Education 4.0: Necessity of Online & Blended Learning

Online education has become a mandatory need in the current situation. Whereas it is partially agreeable that this is not the best option, but is the best option in the current situation. With constant lockdowns, it has become mandatory for the students to start training their own mind to like this mode of learning. After all, everything is in the mind, and if a student can train his mind to believe that education is possible through the use of the headphone, closeness to the teacher's computer screen, etc., learning will become easy. However, they also need to accept the fact that discussions in the canteen and playing in the playground do give the students the dynamicity, learning online is imperative in the current situation and has to be encouraged by the guardians. It has to be understood that encouragement also comes in two ways. So once students start taking it sincerely, teachers also will get the motivation to deliver better.

Era of online and blended learning

Off late, there has been a lot of discussions about Education 4.0 and there have been debates about whether or online learning is facilitating it. As the industry is revolutionalising from 3.0 to 4.0 (where everything in the industry is being automated comprising the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Virtual and Augmented Reality), it is imperative and inevitable for education to also move further. So, how is Education 4.0 defined?

Education 4.0 comprising the following 9 things:

• Anywhere/anytime learning: Ability to learn anywhere anytime at the student’s own will. Definitely, online learning will facilitate this as a student has access to innumerable resources all across the internet and can learn from the internet, irrespective of place and time.
• Personal learning: Online learning will enhance personal learning for a student.
• Flexible delivery: Modern-day teachers need to find a better way of delivering with more flexibility to revolutionalise Education to 4.0.
• Peers and mentors: From canteens to classroom debates in offline learning, in online learning institutions need to give the better opportunity of the mingling of peers and mentors through sessions of debate, more scope of group study, frequent mentor-mentee sessions, etc.
• Why/where and not what/how: Not much influence of offline or online learning would come in the point Why/where and not what/how. But again modern-day teaching is to concentrate on the science behind why and where a fact is, because what and how is a fact is available easily on the internet to be found better by a student.
• Practical application: Although the practical application is possible offline through labs and equipment. However, teachers today need to encourage the students for applying the things they learn.
• Modular and project-based learning: Modular and project-based learning as apart from the complete software-based projects, the laboratory is a requirement.
• Student ownership: Student ownership in his learning comes from motivation and offline meetings with teachers, and competition of peers might have a role to play.
• Evaluated not examined: Modern-day teaching learning demands that the students are regularly evaluated on the basis of continuous assessment, class responses and not on the basis of a single year-end examination. Apparently, offline teaching is better to understand the regular class responses from a student, but online learning has created an extreme requirement to regularly assess the students in class, as a year-end online examination might not be reflective of a student's performance, as most answers are deducible from Google searches for the students to answer. So here also there is not much to compare.

Keeping all points in mind, it is obvious that for Education delivery to progress to its next level, blended learning (a mix of offline and online learning) is the requirement of the hour. Few points would come better in the offline mode and a few would come better online. A blend of the two to choose the better from both is the way forward.

How are we implementing at UEM Jaipur

UEM, Jaipur was following a blended or mixed mode of learning even before the pandemic, i.e. where few talks, lectures, special classes and combined classes used to happen online along with regular offline classes. Today, classes are conducted using Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Goto Webinar as we have paid subscription of all these platforms. Laboratories are also held using VLAB, Hacker Rank, etc. VLAB is a central government’s initiative where you can virtually select different apparatus/equipment needed and show the experiments on screen. Hacker Rank is needed for computer programming. Our assignments are shared via Google classroom and students submit the assignments there, and teachers check it and return using the same platform. Virtual marking like using a pen to scratch the incorrect answers/statements and write the correct ones are possible. Our exams are conducted using our own platform called IEMJEE.

Laboratories are also held using VLAB, Hacker Rank, etc. VLAB is a central government’s initiative where you can virtually select different apparatus/equipment needed and show the experiments on screen.

We have over 10,000 online courses from top universities across the world which UEM students can take anywhere, anytime. Marks from one of these courses are taken into final marks of a student to be obtained every semester, and this also facilitates continuous evaluation of students.

All lectures delivered by the teachers are available on UEM JAIPUR official Youtube channel. Flexible delivery is more facilitated at UEM JAIPUR through flip learning, where the students are provided with the recording of the class that is to be imparted in the coming week in advance from our own Youtube channel. Students come prepared to the class and the class is held to discuss implementation and practical applications. Each and every student is provided with a mentor to facilitate point 4. There are around 20 mentees under a mentor, who guides the students in all dimensions. Additionally, a project on the basis of each course taught in a semester is a mandatory requirement in the UEM JAIPUR curriculum.

Benefitting students

The implementation of Education 4.0 and modern teaching techniques help the students to acquire the best placements. At UEM Jaipur recently a student received nine job offers, one of them being a Rs 72-LPA package from Giga Data Center, Atlanta, USA. Every student received one offer even during the pandemic.

About the author

Prof. Dr Biswajoy Chatterjee is currently the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Engineering & Management (UEM), Jaipur. He completed his PhD from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Agartala specialising Nano-Science and Nano-Technology. Dr Chatterjee is pursuing research in the same domain in addition to Computer Vision and Speech Processing. He is a known name in the field of Applied Robotics and has conducted several National level workshops in Robotics

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha