EduTech 2009
Thursday, 18. June 2009, 07:38:49
I went to EduTech 2009 in Pragati Maidan in New Delhi a few days ago to speak on the topic 'What is wrong with today’s web related curriculum and how to fix it?' I'll write more about what I presented later on in another post...
If I have to summarize the central points being touched by just about everyone in the conference, they were
The disconnect between industry and academia
This was actually the central point of my presentation as well, and was repeatedly highlighted in many others people's talks. The web industry wants skilled front end engineers, but we cant find enough of them as the college's don't teach the proper techniques for it. During the panel discussion later in the day, this was again highlighted by the Director of HR from L&T who said he was finding it difficult to find good engineers in structural engineering.
Another thing which was highlighted was the fact that Indian students were relatively good when it came to written communication skills, but were found rather lacking when it came to spoken communication skills, especially in English. This was especially a problem in science and engineering graduates, and no steps are taken in the majority of colleges and universities to address this issue. Some may argue that extra-curricular activities somewhat help in this regard, but the fact is that this is totally optional and the students who really need to improve their communication skills never participate in these activities in the first place.
Some universities, for e.g, JIITU in Noida, do have a separate course in improving communication and personality skills, which is quite good. However, most colleges still are not there in providing decent help at the curriculum level in improving communication skills.
One more point I would like to add, is that in my experience with communicating with a lot of Indian students, especially in connection with the Opera Campus Crew and University seminars, I have found that the level of written communication has also gone down. Students are starting to write in 'SMS lingo' and sometimes it is downright impossible to figure out what they have written. I definitely feel there is a great need to improve communication skills amongst college students, especially in English, which has been India's main advantage in getting client projects in the IT industry.
The role of technology in education
Technology has been playing a major role throughout the history of education. The rudimentary blackboard was at one point of time a sophisticated piece of technology. The calculator was once regarded in the same way. So were projectors, and now so are computers.
The change now, is not in the devices as such (though there are many devices which are making an impact, the Amazon Kindle being one of them) but in the software being written which is enabling greater sharing of knowledge.
We had various people telling us about how Open Source software was helping their institutions in spreading knowledge. This was especially the case with Dr. Savitri Singh who presented on how Wikis were helping in the dissemination of information in her university. The same point was emphasized by Varad Gupta as well. However, later on during talks, some questions were raised about the accuracy of the information on the wikis, and other problems regarding Open Source Software deployment in educational institutions which Mr. Nitin Mukadam from NMIMS highlighted.
Claire Masson from Pearson talked about next generation online homework. Pearson has made a tool, which makes it possible to provide better guidance to students when it comes to homework. Basically the idea is that students will be logging in online to complete their homework, which will be a bunch of questions. If the students struggle with the questions, additional hints or questions will be provided to make the student think on the right track, just like a teacher would if he were to be asked the answer to a question in person. Also, the benefit with that is that teachers are free from grading all the sheets, as all of it is done online, plus the teachers get additional information on which questions were answered easily by students, and on which questions they struggled. Overall, I was quite impressed with the tool by Pearson, and I think it was only a matter of time before someone came up with this kind of software.
One of the most impressive talks, IMO, was given by Mrs. Ruby Kumar of Gems Education. She provided a range of tools being used right now in various schools, but more prominently, her own schools, which used technology in innovative ways to teach students better.
One of things mentioned was interactive whiteboards (Also sometimes referred to as Promithean or SMART boards depending on the company).
Here is a little video of how it is used...
Another thing mentioned as e-Twinning. The basic concept behind it being that students from one school will collaborate with another school (many times in another country) on working on specific problems. Communication happens through ICT and apart from increasing communication and problem solving skills, it also helps in cross cultural exchange.
Other things mentioned were webquests, concept mapping and QUIA books.
Other points discussed
As mentioned previously, it was mentioned by quite a lot of people that teachers nowadays are just there to help, rather than to push information down students throats. With the advent of SMS, Mobile Web, wikis, TV and social networking etc, information about any topic can be consumed within seconds.
IMO, we no longer face major technical challenges in education. It is increasingly becoming apparent that more and more technology is being invented to help students learn. Rather the challenges are (and have always been so since the dawn of time) human in nature. How do we address deficiencies in the human aspect? This is one thing which was not touched upon in the conference. Stuff like addressing bias in treatment of certain students, disciplining the class, motivating students to perform better, etc...these are all real world challenges.
The problem with all this technology is the assumption that the student wants to learn. If the student wants to learn, then these technologies are absolutely great. However, if the motivation is not there itself, if the student is not willing to learn in the first place, then all this technology will not be able to do much. As such, the human aspect (rather than the technology aspect) should have been a point of greater discussion as well, but sadly, it was not.
One more very important point regarding the human aspects of teaching was the emphasis on ethics. I raised this issue in the panel discussion, and the fact that even many reputed engineering colleges in India do not have a course on engineering ethics yet. Ethics in this day and age, is especially important, with kids being away from their parents and the corporate world having scandals after scandals. Some people said that ethics have to be taught at the school level. I guess that should be fine, however, I would think that its only in college that a student's mind is mature enough to realize the importance of it and the way he should apply ethics in his own future profession.
Nitin Mukadam said that a thing like ethics cannot really be taught. It has to come from within. I kindly but strongly disagree with him there. Ethics courses deal with what situations you'll have to deal with when you enter the industry. Stuff that, as a student, you probably do not even realize would be an ethical decision. Such case studies and other valuable information is dicsussed in most ethics courses, and it certainly makes students aware of the importance of ethics in the industry. I know from personal experience that the ethics course that I took made a huge impact on me and changed the way I thought about the industry and the way I should look at things.
Overall EduTech 2009 was a great place to hear of new ideas in the education sphere, and to see the future of education practices being discussed. I hope next year its an even bigger event.
If I have to summarize the central points being touched by just about everyone in the conference, they were
- There is a wide disconnect between industry and academia.
- Technology has an increasingly major role to play in how to disseminate knowledge to our students.
- The role of teachers is moving towards being facilitators rather than 'dictators' of knowledge.
The disconnect between industry and academia
This was actually the central point of my presentation as well, and was repeatedly highlighted in many others people's talks. The web industry wants skilled front end engineers, but we cant find enough of them as the college's don't teach the proper techniques for it. During the panel discussion later in the day, this was again highlighted by the Director of HR from L&T who said he was finding it difficult to find good engineers in structural engineering.
Another thing which was highlighted was the fact that Indian students were relatively good when it came to written communication skills, but were found rather lacking when it came to spoken communication skills, especially in English. This was especially a problem in science and engineering graduates, and no steps are taken in the majority of colleges and universities to address this issue. Some may argue that extra-curricular activities somewhat help in this regard, but the fact is that this is totally optional and the students who really need to improve their communication skills never participate in these activities in the first place.
Some universities, for e.g, JIITU in Noida, do have a separate course in improving communication and personality skills, which is quite good. However, most colleges still are not there in providing decent help at the curriculum level in improving communication skills.
One more point I would like to add, is that in my experience with communicating with a lot of Indian students, especially in connection with the Opera Campus Crew and University seminars, I have found that the level of written communication has also gone down. Students are starting to write in 'SMS lingo' and sometimes it is downright impossible to figure out what they have written. I definitely feel there is a great need to improve communication skills amongst college students, especially in English, which has been India's main advantage in getting client projects in the IT industry.
The role of technology in education
Technology has been playing a major role throughout the history of education. The rudimentary blackboard was at one point of time a sophisticated piece of technology. The calculator was once regarded in the same way. So were projectors, and now so are computers.
The change now, is not in the devices as such (though there are many devices which are making an impact, the Amazon Kindle being one of them) but in the software being written which is enabling greater sharing of knowledge.
We had various people telling us about how Open Source software was helping their institutions in spreading knowledge. This was especially the case with Dr. Savitri Singh who presented on how Wikis were helping in the dissemination of information in her university. The same point was emphasized by Varad Gupta as well. However, later on during talks, some questions were raised about the accuracy of the information on the wikis, and other problems regarding Open Source Software deployment in educational institutions which Mr. Nitin Mukadam from NMIMS highlighted.
Claire Masson from Pearson talked about next generation online homework. Pearson has made a tool, which makes it possible to provide better guidance to students when it comes to homework. Basically the idea is that students will be logging in online to complete their homework, which will be a bunch of questions. If the students struggle with the questions, additional hints or questions will be provided to make the student think on the right track, just like a teacher would if he were to be asked the answer to a question in person. Also, the benefit with that is that teachers are free from grading all the sheets, as all of it is done online, plus the teachers get additional information on which questions were answered easily by students, and on which questions they struggled. Overall, I was quite impressed with the tool by Pearson, and I think it was only a matter of time before someone came up with this kind of software.
One of the most impressive talks, IMO, was given by Mrs. Ruby Kumar of Gems Education. She provided a range of tools being used right now in various schools, but more prominently, her own schools, which used technology in innovative ways to teach students better.
One of things mentioned was interactive whiteboards (Also sometimes referred to as Promithean or SMART boards depending on the company).
Here is a little video of how it is used...
Another thing mentioned as e-Twinning. The basic concept behind it being that students from one school will collaborate with another school (many times in another country) on working on specific problems. Communication happens through ICT and apart from increasing communication and problem solving skills, it also helps in cross cultural exchange.
Other things mentioned were webquests, concept mapping and QUIA books.
Other points discussed
As mentioned previously, it was mentioned by quite a lot of people that teachers nowadays are just there to help, rather than to push information down students throats. With the advent of SMS, Mobile Web, wikis, TV and social networking etc, information about any topic can be consumed within seconds.
IMO, we no longer face major technical challenges in education. It is increasingly becoming apparent that more and more technology is being invented to help students learn. Rather the challenges are (and have always been so since the dawn of time) human in nature. How do we address deficiencies in the human aspect? This is one thing which was not touched upon in the conference. Stuff like addressing bias in treatment of certain students, disciplining the class, motivating students to perform better, etc...these are all real world challenges.
The problem with all this technology is the assumption that the student wants to learn. If the student wants to learn, then these technologies are absolutely great. However, if the motivation is not there itself, if the student is not willing to learn in the first place, then all this technology will not be able to do much. As such, the human aspect (rather than the technology aspect) should have been a point of greater discussion as well, but sadly, it was not.
One more very important point regarding the human aspects of teaching was the emphasis on ethics. I raised this issue in the panel discussion, and the fact that even many reputed engineering colleges in India do not have a course on engineering ethics yet. Ethics in this day and age, is especially important, with kids being away from their parents and the corporate world having scandals after scandals. Some people said that ethics have to be taught at the school level. I guess that should be fine, however, I would think that its only in college that a student's mind is mature enough to realize the importance of it and the way he should apply ethics in his own future profession.
Nitin Mukadam said that a thing like ethics cannot really be taught. It has to come from within. I kindly but strongly disagree with him there. Ethics courses deal with what situations you'll have to deal with when you enter the industry. Stuff that, as a student, you probably do not even realize would be an ethical decision. Such case studies and other valuable information is dicsussed in most ethics courses, and it certainly makes students aware of the importance of ethics in the industry. I know from personal experience that the ethics course that I took made a huge impact on me and changed the way I thought about the industry and the way I should look at things.
Overall EduTech 2009 was a great place to hear of new ideas in the education sphere, and to see the future of education practices being discussed. I hope next year its an even bigger event.
WIDGETIZE