Digital Learning and the Future: Need for Innovation
We are sure living in unprecedented times with the World facing a global crisis, the outcome and future consequences of which remain uncertain. However, people have slowly started to adapt to the lives in isolation and global lock down. We are experiencing a paradigm shift in the basic functioning of a human centric society. Day by day, we witness new solutions, interesting jugaad innovations, to provide relief to problems born out of a crisis. This is the kind of an innovative, creative world that we are shifting to. This quarantine is slowly and steadily defining new normals for the entire world. We have reached a pause, and this pandemic seems to be providing us with the opportunity to go through a restart. Donella Meadows believes that a change is brought about by scrapping one paradigm and setting in another one. ‘All it requires is one click of a mind, a new way of seeing things’, she says and that is exactly where we are right now. David wan, in his article, aptly articulates that now the time has come for a restorative era. The practices and policies of humankind have reached a stage of reflection and recuperation.
All around us, amidst a global lock down, we are noticing gradual changes in how human life has started functioning. With a pause on industrial work, travelling and human motion in general, we are witnessing a restoration of nature. Being able to experience clean breathable air after a long time has prompted people to adopt healthier and more sustainable food eating and waste disposal habits. Since, all activities have hit a snag, people are also recognising privilege, the inaccessibility of food, and are becoming more aware of the economical and social inequalities present in our society. This kind of awareness has motivated people to reflect upon their own consumption patterns and inspired them to give back to the society they are a part of, seen by the massive amounts of relief and aid work done by individuals and different groups. These practices have now become a way of life and the expectation is that these new normals stay even after the situation improves. However, a major shift that has taken place in the way we are now viewing our life is in the gambit of connectivity.
Humans, by nature, are social creatures. The innate need of humankind to stay connected is more visible now than ever and the best way to do so is through the multitude of digital tools available at our disposal. Over the past few decades, advancements in technology and innovation has made complete digitisation a near future reality with connectivity via the internet being at the centre of it. People are connected through a host of things such as online games, chat platforms, social media blogs and videos, work meeting platforms, entertainment platforms and online learning. Digital connectivity has advanced so much that, almost everyday, we have a new multiplayer game, a new chat platform, a new social media network or a new online payment gateway. However, the sector that faces the biggest challenge with digitisation is Education. Online learning still has a long way to go.
With schools and universities closed around the globe, students and teachers have transferred to a mode of online courses and learning through zoom and google meet lectures. What we are facing might be the greatest global education and learning crisis that any of us have witnessed in our lifetimes. According to reports, due to the covid-19 crisis, more than 1.3 billion children and youth are out of school and universities in 161 countries. This is close to 80% of the world’s enrolled students. Now, the educational crisis that the world had already been facing was not small to begin with. According to the world bank learning poverty indicator, the percentage of children who could not read or understand literature, stood at 53% of the low and middle income nation and these numbers will only increase with such a pandemic. Many institutions and governments recognise the fact that for the foreseeable future, online learning is the best possible solution to keep the wheels of education turning. Online learning is our new normal and a highly important one at that. However, it does not come without its challenges and for that fact alone, this new normal deserves significant attention.
Just like with the adoption of any technology, when online learning tools were first proposed, they faced a lot of traction as they are doing now. Online learning was never a top priority for institutions; they were just add on tools which were never much focused on. Now, when the entire world is being forced to go online, the lack of a conducive online infrastructure is glaringly obvious. Some of the concerns surrounding the pause in classroom learning are loss of learning, hindrance in social development and particularly in middle and low income nations, increased dropout rates and students missing their most important meal of the day (world bank). There has been significant opposition by the students and educators alike when comparing online learning to physical classrooms and with good reason. The current technological scope is limited with a lot of shortcomings and currently the cons outweigh the pros for the case of online learning.
The most significant drawback of online education is the lack of accessibility for all. A global transition to a mode of online learning and skill acquiring will always leave out the economically weaker sections of the society who cannot afford access to the paraphernalia associated with online classes. For some students, schools and universities are safe spaces from toxic home environments while for several others it is a place where they can get one guaranteed meal of the day, all of which is not provided by online classes resulting in high dropout rates. In addition, just logistically speaking, for online classes to function properly, a strong and steady stream of internet connectivity and a reliable power supply is required, the infrastructure for which is lacked by many cities or rather countries, thus making it even more difficult for teachers to teach and students to learn.
Nevertheless, Covid has provided us with a chance to rethink how we impart education. Learning is no longer limited to the pedagogical hand overs of knowledge. Along with a change in global outlook, this crisis may also teach us how education needs to change to make young students the leaders of tomorrow. Online learning needs to be redefined to incorporate a more holistic learning experience and this is where in creativity, innovation and design thinking come into play. In a globally changing environment, students don’t just require knowledge, they require life skills that go beyond classroom teaching. They require resilience, adaptability, flexibility, creativity and entrepreneurial skills to become future professionals (weforum). Acquiring new skills is a major part of this development and contrary to popular belief, these skills can be acquired through e-learning as well.
Reinvention of education and making e-learning an adaptable, more all rounder programme is not just a concern for academic institutions, educators and students; it concerns the world at large. Similarly, the solutions to these problems will not just arise out of technological advancement but through new ways of approaching the same problem, through creativity, empathy, innovation and most importantly through design thinking. The challenge we face is to redefine conventional education by inculcating an atmosphere that fosters creativity, promotes entrepreneurial drive and teaches global skills. So, who better to solve these issues than young, motivated entrepreneurs and innovators themselves. Education requires a fresh perspective and modern age tools of problem solving wielded by creative, young, liberal entrepreneurs.
Through the methods of design thinking and jugaad innovation, entrepreneurs along with other stakeholders can come up with new and innovative solutions to creating a more conducive e-learning experience. The opportunities in such a field are vast. Tom Perrault in an HBR article writes that for a long time now digital companies have only focused on acquiring more and more people with technological or coding skills which is fair considering their field of work. However, as mentioned in the article, in the near future computers will take over more and more of these tasks like data crunching. What can’t be replaced would however be the liberal skills being overlooked today such as creativity, empathy, listening and vision. These skills are important for any organisation, not just for their success but to bring something new to the table, something that brings about an innovative positive change in the society.
Empathy is one of the key steps in the process of design thinking. Design empathy is an approach that draws upon people’s real life experiences to address modern challenges (Empathy on the edge). Establishing a deeper understanding of the user behaviour and their needs , allows individuals and companies to unlock the capacity for innovative solutions. Identifying the user, putting yourself in their shoes and determining the issues they face, gives the innovators a better understanding of how their solution should be positioned, at whom it should be targeted and what its purpose is. In the case of e-learning specifically, identifying that accessibility for all poses the major challenge and how children from underprivileged communities cannot learn due to lack of resources becomes the first step to unlocking the creativity. Understanding the various stakeholders involved in providing access such as teachers, private entities and more importantly the state, bringing them together to create a more integrated WiFi network system or generating sanitised safe space systems across the cities for students to come and learn could be just one of the many innovative solutions to the same problem.
Another unique approach to innovation is through Jugaad. As explained beautifully by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, and Simone Ahuja, jugaad is a Hindi word that means innovating by improvising with limited resources to come up with an effective solution . Jugaad helps us innovate faster, cheaper and better. Using a cloth hanger to create a light stand, using an iron to heat up your coffee, utilising the engine of a motorbike to make a portable washing machine are all examples of jugaad innovation. It not only teaches us to do more with less but to also come up with highly adaptable and inclusive innovations. Similarly, utilising the existing connectivity platforms to create a more engaging learning practice could be one solution that can come up through jugaad. Integrating gaming platforms and education networks to create informative and fun learning programs is yet another example. This kind of a solution is faster to execute, cheaper to develop and better in the long run.
The Covid crisis has once again brought digital learning to the centre stage and the hope is that in the coming future it will be incorporated as a key learning tool. Educators across the world are experiencing new possibilities to do things differently and with greater flexibility resulting in potential benefits in accessibility to education for students across the world. With widespread incorporation of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, studying through holographic features and reality simulations might no longer be a distant dream. Till then, with the world evolving at such a fast pace, education needs to keep up and that can only be done through creativity and innovation. Opportunities are vast and the world needs more and more jugaad innovators, design thinkers and liberal entrepreneurs to keep coming up with modern solutions to modern age problems. It might take digital learning a long time to set its base, but through proper tools and the work of driven individuals, reinventing education to make it a more inclusive and holistic learning system is a near reality.
