a combination of digital and contact programmes. We currently address 50,000 trainees per year, which should rise to 100,000 soon, and then our target is 1 million by 2020. We are clear that tech-led learning is the answer to the questions of access, quality, and learner experience.

How technological transformations and innovative learning tools can change the education landscape in India in the coming decade?

Technological transformations can change the education landscape, if: yy laptops, tablets and smartphones will play a major role in changing the nature of access to learning. yy the decline in calibre of teachers and professors in physical classrooms will lead to much greater acceptance of digital programmes conducted by high quality master trainers. yy the price of digital programmes will keep coming down, and the costs of safe travel and accommodation will keep going up, which means the costbenefit ratio will tilt towards digital programmes. yy nano-courses will become popular because of their convenience and flexibility, and degree giving institutions may morph themselves into custom aggregations of heterogeneous nano-courses.

All this may appear pretty disruptive in the short and medium-term, but when the dust settles, we will have high-quality education and affordable edutainment that is both flexible and affordable.

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Digital Learning: Empowering Youth ‘Digital Learning’ is the future of education in India, shares Sajan Paul, Director, Systems Engineering - India & SAARC at Juniper Networks with Elets News Network (ENN). He believes that the mass adoption of digital learning will not only address the accessibility and quality education concerns, but also empower billions of children and youth in the hinterlands of India ‘Access’ to all and ‘quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system in India. What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

Technology adoption in the education sector is highly relevant in the Indian context because of massive deficit of access to high quality education at the primary and high school level. India’s education sector is grappling with host of challenges, including geographical distribution to socio-economic condition of learners, cost of quality education, poor infrastructure and amenities at government schools, teacher absenteeism and low teacher-student ratio.

Increased adoption of technology will enable the country to counter all of the above issues, here and elsewhere, making it more affordable and accessible.

Today, several edutech solutions are on offer that are allowing access and quality like never before. The government has been emphasising on e-learning to be introduced in all schools as part of the larger Digital India programme.

The programme itself is a right step in this direction to provide good quality education to all.

Being in the technology-enabled learning space, how can your organisation contribute in bridging the education fault lines?

Being a technology enabler, Juniper has a lot to contribute for transforming India’s education sector. Xavier University Bhubaneshwar (XUB) started operations at its new state-of-the-art campus with a complete network infrastructure supplied

by Juniper Networks. The new campus

network has allowed XUB to scale to support up to a ten-fold increase in students.

The campus network currently serves about 1,000 full-time students and 80 staff, based on an architecture that will enable the university to scale up to 10,000 students while maintaining low operational overhead and delivering seamless and secure network performance through both wired and wireless access.

The network design is aligned with XUB’s drive to be a fully digital institution with leading edge services such as Xavier Videobook, which enables students to source relevant and contextual video content to make learning more immersive, and Xavier My Room, a platform for hosting virtual classrooms and peer-to-peer interaction using highquality video and audio conferencing.

The Juniper Networks solution integrates switching, routing, security and wireless networking in a holistic manner to simplify network administration and minimise operational overheads.

How technological transformations and innovative learning tools can change the education landscape in India in the coming decade?

We, at Juniper Networks, strongly believe ‘Digital Learning’ is the future of India’s education sector. Mass adoption of digital learning will not only address the accessibility and quality education concerns that the country is fighting with, but also empower billions of children and youth in the India’s hinterlands. It will bring them to the mainstream and the educational inequalities between an urban child and the rural child will

Sajan Paul, Director, Systems Engineering - India & SAARC, Juniper Networks

become a story of the past.

As the country gears up to transform itself as a digitally empowered knowledge society through the government’s dream project – ‘Digital India’ initiative, digital learning will soon become a reality all across the country.

Successful digital learning initiatives require high-performance, robust, and secure network infrastructures with highdensity Wi-Fi support. Schools, campuses, other educational institutes and data center networks must be ready to support mission-critical digital learning, online courses, and online assessments.

With increased technology adoption in India’s education sector, the country will witness a ‘learning revolution’ in the coming decades. For a country like India which has world’s largest youth population, empowering its youth is a key priority and providing ‘quality education to all’ will bring a massive change in its socio-cultural-economic landscape. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Enabling Learning For All Arun Jagannathan, CEO, CrackVerbal, shares with Elets News Network (ENN) an insight on bridging the educational gap through technological solutions in the higher education sector According to you, does reservation in higher education defeat the purpose of imparting the best possible education to meritorious candidates?

Historically, reservation was necessary in the Indian milieu. However, I believe that with respect to higher education, especially management education, you are essentially competing in a global workspace. In my opinion, it is not helpful or beneficial to enforce reservation in management education.

However, there are certain exceptions – for instance, since most organisations are setting targets for a gender ratio at senior management positions, premier management colleges might seek to cater to this requirement by setting their own gender diversity targets.

In the light of Supreme Court ruling, what would be the impact of doing away with all forms of reservation in institutions of higher education?

In the short-term, removing reservation completely from all institutes of higher education could cause a lot of angst in some segments of the society. However, keeping aside the political and civicorder ramifications for a moment, I believe that such a ruling would cause far less of a ripple in the management education institutions than in primary, secondary and undergraduate educational institutions.

‘Access’ to all & ‘Quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system in India.

What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

The Internet has drastically changed the

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landscape of education in India. Today, we have so many success stories in the Internet-enabled education space – Khan Academy, SimpliLearn, Vedantu, to name a few. Technology has eased many of the traditional fault lines of Indian education. Now, with the help of online learning, these concerns can be managed very effectively. Technology has opened up avenues to prepare for competitive exams, and enables the growing popularity of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that provide niche, highquality education, delivered by professors from premier institutes around the globe.

Being into the technologyenabled learning space, how your organisation can contribute/ is contributing in bridging the education faultlines?

One of the basic philosophies at CrackVerbal is to constantly elevate student experience with innovative methodologies. As I see it, there are two gaps in test-prep education that we are focused on bridging. Firstly, our students want flexibility in studying as per their own convenience. Given the hectic schedules, they just want a course that fit into their daily routine. Secondly, they want access to the best faculty for that particular subject and are no longer satisfied who they have access to in their own cities. We have zeroed in on this trend to create online various avatars of our GMAT and GRE courses. Though we got into the online space many years ago, we have recently launched the new GMAT and GRE on-demand courses that are completely revamped from groundup. Besides, we have a mobile app for GRE students, called WordToonz, an

Arun Jagannathan CEO, CrackVerbal

innovative, mnemonic-driven method to learn GRE words, anywhere and anytime.

How technological transformations and innovative learning tools can change the education landscape in India in the coming decade?

I see two major transformations that are revolutionising education. The first is the fact that online learning enables the rise in popularity of the ‘flipped classroom’.

Here, students learn the basic concepts and theory through instructional videos, and interact with teachers in order to work on higher-order problems and activities. With online learning, students can learn at a pace that is comfortable to them, rather than being forced to keep up. A decade down the line, we are likely to see a classroom that is starkly different from the classroom of today, with teachers using innovative pedagogies and teaching tools that are evolving even as we speak!

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Making Learning an Active Process Angad Singh, Co-Founder & CEO, My Mission Admission shares with Elets News Network (ENN) about the challenges in higher education system, role of technology in imparting education, future education landscape and more Challenges Indian Higher Education System is Facing Despite the keenness of some institutions of higher learning to establish effective ICT education programmes, they are confronted with enormous problems that may impede the proper implementation of these programmes. Insufficient infrastructural facilities are the biggest hurdle in the digitalisation of higher education. Another significant challenge is the poor ICT penetration at rural level and lack of usage among Indian higher education practitioners.

In addition, it has been observed that the developing countries such as India are resistant to change from traditional pedagogical methods to more innovative, technology-based teaching and learning methods, by both students and academicians. One of the biggest hurdles we have seen is the high cost of private higher education in India that leaves the students with little money to invest in technology thus impacting the quality of education.

Role of Technology in Imparting Education Globalisation and technological changes have created a new global economy powered by technology, fueled by information and driven by knowledge.

ICT has been proven as a potentially powerful tool for educational change and reform. When used appropriately at institutional level, ICT can further help in improving access to education, strengthening the relevance of education to the increasingly digital workplace, and raising educational quality by making teaching and learning an active process connected to real life.

In addition, learning approaches that

and in particular MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have increased the accessibility of education.

Angad Singh Co-Founder & CEO, My Mission Admission

use contemporary ICT provide many opportunities for constructivist learning and support for resource-based, studentcentered settings by enabling learning to be related to context and to practice.

With the help of technology, educational institutions can offer programmes at a distance mode. Today, many students can use this facility through technologyfacilitated learning settings and they can benefit from anytime, anywhere learning.

Bridging Educational Fault Lines The modes of teaching in higher education have significantly changed in last the 10 years. In the present scenario, there is abundant information on any subject available on the internet. Online education has added new options of teaching, created a wide variety of new courses, and increased the enrolment in many academic institutions while bringing the cost of student acquisition very low for institutions thereby increasing their spent on technology.

New ways of teaching such as cable and satellite transmissions, audio and video conferencing, virtual classrooms

MyMissionAdmission.com, a Learning Platform MyMissionAdmission.com is a social, discovery and learning platform for students to get into their dream careers, courses and colleges. We help students choose their careers wisely and make an informed choice about their colleges, by getting advice from trusted sources, working professionals, experts and mentors. Also, students can schedule video counseling sessions with colleges and universities and talk directly with their representatives and clear all doubts relating to admissions, fees and courses.

The best part is that all this comes free of cost for the students in this social platform. Through a unique gamified scholarship system, students can also build their own scholarship fund through engagements and referrals, thereby selffinancing their education.

The Education Landscape in Coming Years In coming years, education will no longer be limited to the four walls of a classroom.

It will pave way for virtual classrooms, making learning attainable and providing undemanding access everywhere and consistently. This will allow students to use digital learning as a ‘flipped classroom’ adding considerable value to the manner in which education is imparted.

The latest trends in digital education space also include adaptive and collaborative learning where a student is engaged by practicing, experiencing, sharing things and gaining knowledge in a collaborative environment. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Personalised Learning through Technology Education is an organic process where every learner learns at his own pace.

‘Technology Enabled Learning’ stands for flexibility, freedom, choice, personalisation and individualisation. Shantanu Rooj, CEO, Schoolguru, talks with Elets News Networks (ENN), about the benefits of technological learning that frees up students from the rigors of the classroom Is reservation in higher education defeating the very purpose of imparting the best possible education to meritorious candidates?

Reservation by caste, in higher education, is an old practice and has outlived its purpose. The main purpose of introducing the reservation was to provide an opportunity to the extremely backward classes of the society, mainly the SC/ST students, to rise and come up to the level where they can compete with the upper class students, who were assumed to be the privileged. However, after the cabinet decision to expand the reservation quota to include the OBC students without considering the case of the creamy layer, the purpose seems to have shifted from the ‘upliftment of the classes’ to ‘securing of the vote bank’. The decision of the Supreme Court seems to be in the right direction, as it directs the government to remove the quota from higher education in general, especially in highly specialised streams like medical services, thereby ensuring that the best possible training is provided to the meritorious students, thereby creating a ‘Competent India’.

Reservation seldom helps the needy but at the same time it creates another privileged section, the creamy layer, which suppresses its own community.

Reservations, if at all needed, should be for the needy based on several other factors and not the caste. The effective use of financial subsidy provided to the challenged class as scholarships can bridge some part of the gap. The concept of reservation, very often, denies an

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equal opportunity to the meritorious, the deserving, the efficient, the qualified and the truly needy, an opportunity to avail the right education or the job.

‘Access’ to all & ‘Quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system in India.

What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

Technology can play a decisive role in ensuring the accomplishment of the above-mentioned initiatives. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) amongst the 1823 year olds is at a meagre 22 per cent as per a report of the MHRD. Filling the gap

Shantanu Rooj, CEO, Schoolguru

would require us to create large physical infrastructure and the appropriate number of educators in a very short period. Looking at the budget allocations to the education sector, this clearly does not seem to be the priority or the strategy of the government. Moreover, creation of a large number of well-qualified and well-trained teachers require time, in addition to financial resources.

Technology, with its several variants like online learning, mobile learning and blended learning, has the potential to reach out to the masses, the deprived, the challenged and the under-privileged much faster than the classroom model

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of education. The smartphone and the Internet revolution sweeping the country, come as an advantage and should be able to boost the purpose.

Being into the technologyenabled learning space, how your organisation can contribute in bridging the education fault lines?

Schoolguru, as an organisation, has been built around the simple philosophies of helping students get Access (available to the students on demand), Equity (affordable and flexible as per the profile of the students) and Excellence (high quality learning outcome without any differentiation) in higher education.

We believe that the online audio-visual medium has the potential to bring in ondemand high quality education, taught by the top educators from across the world, at the doorsteps of the students.

To help the rural youth, various initiatives of the Indian Government in this line, are a testimony to the same.

However, to make them employable beyond basic literacy skills, the higher education infrastructure of the country needs a lot of overhauling.

Keeping in mind the efforts and time required to prune up the physical infrastructure, we believe that the ‘online’ and the ‘virtual’ medium of education can quickly fill up the void without compromising on the quality of education. Various reports published across the world (Report on NMEICT of the Government of India and the report on the potential of Online Education by the US Department of Education) are corroborative of the fact that this audiovisual medium has immense potential, if delivered well, to deliver high quality, highly interactive, yet highly flexible learning to the masses.

How technological transformations and innovative learning tools can change the education landscape in India in the coming decade?

The several technological innovations taking place in this domain of education are set to change the way quality education is imparted by universities.

With some help from Schoolguru, several Indian universities like SNDT

Keeping in mind the efforts and time required to prune up the physical infrastructure, we believe that the ‘online’ and the ‘virtual’ medium of education can quickly fill up the void without compromising on the quality of education.

Various reports published across the world are corroborative of the fact that this audio-visual medium has immense potential Women’s University (Mumbai), Krishna Kanta Handiqui State Open University (Guwahati), Tamil Nadu Open University (Chennai) and The University of Burdwan (West Bengal) have implemented such student-friendly technologies and have proven their focus.

The students of these universities have access to audio-visual course content on their smartphones through

a hybrid android app, thereby taking away the two biggest impediments of online education – the availability of a computer and an Internet connection.

These universities have adopted several initiatives like launching their own MOOCs programmes, taking initiatives to strengthen their student support services by setting up a call center, providing the highly interactive mobile app to all students, helping them with analytics on their progress, conducting virtual classroom sessions for live interactions and promoting social learning.

Schoolguru also believes that the social media has a great inherent potential to change the way people learn. Online learning can be made more effective by the right use of social and peer learning.

Several universities in India have started adopting the technologyenabled learning platforms to assist their classroom education. Availability of good quality educators in the interior parts of the country has always remained a challenge. Colleges and universities located in smaller towns and cities find it very difficult to attract and retain the right talent. The use of the right technology can help these institutions fill this gap and complement the classroom education. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Leveraging Technology to Reach Masses A lot of global universities have significantly increased their online presence, and are leveraging technology to reach out to the masses, shares Jatin Bhandari, CEO, PythaGurus with Elets News Network (ENN) Do you think reservation in higher education is defeating the purpose of imparting the best possible education to meritorious candidates?

There are two things I want to address in the higher education quota. The first one is the impact of higher education on the ability of candidates to make a contribution to their career as well as country. If you consider medical, engineering and management as professions, the bandwidth of impact is much wider than the school level education.

If we offer seats on the basis of reservation, we are essentially depriving the candidates who are motivated to make a career and are driven to learn. The size of the Educational PIE is the same - and we are splitting it with a very distorted rationale.

For every person gaining admittance with a reservation quota, there is one deserving candidate who gets left out.

Another factor that I want to consider is the stage of higher education in the overall lifecycle of a human being. Don’t you think we are too late in hand holding someone if we are providing quota in higher education? Not only are we sending the message to a 14-year-old child that he does not need to nurture his learning potential and fight as there is quota waiting for him at a later stage of his life, but we are also making him lazy. If we want to spend more budget in teaching the candidates with reservation quotas, I think the emphasis should be in the early stages of their lives.

It should be in the first 12 years of their education. The system should enable them to reach a level commensurate with the people in the general category.

In the light of Supreme Court ruling, what would be the impact of doing away with all forms of reservation

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Jatin Bhandari, CEO, PythaGurus

Technology can eliminate the barriers that a lot of people face with regard to accessibility, cost, etc, of education. With technology, you can provide education to anyone, anywhere, with ease and within less cost in institutions of higher education?

Doing away with all the reservation will enable the talent to come forward. It will allow hundreds of thousands of students across the country to gain access to a well -deserved education. This will also have a great impact on the GDP - by injecting the country with more efficient workforce.

‘Access’ to all & ‘Quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system of India.

What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

Technology can eliminate the barriers that a lot of people face with regard to accessibility, cost, etc, of education. With technology, you can provide education to anyone, anywhere, with ease and within less cost. A lot of global universities have significantly increased their online presence, and are leveraging technology to reach out to the masses. Therefore, technology is bridging the educational fault lines and opening entry to different sects of the society.

Being into the technologyenabled learning space, how your organisation is contributing in bridging the education fault lines?

Our organisation helps people in employability. We identified that the student community faces massive rejections in recruiting, interviewing, and higher education. We have created technology products to bridge this knowledge gap.

Students can take our video courses and understand a lot about different styles of interviewing and prepare for different B-Schools, and jobs.

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Democratising Education through Technology Sonya Hooja, Director & Co-founder, Imarticus Learning, shares her views with Elets News Network (ENN) on the notion of access and quality education for all, role of technology in transforming education and more According to you, does reservation in higher education is defeating the very purpose of imparting the best possible education to meritorious candidates. If yes, how?

I think everyone would agree that our system is not completely meritorious. But that goes beyond just quotas and includes the massive capitalisation fees that parents have to pay.

The Mandal Commission’s heart was in the right place. Centuries of pervasive and entrenched caste system affected a significant portion of India’s population.

It was detrimental to their advancement while offering enormous opportunities to others. However, the question lingers: are we ready for a truly meritorious system?

Probably not, but we need to redraw the lines underlying our affirmative action and use socio-economic indicators rather than religious, caste or class based ones. This way we can give truly give a chance to deprived sections to gain quality higher education.

In the light of Supreme Court ruling, what would be the impact of doing away with all forms of reservation in institutions of higher education?

Supreme Court is not asking to do away with reservation but to rethink the logic behind it and address the issue of social Sonya Hooja Director & Co-founder, Imarticus Learning

backwardness rather than class or caste.

Theoretically, doing away with all quotas in higher education should create a completely meritorious eco-system but that would also require us to rein in the corruption and ensure that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are receiving quality primary and secondary education.

‘Access to All’ & ‘Quality of Education’ are the major fault lines in the education system in India. What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

Technology is often referred to as a great equalizer. It has the potential to bridge gaps and homogenise experiences.

Inaccessibility and compromised quality of education are unmistakable fault lines that deter students from accepting online education. Today’s generation of students and consumers are growing up in a digital world and according to a survey by Live Mint, 93 per cent students in India access the internet everyday.

A key driver for democratising

education is the advent of MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. These are short-term certification courses endorsed by top universities and are available to students for absolutely no cost.

Being into the technology-enabled learning space, how your organisation can contribute/is contributing in bridging the education faultlines?

Imarticus Learning provides online programmes in the investment banking and data analytics space. These are conducted via a state-of-the-art learning management system that has the capability of hosting content in the form of HD quality videos, interactive quizzes and case studies. Our experiential learning methodology ensures extremely high engagement rates and student satisfaction.

In addition to our paid courses, we also host a series of free workshops on our Learning Management System. Students can undertake these workshops from our website for absolutely no cost. Another development that has the potential of transforming online education is the advent of Adaptive Learning techniques.

This allows consumers to customise their learning experience to their strengths and areas of development.

How technological transformations and innovative learning tools can change the education landscape in India in the coming decade?

Imarticus Learning was traditionally a classroom-training institute and recently forayed into the online space. While instructor-led classes allow students to interact and engage with their teachers in real-time, the future of education truly lies in a barrier-free platform where students are able to replicate their classroom experience online. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Making Quality

Education Accessible

Uday Thakkar, Chief Operating Officer, Dynaflex Pvt Ltd, shares with Elets News Network (ENN) about the reservation in higher education, role of technology in making quality education accessible to all and future educational technological transformations and more Does reservation in higher education is defeating the purpose of imparting the best possible education to meritorious candidates?

The reservation system was put into practice as a result of principle of positive discrimination enshrined in the constitution in order to correct the historical injustices made to certain sections of the society. On analysing the system, it shows that it has failed to achieve the stated objective. The Supreme Court’s move to scrap the quota system has entailed both positive and negative aspects within it.

According to me, removing the quota will make sure that admissions are given only on the basis of performance rather than some other indicators. Also, putting up a merit criteria will ensure that every candidate puts his/her best efforts to get admission. This would bring healthy competition and make sure that the best talent is selected.

In my opinion, a better way would be to adopt a middle path, whereby, reservations are made on the basis of an objective criteria-economic indicators so as to achieve the idea of egalitarian society.

In the light of Supreme Court ruling, what would be the impact of doing away with all forms of reservation in institutions of higher education?

I don’t think it is ever going to happen

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Uday Thakkar Chief Operating Officer, Dynaflex Pvt Ltd

as promises for providing reservation to people is one of the crucial ways to seek votes in our country. However, if it happens, the total scenario of India will change.

There is no scarcity of talent in India, the only reason people don’t get chance is due to their poor financial conditions.

The decision of scrapping reservation will be the proof of equality in India.

For policy makers, it is important to understand where the education technology industry is headed and how it’s potential can be tapped in to change the stark realities prevailing in India with respect to education at the grassroots. This will, in turn, help to bridge these fault lines leading to economic prosperity and spread of education.

‘Access’ to all & ‘Quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system in India.

What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?

It has been promised for a long time that technology will change education for better – make it more affordable and accessible. The promise of educational technology is more important in Indian context because we have a massive deficit of access to high quality education at the primary and high school level due to a number of seemingly insurmountable challenges, ranging from geographical distribution to socio-economic condition of the learners who attend a majority of Indian schools. Also, the cost of educating one of the world’s greatest populations has been steadily increasing, and there is expectation that technology may make education affordable for those who are so far unable to benefit from the same.

How technological transformations and innovative learning tools can change the education landscape in India in the coming decade?

Today, technology is widely used in every sphere of life, influencing students’ expectations for using it in higher education. Online learning, in particular, is touted a key delivery mode in higher education that will address the majority of drivers of change. Now, high-school students see their educational future built almost entirely around technology. They are eager to incorporate the electronic tools (smartphones, i-pads, etc) into their education. Students entering college today want to design their own curriculum and find ways to learn in their own style.

In my view, technological transformations and innovative learning tools will surely change the education landscape in India in the coming decade.

interview

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Offering Lucrative Opportunities Ireland is a much sought after destination for education, with its universities in the top most list, globally. On his visit to India, Barry O’Driscoll, Development Advisor, Enterprise Ireland, shares with Aamir H Kaki of Elets News Network (ENN) the education scenario in Ireland, opportunities for Indian students, Ireland Government’s initiative to promote education in India and much more How do you perceive the education scenario in India as compared to Ireland?

Despite the significant difference in scale, both India and Ireland place great importance on education for economic development and prosperity. Ireland has a long tradition of education excellence and is known as ‘The Land of Saints and Scholars’. This tradition stretches back to the Middle Ages when Irish monks were leading educationalists within Europe.

Today, Ireland has one of the highest education participation rates in the world.

Ireland is, in fact, the most ’youthful’ country in the EU, with four out of 10 people (40.1 per cent) aged under 30. In turn, this has had a positive impact on the economic growth and development of our country.

India, with a growing young population, is seeing an increased demand for higherlevel education, including overseas study.

Ireland, despite its size, is well placed to provide world-class education to Indian students at all levels from undergraduate and postgraduate to PhD level.

What are the opportunities for Irish Universities in India, with regard to collaboration and imparting distance education?

Ireland’s higher education institutions have their own individual strategies for internationalisation, but one common priority in the longer term is to increase the level of mobility of students and staff - in both directions. Currently, there are over 2,000 Indian students studying in Ireland at higher level, and this is growing yearon-year. The next step in collaboration is to increase the number of partnerships, whereby Irish students and staff, may

staff in the delegation come from a range of disciplines, including management, data analytics, and mobile technologies.

In general, the majority of students we have been meeting for the past several years look at postgraduate options, mainly in engineering, business and sciences.

However, we are now seeing an increased interest from students in the areas of arts and humanities, and also at undergraduate level. We have a visa officer with us to undertake one-on-one counselling with students in order to answer all their queries on the visa application process.

Barry O’Driscoll Development Advisor, Enterprise Ireland

travel to universities in India to undertake postgraduate studies or for research collaborations.

What steps the Government of Ireland is taking in promoting the participation of Indian students in Irish universities?

The Education in Ireland brand comes under the remit of Ireland’s Department of Education and Skills. The ‘Government of Ireland Scholarships’ for Indian students offer full fee waivers as well as stipend to cover their living expenses. There are also around 200 scholarships from our higher education institutions that comprise grants, ranging from 25 per cent to 100 per cent of the education expenses.

What are the focus areas of your visit to India?

We are travelling with a group of 11 educational institutions from Ireland across five cities of India, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi. The academic

What is ‘Education in Ireland’ initiative all about?

‘Education in Ireland’ is the Government brand that promotes Ireland as a destination for international education. We undertake events in India at various times throughout the year, including education fairs, predeparture briefings, alumni events and media engagements. Our aim in India is to increase awareness about the high quality education that is available in Ireland. All of Ireland’s universities rank in the top five per cent globally. Our institutes of technology are renowned for their close links with the industry. Irish universities are in the top one percent of research institutions in the world, in terms of research impact in 19 fields, spanning natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.

Whether it is science, business or engineering, studying in Ireland can be a passport to a successful career. Ireland has a one-year stay back option, which allows international graduates to remain in the country for one year to seek employment.

For full interview: log on to http://dl.eletsonline.com/ digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Start-Up

Making Education Fun Online Harish Malladi, CEO, EdVIE talks to Elets News Network (ENN) about how concepts of STEM subjects can be instilled through innovative learning online What are the primary reasons behind starting the venture?

EdVIE is a product of Enlume Technologies Pvt Ltd, an IT services company. It is the fruition of a longstanding dream of a group of engineers who knew first hand the importance of a strong foundation in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects for a successful career.

Our journey from small towns of Andhra to Silicon Valley, is credited to the education we received in our schools and colleges. As is the case with most lower and middle class families in India, we also got success primarily because of education.

We started EdVIE, because of our passion for and emotional bonding with education. By leveraging power of Internet and technology, we want to bring effectiveness and efficiency in the field of education.

What is the market size of the services offered by you in India at present?

The market size of online education in India is $20 billion which is expected to touch $40 billion in 2017. Families, especially in tier II cities have high propensity to spend on education, as it is believed to hold the passport for a successful future and good life. A major driver for online education is penetration of Internet and increasing network speeds. In coming years, the market will grow at a much faster rate.

How your solutions are beneficial for organisations/individuals?

Most of us might have heard about students who did exceedingly well

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upto 10th grade but started scoring low in 11th and 12th grades, resulting in increased stress and low confidence.

This is because of the disparity between the difficulty level in lower grades and in 11th and 12th grades. The difficulty level and bandwidth of the syllabus covered in higher grades increase upto 10-15 times, creating a situation of shock and stress for students.

When students join EdVIE courses, we equip them to handle the increased difficulty with the help of our curriculum, live classes, online testing and mentorship. Our online live classes are conducted by experienced, qualified and well-trained teachers, who take students from basic to advanced level in a gradual way.

Within short period of time, students start feeling confident and start scoring better in their school exams. In the long run, our students achieve highest success in competitive exams.

What are your plans for the next two years?

We want to establish ourselves as a dominant player in online STEM education in India. We will be expanding our course offerings in STEM subjects and will enter into different markets and market segments. We are working on making our courses available on multiple devices and platforms. We want to do all that but our prime focus will remain on making students fall in love with Math and Science so that they handle the future competition and challenges better and go on to solve world’s problems.

What are the various methods you

Harish Malladi CEO, EdVIE

are using to increase the visibility of your organisation?

Apart from usual online and offline marketing activities, we extensively conduct educational events in housing societies, corporates and schools, which provide learning opportunity to participating students and parents.

All our educational events create huge brand equity and word-ofmouth for us.

How you can differentiate your services from your competitors?

Our core of strong, well-researched and comprehensive content and course structures differentiate us from others. We understand the importance of live exchange between students and teachers. Hence, all our classes are conducted live so that students can actively engage for a permanent learning. Our classes are conducted in a group creating an atmosphere of collaborative learning. Further, small batch sizes enable us to give personalised attention to each student.

Our students go on a journey of holistic learning through live classes, structured online tests, performance insights, mentorship and peer exchange.

What are the major stakeholders and sectors you are focusing on?

We focus on STEM Subjects in online education sector. For us, students, parents and schools are the major stakeholders.

Start-Up

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Easing Learning via Technology Technology is used today to dissipate quality education to every nook and corner of our country, says Piyush Agrawal, Founder & CEO, SuperProfs, in an interaction with Elets News Network (ENN) Please brief about the reasons behind starting the venture.

I was pursuing PhD at Stanford University (USA) when a brainwave hit me – Technology can and should be used to dissipate quality education to every nook and corner of our country. I dropped out of my course and returned back home with a vision – to make quality education accessible to masses. Firstly, I worked with Sujeet Kumar (CTO and co-founder of SuperProfs) on a video compression algorithm, to make videos streamed at low internet bandwidth (even as low as 100 Kbps). We initially offered this technology to universities and worked with them to improve our solution.

In 2014, we decided to take it to students directly– and that is how SuperProfs was born. Thereafter, we tied up with some of India’s top professors offering coaching for competitive exams and helped them bring their courses online. We have so far launched 1000+ courses for CA, CS, CMA, GATE, JEE, UPSC (IAS/IPS/IFS), etc.

What are the challenges faced in doing business on ground level?

Being a B2C company, it is always a challenge to manage the details of logistics involved. We have to make sure that there are no slip ups and the entire process of recording lectures, streaming it to students, providing study material, doubt clearing, etc., is done seamlessly.

Our operations and customer-facing teams work round the clock to ensure full customer satisfaction.

What is the market size of services offered by you?

Coaching for preparation of competitive exams in India is a $8 billion industry and concentrated only in a few hubs or cities. As no sincere efforts have been so far made to aggregate and streamline the coaching process, SuperProfs is attempting to do this exact thing.

However, this requires a change in the mindset of all players involved in the coaching industry. SuperProfs is striving hard to win the trust of all stakeholders with the help of superior technology and excellent quality of services.

How your solutions are beneficial for organisations/individuals?

In India, nearly one crore students appear for various competitive exams every year. However, only a small fraction have access to good quality coaching.

There are geographical and financial constraints that prevent students, especially those who are not from metro cities. We believe that technology can bridge the gap between teachers and students. Now, students from remote areas can access coaching classes by top professors on their mobile phones with just 2G internet connectivity, at less than 50 per cent cost compared to a face-toface coaching class.

Please share the vision of your company for next two years.

For next two years, our key focus will remain on helping students, so that they do well in competitive exams, tie ups with more top professors and adding more courses in regional languages. We will focus on providing the professors with required tools to conduct mock tests, interactive sessions, etc. We are also

Piyush Agrawal Founder & CEO, SuperProfs

planning to launch courses for TOEFL, IELTS and GMAT. What methods are you using to increase the visibility of your organisation?

We are trying to spread brand awareness among students by conducting various activities in colleges across India. We are very active on social media as well. SuperProfs is also getting a lot of attention in media – print and online.

All these together help in increasing our reach over our customers.

What are the major stakeholders and sectors you are focusing on?

Our major stakeholders are professors and students. We make sure that the professors are provided with all necessary technology that allows them to share their knowledge with students from any corner of the country, and students get what they are promised – best online coaching classes.

The only sector that we are focusing on is Edu-Tech (Education Technology).

What are the initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?

We believe that there are no shortcuts to the top. We will become the market leader, if we offer the best services to customers.

We have promised to make competitive exam preparation easy for students and intend to deliver on that. We also want to make sure that the professors, tied up with SuperProfs, are facilitated with everything required so that they can communicate with students with ease. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Start-Up

m-Learning: New-age education mantra A marketplace for educational resources, Prozo showcases various offerings through m-learning or mobile learning, shares Dr Ashvini Jakhar, Founder, Prozo with Elets News Network (ENN) What does mobile learning offer? m-learning or mobile learning offers learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions.

It provides an aid to the delivery of learning, education or learning support on mobile phones, PDAs or tablets.

It allows virtual learning anywhere, anytime. It is proving beneficial, especially for students who may want to learn outside classrooms at their own pace and as per the convenient time and location. m-learning focuses on the mobility of learner, interacting with portable technologies. Sharing is almost instantaneous when using the same content leading to instant feedback and reviews. m-learning has brought portability by replacing books and notes with small devices, filled with tailored learning contents.

What are the benefits of m-learning in education?

The biggest benefit of m-learning is the use of mobile devices to deliver and access education anytime anywhere.

It could prove beneficial for India’s education sector where the tertiary or brick and mortar infrastructure is limited. Our current education system, if too adopts more and more of m-learning concept, may create smarter education systems for posterity. Mobile devices are easily available and even accessible to the remotest corners in India. People can use mobile devices to access educational resources; connect with experts, or access content other than what is discussed in classrooms.

Prozo is developing Android and iOS-based mobile applications that will provide instant access to quality and relevant educational material for

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40–50 kms away from a resource hub to travel and get study material every time the need occurs. Our platform is extending its technology to provide the same information and help on mobile devices.

Dr Ashvini Jakhar Founder, Prozo

students of all ages, helping them in all sorts of exam preparations. It is a comprehensive platform that provides m-learning aids like tablets and PDAs other than books, digital content and mentors who are toppers and specialists in their respective field. The telementorship programmes will not only provide timely guidance and counseling, but also coach young minds to handle the stress of changing exam patterns and syllabus year-on-year.

How will it help students understand the concept of learning? m-learning complements the traditional form of education. At Prozo, we not only offer traditional resources of learning viz, books, mock exams, personal notes and coaching material but there is also digital content comprising all kinds of mobile devices like tablets, PDAs, PCs or laptops. Even information about various e-learning courses is made available, along with free resources like blogs, tips on specific exams, etc. Now, it may not be possible for a student located some

Are there any initiatives government has undertaken in m-learning under Digital India campaign?

So far, it is known that the Government of India (GoI) has been actively supporting the e-learning drive to strengthen accessibility. Other than funding the National Rural Internet and Technology Mission, distribution of Aakash tablets to college students was also a step towards e-learning. It has launched two schemes - National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) and National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) - to leverage the potential of ICT in the dissemination of video and web-based course content. The GoI also extensively uses the PPP route in collaboration with ICT providers through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and ICT@Schools projects. Now, m-learning can be an alternative to e-learning depending upon choice of users.

Do you think government schools should incorporate m-learning?

Why? I think it will take its due course of time and may happen naturally when the factors contributing to the overall growth of m-learning may start to evidently influence the users.

For full interview, log on to http://dl.eletsonline.com/

Start-Up

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

Offering Co-Scholastic Learning Gaurava Yadav, CEO & Founder Director and Aparna Mishra, Co-Founder & COO, of EduAce Services - Co-Scholastic Learning Partner for Schools, talk with Elets News Network (ENN) about EduAce Services’ unique proposition, solutions, initiatives, future plans and more Please brief about reasons behind starting the venture.

There was always this thought of starting our own venture. Even though, we have worked with corporates for long but always had this dream to start our own enterprise.

Education is something which interest us as there is lot of scope to work in this sector and so much to do.

What are the challenges encountered in doing business on ground level?

Initially, being a new brand, it was a little difficult to convince schools that our proposition was really unique and useful for students. But once we were able to give POC’s (Proof of Concept), it was no looking back since then.

What is the market size of the services offered by you in India at present?

Currently, we are offering services in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi & NCR. What are the major benefits for organisations/individuals adopting your solutions?

EduAce Services is north-central India’s leading educational co-scholastic learning company, working with schools and students on their co-scholastic learning needs.

We have created various strategic IP products, which are aimed at the vast schooling community complimented by its fast growing reach to various Indian states, pan-India.

Gaurava Yadav CEO & Founder Director

Aparna Mishra Co-Founder & COO

Please share the vision of your company for next two years.

Currently, we are working very closely with around 1500 schools. Our target is to reach around 3000 schools by 2017 end.

other services and products which keep us stand ahead of our competitors.

What methods you are using to increase the visibility of your organisation?

Among other branding activities, we focus more on word of mouth publicity and social media branding. In addition, we have tied up with various industry bodies, educators’ forums, CSR activities etc, which take us to a different platform.

How your services are different from your competitors?

One of our flagship brand – School Quiz League, is India’s first General Knowledge based programme for Class VI to Class XII students, which is in itself a unique programme. There are various

Which are the major stakeholders and sectors you are focusing on?

Our main focus is on the schooling community and the major stakeholders are the schools and their owners, principals, teachers and students.

What are the various initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?

In December 2014, the Grand Finale of our IP brand (Quiz Show) School Quiz League - Pratibha Ki Khoj, India’s first general knowledgebased quiz programme, came on NDTV Prime. The programme was hosted by Charu Sharma, the famous Cricket Commentator.

We have come up with the GK book -“Classroom GK”, for Class VI to XII students. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

41

Industry Speak

‘Holistic Education from my Vantage Point’ Holistic education takes place with the contribution of the parents and the schools.

There is a need to understand the children’s emotional needs and capabilities before challenging their learning quotient. Darpan Vasudev, VP, Next Education shares with Elets News Network (ENN) on how parents can achieve their desired expectations with regards to their child education

Darpan Vasudev Vice President, Next Education

I

n the last few years, there have been enormous discussions, debates and deliberations on the way education is imparted in India. The ever-changing landscapes of curricula, the objectives and most importantly the desired outputs have been getting different responses from people from varied backgrounds.

While the role of formal education is most crucial in shaping personality and creating prospects of great

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December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

career, one might be in a quandary to understand how it is possible to have a common framework for all, despite being cognizant of the fact that all of us are born with unique abilities, talents, competencies and aptitudes.

Furthermore, even if we assume that the calibration of education patterns is done keeping in mind the various types of apprentices’ basic needs, what happens to the conditioning at home and society because of prejudices, cultural belief systems and pressures that causes a variation in the child’s comprehension?

Now, what I have mentioned here could be a well-known fact to many.

However, the expectations of parents in terms of the outcome seem more or less the same. They all want their children to have the best of domino effect, irrespective of what potentially overbearing cost it brings along.

These expectations sometimes become obsessions and parents turn towards schools with high anticipations.

Some even end up disparaging the institutions – who are in more ways than one helpless, because they have to fit in to the norm set by their governing bodies.

While those coming from highly learned and placed backgrounds have a firm reasoning on what they want to achieve. It is time, the others wake up and smell the coffee. We make our moves, model our behavioural patterns and alter our mindsets based on what we want to achieve.

We make our moves, model our behavioural patterns and alter our mindsets based on what we want to achieve So, how do we know what we want to achieve with respect to our child? Follow the points mentioned:  If you think your child doesn’t listen to you, evaluate how many times you listen to the child? Maybe you are missing out on some unique quality that he/she possesses, only because YOU don’t listen;  Expose rather than impose – the various turfs vs the ones you are familiar with;  Determinedly substitute – job, career and future to pleasure, passion and present. Words have enormous power.

The quintessential holistic education takes place when the contribution of the parents is proportionally higher, without the expectations and predispositions of schools. You must seek first to understand your child’s emotional needs, then the capabilities, and finally challenge their cerebral, intellectual, spiritual and reasoning quotients. Attempt to make a person of values, who is giving in his/her intrinsic core first, all the other achievements will follow for sure.

Industry Speak

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

Gaining Competitive Advantage through Analytics Noshin Kagalwalla, Managing Director, SAS Institute (India) Pvt Ltd, talks to Elets News Network (ENN), about data analytics, its demand as a career option, role of education in bridging the skill gap and more What is business analytics? Why has there been a demand for business analysts in the recent past?

Business analytics is the broad use of data analysis and quantitative techniques that empower organisations to transform their data into actionable intelligence, helping them drive better decisions and ultimately, better business outcomes.

As compared to earlier days, adoption of analytics in Indian industries has rapidly moved-up the maturity curve.

Today’s highly competitive and fastmoving global economy demands organisations to take decisions in realtime. Organisations across sectors have realised that these decisions can no longer be made based on gut feeling or hunches and the fact that by embracing an analytical culture, they stand to gain a competitive advantage. Consequently, we are seeing a very high demand for data scientists and data analysts who are equipped with great problem-solving skills and can identify creative ways of incorporating analytics into the DNA of a business or the very product or service which the organisation has to offer to the clients.

Is there a skill gap today? If yes, how is education sector trying to bridge the same?

According to IDC, in the US alone, there will be 181,000 deep analytics positions in 2018 and five times that many positions requiring related skills in data management and interpretation.

In India too, there is a serious deficit of analytical skills and data-literate managers. The education sector has already recognised the fact that analytics has gained prominence as one of the most sought after career options

best minds in management education have been involved in creating a curriculum that is global in scope. This particular programme is designed in partnership with SAS on a schedule that minimises disruption of work and personal pursuits. It is a combination of classroom and technology-aided learning platforms where participants will typically be on campus for a five-day schedule of classroom learning every alternate month for a span of 12 months.

Noshin Kagalwalla, Managing Director, SAS Institute (India) Pvt Ltd

today. The top institutes in the country have, in fact, embarked on the journey towards bridging the demand-skill gap by partnering with industry leaders like SAS to launch tailored programmes and courses to nurture the talent in business analytics.

Please share any joint programmes that SAS has along with universities and educational institutes.

SAS has primarily offered joint programmes on analytics with leading schools in India, including IIM Bangalore, ISB, NMIMS, IIM Lucknow and recently with WeSchool and Vivekananda Education Society Institute of Management Studies & Research (VESIM).

Some of the case studies are: ISB, Hyderabad ISB Biocon Certificate Programme in Business Analytics (CBA): Some of the

IIM, Bangalore Business Analytics & Intelligence (BAI): The course in partnership with SAS is designed to provide in-depth knowledge of handling data and Business Analytics tools that can be used for problem-solving and decision-making using real-time case studies. At the end of the course, the participants are able to: yy Understand the emergence of business analytics as a competitive advantage; yy Understand the foundations of data science; the role of descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics in firms; yy Analyse data using statistical and data mining techniques and understand relationships between the underlying business processes of an organisation; yy Learn data visualisation and the art of storytelling through data; and solve problems yy Analyse from different industries such as manufacturing, service, retail, software, banking and finance, sports, pharmaceutical, aerospace, etc; yy Get a hands on experience with software such as SAS. For full interview, log on to http://dl.eletsonline.com. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Focus

Tethering Medical Education to Technology

Achieving the 1: 1000 ratio

While shortages of doctors and paramedical staff are perennial, the need to inculcate adequate skills in the faculty of medical colleges and the field doctors is acute. The current estimated doctor population ratio in India is 1:1700 as compared to a world average of 1.5:1000. The MCI has set a target of 1:1000 by the year 2031. For achieving this target and considering the number of existing medical colleges in the country, it was noted that the present intake by medical colleges in India and the critical mass of doctors have to be rationally enhanced. Aamir H Kaki of Elets News Network (ENN) looks into the reforms needed in medical education in India and how technology can serve as a significant tool in transforming the sector

D

espite being the highest number of medical colleges in the world, the doctor to patients ratio in India is abysmally low, pegged at 1:1000.

However, the immense growth has occurred in the past two decades in response to increasing health needs of the country. The major challenge for regulatory bodies like the Medical Council of India (MCI) has been to balance the need for more medical colleges as well as maintaining and improving the quality standards. The globalisation of education and health care and the country’s potential as a destination of choice for quality education and health care has brought the issue into sharper focus.

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The MCI’s Vision 2015 draft committee has proposed wide-ranging reforms. It cites three main reasons for India’s healthcare woes: yy Shortage of physicians (both generalists and specialists); yy Inequitable distribution of resources and manpower; and, yy Deficiencies in the quality of medical education.

The report has proposed reforms such as curricular reform, emphasis on primary healthcare and family medicine, and strengthening medical institutions by investing in technology.

To systematically address the issues and develop strategies to strengthen the medical education and health care

system, curricular reforms are needed so that Indian Medical Graduates match or better the international standards.

Under the draft, there will be a Curriculum Implementation Support Programme, which will assist the teaching faculty of the medical colleges to implement these changes at their own medical colleges. It is also envisaged that the tools of information and communication technology will be harnessed to enhance teaching and learning.

1:1000 by 2031 While shortages of doctors and paramedical staff are perennial, the need to inculcate adequate skills in the faculty of medical colleges and the field

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

doctors is acute. The current estimated doctor population ratio in India is 1:1700 as compared to a world average of 1.5:1000. The MCI has set a target of 1:1000 by the year 2031. For achieving this target and considering the number of existing medical colleges in the country, it was noted that the present intake by medical colleges in India and the critical mass of doctors have to be rationally enhanced. While improving the numbers will be important, maintenance and improvement in the quality of the doctors with humane content is paramount. Increasing the numbers of doctors alone, without proper and adequate knowledge and skill will not prove beneficial to the healthcare system.

To meet the set target will take a long time, however, experts believe that the technology can serve as a tool to bridge the gap. As Rahul Narang, Chief Technology Officer, Lybrate puts in, “Most of the countries in Asia-Pacific region are grappling with the issue of shortage of doctors. In India specifically, the doctor-patient ratio is skewed with one doctor available for every 1700 people, unlike in European countries.

Use of IT in the healthcare domain can help bridge the shortage of doctors in the country and spread their reach beyond their local area of practice.”

Technology: Transforming the Medical System The application of IT and computerbased technology in healthcare and medical education system is both rewarding and challenging. The introduction of different material based learning aides including computer-based softwares, cloud computing, internet and

The introduction of different material based learning aides including computerbased softwares, cloud computing, internet and telecommunications has the potential of changing the face of medical education and healthcare delivery system

telecommunications has the potential of changing the face of medical education and healthcare delivery system.

In recent years, extensive development and growth of IT has made vast changes in medical education system in India at both the teaching level as well as research level. The availability of internet services across every corner of India made data transfer easy, time saving and convenient.

As Dr Harish Pillai, CEO, Aster Medcity & Cluster Head Kerala stated, “India is on the cutting edge when it comes to healthcare technology. We can do more in the area of research and development. Typically, most of the hospitals in our country focus more on clinical excellence that is not how a good institution works. A good institution need to have a fair balance of clinical excellence, academics and research, which is needed to retain the talent. We, all in the private sector in India, need the right ecosystem.”

The use of IT is slowly progressing in Indian medical education system and is on the rise. It is projected to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years. Several health and medical

digitalLEARNING / December 2015

45

Focus experts feel that the new mobile and cloud-enabled applications imply a lot of backend infrastructure readiness from IT – right from secured access, wireless connectivity, proper bandwidth utilisation, to providing security to devices and data.

Abhijit Gupta, Founder and CEO, Praxify Technologies informed, “From struggling to get decent broadband bandwidth to set up heavy resource driven server infrastructures, India has come a long way in the past two decades. With the advent of cloud and mobility, and the growing demand of ubiquitous access, IT has started playing a strong role of an enabler in the medical infrastructure today.”

Technology will be a game changer in the manner in which medical education, training and healthcare services will be delivered in India. The private sector will be the major driving force behind technology adoption in this vital segment. Due to the increasing convergence of technology and healthcare, there is a huge opportunity for providers to improve the experience and operate more efficiently due to augmented association and information sharing among providers. There are lot of players in the market providing innovative technological solutions to ease the medical education, research, healthcare services and overall health outcomes.

The innovative digital solution such as Ovid - a research platform

In MCI’s Vision 2015, the following modifications have been made in the existing curricula to accommodate the aspirations of the defined goals and competencies:  Newer learning experiences through introduction of foundation courses placed at crucial junctures, clerkships/student doctor clinical mode of teaching and electives;  Early clinical exposure starting from the first year of the MBBS course;  Alignment and integration (horizontal and vertical) of instruction;  Integration of principles of Family Medicine;  Emphasis on clinical exposure at secondary care level;  Competency based learning;  Greater emphasis on self-directed learning;  Integration of ethics, attitudes and professionalism into all phases of learning;  Encouragement of learner centric approaches;  Ensure confidence in core competencies so as to practice independently;  Assessment of newer learning experiences, competencies, integrated learning and subject specific content;  Acquisition and certification of essential skills. which enables healthcare institutions to access world renowned journals, eBooks, databases and many other resources electronically - by Wolters Kluwer, is transforming the healthcare and medical education system.

Shireesh Sahai, CEO – India, Wolters Kluwer said, “In a hospital setup, professionals need multiple solutions to enhance their knowledge and give best possible treatment to their patients.

Our solutions enable healthcare professionals from any tier such as specialist, primary care physicians, nurses, pharmacists, researchers and medical students to deliver better health outcomes. Our leading innovative digital solutions which are used by

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digitallearning.eletsonline.com

healthcare professionals across the globe are UpToDate, Ovid, Lexicomp, Provation, 5 minute consult, Nursing solutions, Healthcare Communication and many more.”

The ever-changing scenario of technology in every sphere is forcing the stakeholders to keep abreast of the changes and to take proper measure to upgrade themselves. Even the healthcare and medical education is not untouched with it. Several developed countries around the world are taking several measures to make the medical experts abreast of the latest trends and developments. There is a real need for governments across India to adopt the continuing medical education model, and make it mandatory for doctors to take regular tests to keep themselves updated.

Robin Raina, CEO Ebix Inc said, “Globally, some governments have made it mandatory for doctors to obtain continuing education credits. This means if you are a practicing doctor, it is mandatory for you to keep abreast of the latest trends in your field. Ebix offers continuing medical education solutions to practicing doctors to help them obtain credits. Typically, these are three hour online tests approved by top medical bodies like Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins, which can be taken

The innovative digital solution such as Ovid - a research platform which enables healthcare institutions to access world renowned journals, eBooks, databases and many other resources electronically - by Wolters Kluwer, is transforming the healthcare and medical education system thrice a year. In India too, a few states like Jammu and Kashmir have started adopting this model.”

The Path Ahead There is a need to set up faculty development institutes that will equip and empower teachers in medical education for discharging their professional responsibilities.

The objective of a good medical education should be to produce general practitioners, specialists, teachers and research workers. The factors

governing this are the curriculum, medium of instruction, duration of course, admission qualifications, the examination system, teachersstudents relationship, prospects of teachers and students, etc. Besides, it may be mentioned that the medical education should fit in with the needs of the country and the conditions prevailing there.

The dependence on technology in the medical education and healthcare industry cannot be overstated, and as a result of the recent development of brilliant innovations, medical experts and healthcare practitioners can continue to find ways to improve their learning and practice – from imparting education and training to better diagnosis, surgical procedures, and improved patient care.

Whatever the final shape of the mechanism, it owes it to the citizens to create some basic changes in medical education and healthcare system.

Policy makers, physicians and those who teach physicians have to open their eyes to the opportunities, realities, and responsibilities available in the vital segment of medical education and healthcare. We need a holistic, radical surgery to restructure the entire medical education system in India. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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ROUNDTABLE

Focus

Creating Affordability of Higher Technical Education: Central to Indian Economy

As India moves onto a knowledge age, the country’s higher technical education has thereby assumed an inflection point whereby there is a potent demand of duly trained and oriented techno-managerial manpower. However, a significant set of seats are lying vacant in the technical institutions, despite a large number of potential candidates. The reasons quoted for the same are lack of quality and affordability. Elets News Network (ENN) presents a viewpoint on this overdue issues and how to boost up the higher education system of India

W

hile India has embarked upon an ambitious objective of economic growth through a slew of aspirational national campaigns, governance fixes and a whole lot of other policy level interventions, one of the key points missing from the otherwise duly integrated narrative is the role and importance of higher education in economic growth of the nation. The negative stereotypes have somewhere taken over and crippled not only the actions but the aspirations as well. This is somewhat alarming and concerning as higher education and

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higher technical education in particular sustains and catapults the economic destinies of any nation state.

While the Government is undergoing a mammoth consultation on a New Education Policy, which is being seen as a one size fit all redressal of Indian Education System, taking on one element at a time and impressing upon its due importance would not be a wasteful exercise at all. A large number of institutions would be getting established at the tertiary level with generous grants from the Central Government, the state of affairs of those established through private investments is quite dismal.

Emanating out of a major educational reform in NDA-I, a significant lot of private edupreneurs entered into the fray of establishing technical institutions across which are administered by their respective State Technical Universities (STUs) and regulated by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), which interestingly depends on State Perspectives to project for India's demand.

As per trends and non-formal reports, a significant set of seats are lying vacant in these technical institutions despite a large number of potential candidates.

One of the most repeated reason quoted

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

for the same is "lack of quality". But interestingly, nobody has ventured into the question of "affordability", despite the manageable quality. India's higher technical education has thereby assumed an inflection point whereby there is a potent demand of duly trained and oriented techno-managerial manpower, as the country moves onto a knowledge age; there is a decent higher technical education establishment to cater to the same; but due to sheer negative stereotypes as well as nonredressal of the "affordability" problem, the system is developing cracks.

These institutions have come in the fray from limited private investments and have built up over the years. In order for them to flourish, they need a constant influx of students to meet out the regular operational costs as well as meeting out the key quality interventions. In the advent of declining student enrollment, they get into a negative whirlpool ending up into closure. Quality of Education is thereby somewhere duly related to the affordability issue.

The limited meritorious chunk gets accommodated in the 125 odd centrally-funded technical institutions, and the 500 technical institutions owned in the Government domain or aided from Public Exchequer. Those who are at top of the economic spectrum of the country, some 4,50,000 of them go abroad spending Forex to the tune of `90,000 crores annually as per ASSOCHAM estimates to get quality

foreign education. It's this segment, which is benefited from the educational loan regime of the country. The remaining lot has to succumb to the wide spread of STUs affiliated institutions, who eventually provide armies of techno-managerial manpower to the India Inc. They are all owned, governed and operated by private players having limited capital to their access.

The average default rate of US Fed Student Loans is a mere seven per cent which is a bit higher on the Indian side ranging 16-17 per cent. Interestingly, the repayment plan of US Federal Loans in spread over 10-30 years while that in India it is limited to 2-7 years It's for the students of these institutions, education loan is a major problem. As per a Parthenon Group report, bank officials find these loans extremely risky. They are only able to cater to their higher-end customers. Apart from the aforesaid selection problem on the part of banks, there are significant issues with the current student financing system in India. Awareness, complexity of the

application process and loan terms are the significant hurdles in India as per experts. Lack of standardisation makes the loan application process complex, long and difficult. A quick analysis done by this magazine revealed that even amidst the nationalised banks, the loan granting procedures are different and quite cumbersome despite the marketing claims. Excessive paperwork, loan processing time and lack of coordination between parties is the trouble trinity oft repeated by applicants, as per the aforesaid report.

The current terms make student loans inaccessible to low-income students and less valuable to any student. The rate of default on education loans concern the banking officials quite much. However, taking cue from the US experiment, the same can be lowered by making educational institutions partly responsible for the repayment behaviour of their students. The average default rate of US Fed Student Loans is a mere seven per cent which is a bit higher on the Indian side ranging 16-17 per cent. Interestingly, the repayment plan of US Federal Loans in spread over 10-30 years while that in India it is limited to 2-7 years.

Given the low tertiary gross enrollment ratio (GER) in India and low income levels, there is a great need for student financing. However, student loans account only for a small share of banks' loan portfolios. It, thereby, become imperative on the part of the Government to look into this important aspect of creating affordability of higher technical education in the country, which is so very vital for national programmes. When one of the most ambitious financial inclusion programmes has been duly created and championed, the need of the hour is for a similar such eduCLUSION programmes whereby deserving students don't stop aspiring for higher technical education for want of finances. At a time when we are collaborating with world's oldest democracy on a whole lot of thematics, learning from their well-refined and duly defined Student Financing System would boost up a quality higher education system in the country. digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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DL Analytics

digitalLEARNING @ MHRD

d

igitalLEARNING has been a key focus for ensuring quality and access of education. The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) has been the flagship Centrally Sponsored Scheme to leverage the potential of ICT, in teaching and learning process for the benefit of all the learners in Higher Education Institutions in any time anywhere mode.

Apart from providing connectivity, along with provision for access devices, to institutions and learners, the mission has a major focus on generation of educational content as well as the platforms dispensing the same.

A number of content platforms cum applications have been envisaged and developed over the years which have been the key demonstrable outputs of this ambitious mission.

What has been the impact of these platforms on ground remains the key journalistic quest. What better than measuring the due popularity of these platforms by putting their Alexa Web Traffic to analysis. eletsanalytics bring to you the popularity index of these digitalLEARNING initiatives carried under the aegis of MHRD. Rank Name of the Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

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Virtual Learning Environment Pedagogy Project

URL

http://vle.du.ac.in/ http://www.ide.iitkgp.ernet.in/Pedagogy1/pedagogy_ main.jsp Oscar++ http://www.iitb.ac.in/en/tender/oscar-2012 Aakash Educational Portal http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/nmeict/home.html Text Transcription of Technical http://textofvideo.nptel.iitm.ac.in/ Video NPTEL http://nptel.ac.in/ Material Science & Engg. http://home.iitk.ac.in/~anandh/E-book/ (e-book) Digital Library Inflibnet http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/econ/ ISLERS http://www.iitg.ernet.in/isl/index.htm T&D Module - Managerial & http://ismdhanbad.ac.in/elearning/ Non-Managerial Personnel Virtual Labs http://www.vlab.co.in/ Spoken Tutorial http://spoken-tutorial.org/ E-Kalpa http://www.dsource.in/about/index.html Quantum & Nano Computing http://www.dei.ac.in/dei/quantumNano/ CEC http://cec.nic.in/E-Content/Pages/default.aspx/ Talk to Teacher http://aview.in/contact-us E-Yantra http://e-yantra.org/ ERP Mission http://202.141.40.218/~brihaspati/edrp_portal/index.php Fossee http://fossee.in/ OSS for Maths Edu. http://fossme.bprim.org/ SOS Tools http://sos-tools.org/ Vocational Education http://dei-vocational.com/ Programmes (e-content) UG & PG Courses in English https://sites.google.com/site/nmeictproject/ Lang. & Lit. (e-content) Bug Tracking System http://202.141.40.218/bugzilla/ Payroll Management System http://202.141.40.218:8080/PayrollSys/ Virtual Classroom http://202.141.40.215:8080/brihaspati/servlet/brihaspati Text Transcription http://textofvideo.nptel.iitm.ac.in/

December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

Rank in India 873 1,342

Global Rank 11,840 20,523

1,350 1,350 1,480

14,519 14,519 17,560

1,693 1,815

14,258 17,251

3,375 4,429 24,003

29,866 52,497 315,354

28,076 188,122 43,492 299,632 59,392 313,316 63,499 553,215 126,936 1,215,693 N/A 2,185,335 N/A 480,416 N/A N/A N/A 926,842 N/A 4,046,235 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

N/A

N/A N/A N/A N/A

N/A N/A N/A N/A

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON e-GOVERNANCE

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON THE ENTERpRISE OF HEALTHCARE

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON ICT IN EduCATION

A quALITY MAGAZINE ON BANkING ANd FINANCE

DL viewpoint

NEP Consultations: Taking Cognizance of the Existing Educational Superstructure in the Private Sector The Government of India would like to bring out a National Education Policy to meet the changing dynamics of the population’s requirement with regard to quality education, innovation and research, aiming to make India a knowledge superpower by equipping its students with the necessary skills and knowledge. Elets News Network (ENN) peeks into the NEP consultations and how public and private sectors can have meaningful partnerships for transforming higher education

T

he ongoing consultations on the New Education Policy (NEP) vis-a-vis higher education has included an all pervasive set of subjects: Governance reforms for quality; Ranking of institutions and accreditations; Improving the quality of regulation; Pace setting roles of central institutions; Improving State public universities; Integrating skill development in higher education; Promoting open and distance learning and online courses; Opportunities for technology-enabled learning; Addressing regional disparity; Bridging gender and social gaps; Linking higher education to society; Developing the best teachers; Sustaining student support systems; Promote cultural integration through language; Meaningful partnership with the private sector; Financing higher education; Internationalisation of higher education; Engagement with industry to link education to employability; Promoting research and innovation; New knowledge.

Interestingly, none of these points take into cognizance the existing superstructure of higher education established over the past one and half decade and tends to address none of their key concerns. The articles which seem to be somewhat associated contained in Meaningful Partnership with the Private Sector and Financing Higher Education seem to be entirely oblivious to the existing state of affairs.

The article on Meaningful Partnership with Private Sector simply exhorts the long established understanding that

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higher education cannot sustain only through public funding and envisages PPP as the sole redressal for meeting the wide resource gaps, instrument for resource-use efficiency, improvement in service delivery and promotion of excellence. The peans to PPP don't end here. It goes on, besides supplementing public investments and reducing dependence on public exchequer for provisioning of quality public services, for bringing about: yy Cost-effectiveness through risk sharing and efficient use of resources leading to higher productivity and optimal risk allocation; yy Access to modern technology leading to better project design, implementation, operations and management; yy Accountability through clear customer focus, which, in turn, results in accelerated and improved delivery of quality public service; yy Institutional autonomy by reducing dependence on public funds and in the process significantly reducing external interference in decision making, as it empowers public institutions by making then financially self-sustaining and independent.

So far so good. The usual visionary and aspirational content contained in any policy discourse. However, the innate intent and directionality of the emerging policy doctrine vis-a-vis the existing higher education superstructure in the private domain seems gruesome when the consultation paper reads partnership with private sector does not mean

privatisation, commercialisation and debasement of education, somewhere suggesting the same for the existing spectrum of over 4000+ institutions established over the last decade or so with substantial private investments catering to the bulk of Indian Students.

It's interesting that even after having such a sizable higher education institutional base dotting over 400 districts of the country, the aforesaid consultation document is oblivious to the same. It still intends to explore possibilities of attracting private investment and participation in decision making within the overall framework of education being merit good, while government continues to be responsible for ensuring quality higher and technical education to all as if nothing to this effect has happened in the country so far.

The key questions posed for discussion are all modeled around the guiding beacon of PPP and CSR aimed at bestowing higher education into the hands of large corporations. The success of private universities set up by some of the largest corporate houses is far from dismal. They are finding due heat from the edupreneurs who have diversified from their conventional enterprises in the MSME space and have invested a significant chunk to give rise to an impressive Higher Education Establishment in the country.

The NEP Consultation should have recognised the due existence of this vast segment of private investors in education and taken on board their experiments and learnings to formulate a much more relevant policy discourse.

Focus

digitallearning.eletsonline.com

Yet Another Roadmap to Solve Engineering and Technology Challenges In its bid to catch up with the other unfurling national drives like Make in India, et al, MHRD has come up with a set of 10 technological domains whereby high-powered research groups could be set up under IMPRINT. Elets News Network (ENN) brings you a close encounter as to what lies underneath

T

he successful adoption of technology is becoming increasingly vital to functional independence of a society. Technology, broadly defined as the application of scientific knowledge such as tools, techniques, processes, methods and products, to practical tasks is universal in most societal contexts. The use of technology has become a significant part of work, communication and education.

In the modern era, innovative research, engineering and technological developments that evolve from societal demands and make far reaching impact on humanity, warrant for more sound foundation in scientific principles and ethical values than earlier. They pose a huge challenge to develop a strategy and roadmap to achieve the desired goals. Therefore, there is a need to create and implement an education system that can inclusively and participatively evolve to transform the country and cater to the

Pranab Mukherjee

President of India

“If the institutes of higher learning come together, they can make a great difference in a short span of time to higher education sector in our country.

IMPRINT India is synergising platform for institutions, academia, industry that encourages research and innovation, making it socially more relevant.� needs and aspirations of the people.

In order to adopt engineering and technology as the vehicle to address the societal needs and achieving national prosperity, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has drafted a new and catalytic scheme called IMPacting Research INnovation and Technology (IMPRINT). The IMPRINT India is a Pan-IIT and IISc joint initiative to develop a roadmap for research to solve major engineering and technology challenges in 10

technology domains relevant to India.

The Framework A first of its kind initiative, IMPRINT is launched to address the major science and engineering challenges that India needs to address and champion to enable, empower and embolden the country for inclusive growth and selfreliance. The initiatives provides the overarching vision that guides research into areas that are predominantly socially relevant. This novel initiative digitalLEARNING / December 2015

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Focus with a two-fold mandate is aimed at: new engineering yy Developing education policy; yy Creating a road map to pursue engineering challenges.

Under the initiative, 10 goal posts have been identified and research groups on each of eminent experts are being set up to formulate time-bound plans of action for each. The task of the Research Group is to identify the needs of the nation in terms of its research and technology requirements and to enable proper planning for manpower, research infrastructure and resources.

Leading academic institutions have been identified to set the process in motion.

Each technology domain of IMPRINT along with the underlying themes, targets and topics embedded in them represent the immediate goals before the nation for engineering innovation and intervention. Since IMPRINT is a national programme, initially steered by the IITs and IISc, ultimately the entire engineering fraternity of the country including IITs, NITs, national academies, governmental ministries and departments, research organisations, strategic sectors, policy agencies and industry must join hands and own the collective responsibility.

Narendra Modi

Prime Minister of India

“Society is becoming technology driven. Important to understand the importance of this and look towards affordable technology.

We have to think about how our institutions can set up their own incubation centres. It is an Initiative to develop roadmap to solve technological challenges.

The biggest strength of makein-India is human capital. Skill development is extremely vital as I believe that science is universal but technology has to be local.”

IMPRINT comes out to be yet another initiative under the aegis of MHRD carrying the age-old homilies. It is surprising that even after decades of existence, there exist a seamless research and development ecosystem encompassing academia, research institutions and industrial stakeholders.

The success and eventual outcome of this well meaning ambitious exercise would emanate out of the redressal of the classic criticism of person-based

The domains and coordinators of IMPRINT, steered by IIT Kanpur as the national coordinator are as follows: 1. Health-care: IIT Kharagpur 2. Computer Science and ICT: IIT Kharagpur 3. Energy : IIT Bombay 4. Sustainable Urban Design: IIT Roorkee 5. Nano-technology Hardware: IIT Bombay 6. Water Resources and River Systems: IIT Kanpur 7. Advance Materials: IIT Kanpur 8. Manufacturing: IIT Madras 9. Defence: IIT Madras 10. Environment Science and Climate Change: IISC, Bangalore 56

December 2015 / digitalLEARNING

Smriti Irani

Union Human Resource Development Minister

“IMPRINT provides an overarching vision that guides research into areas that are predominantly socially relevant.” research vis-a-vis product-based are duly integrated with national priorities.

IMPRINT is a policy developing initiative covering pedagogy, teaching, curriculum, technology-benchmarking and infrastructure readiness. It is a national movement providing an opportunity for the higher education institutes in India to integrate with all grassroot level institutes, industry and organisations, mutually complement and deliver what the country demands and aspires.

January 2016 Bengaluru, Karnataka

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