Daily Post 1310
MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES (MOOC)
MOOC has been a well known synonym amongst the educated in recent times. This gave some inkling of the fact that world is moving in the direction of online education. MOOC started to complement and supplement regular education in a small way for the smart and rational. Some off trajectory talks would revolve around the Business Schools etc becoming redundant. This was just a flight of fancy. MOOC as we call, would find open as a more relevant way to define it, rather than massive. Regular academic courses had not hopped on to it.
As to what percentage of education happened through MOOC is a matter of research, certainly given the size of the educational system, it had not reached any massive proportions. What was thought to be in the realm of the imaginary, in about a month’s time seems to have become a dire need. Either it will happen in this fashion or else there would be no education. Our lack of efforts for having created a structure and system for this alternative system of education has thrown the whole educational system in a quandary today.
With all the depth in our educational system both at school & college levels and available IT skills to conduct exams notwithstanding, we are still rattling our brains to find a solution to the exams hanging mid-way and the ones yet to start. Think of a situation where the whole schooling would have to be conducted online. Now the prevalent thought is that in sometime the lockdown would be over and we will back to schools and colleges as earlier. Nobody has an answer. Tech schooling solution has to be evolved so that children don’t lose out on the precious time and also the portions of the syllabus, which seems so simple to prune.
Massive Online Education has to come of age. The replication of the physical mode into the digital online world might create serious handicaps. Hierarchies, structures, mechanisms and even institutions may have broken and recreated in tune with the needs of modern massive online education. The present status can be described haphazard, at best be called an Online Education Refugee Camp, the final resettlement yet to be planned, initiated and executed. Technology is all about finding solutions to the real life’s problems and so is education. Hope, with the two together, a great Massive Online Education System emerges.
DISRUPTIVE CHANGE HAS HIT EDUCATION, AN EQUALLY DISRUPTIVE SOLUTION NEEDS TO HAPPEN