The Post-Covid Sphere of Education

 The COVID-19 pandemic has put several essential services to a standstill, in need of innovative solutions for service delivery. Education is one such sector. Seeing into the 4th phase of the lockdown, we find that schools and college campuses are not operational and students are awaiting their exams. CBSE board exams have been pushed to the first week of July and several college students are ready to see a shift in their learning systems, ready to give entrance exams online or proctored exams.

While education institutions over the world prepare for training their staff as well as students in the appropriate norms of social distancing and sustainability practices, there is an undeniable change underway. The growth of e-learning platforms is expected to be the new way in which curriculum, pedagogy as well as exams are expected to be delivered. In order for these to be sustainable, there are demand and supply side constraints that need to be understood in order to scale the e-learning process.

It has been found that colleges are anticipating a drop in the enrolment rates owing to reduced family incomes as well as concern over health safety. Colleges and the government will hopefully provide enough assurances against rising fees and costs to assuage these fears along with ensuring safety guidelines are followed in schools and colleges.

India is a country where access to the internet is available to 34% of the population. Therefore, access to good internet bandwidth and desktops or laptops is certainly important. More basically, the number of hours that electricity is uninterrupted becomes important to consider when considering students coming from areas lacking in these basic amenities. Several colleges are assessing these things before gauging the next important factor, internet literacy. Given that we live in an age where social media dominates and increasingly, applications and forms are taking an online presence it is clear that literacy exists at least at a basic navigational level for youths today. However, ensuring access and finding online curriculum useful and of quality, there needs to be a skilling of students as well as teachers in finding online modules appealing and friendly. Since experience with digital pedagogy remains low among teachers, and the use of the internet for learning is low, the important question that edu-tech firms would want to answer is- how can we scale e-learning given the economic and spatial conditions of our students? Should exams and assignments also be a part of the move to e-platform, or should it be restricted to providing curriculum?

These important factors will determine how much the e-learning platforms can be scaled along with several social and cultural factors. COVID 19 is here to stay and we must find a way to move towards sustainability of basic needs such as education which is Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 in the United Nations list of goals to reach a sustainable future.