Learn by Wire
Zooming into the New Normal
It’s a regular Monday morning, and I’m… oh wait, or is it Sunday? I cannot seem to keep track these days. I’m sitting in the front veranda with my legs propped up, waiting for inspiration to strike. I have an essay due next week. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the box of groceries by the stairs. Why has it been left out for nearly three days? Aah, Mother must have forgotten. She does seem tense off-late. My ears perk. I think I hear a car engine whirring in the distance. It’s an awfully uncommon sound nowadays. “Sehaj! It’s been an hour since you washed your hands!” Wait. Why is my father home at this time of the day? Well, I guess it really is a Sunday. Maybe.
Homebound, locked down!
I forget the new normal sometimes. An unrelenting pandemic. Two million cases worldwide, and counting. Just last week, my city was declared a ‘Coronavirus Hotspot’ by the government. Even as I am writing this, I cannot fathom what the situation will be. I do not want to. However, even amidst panic, fear and uncertainty, life has a way of going on. We agonise, but we adapt. We redefine our ‘normal’ and begin again.
Educational campuses would have been most susceptible to the spread of Covid-19. With hundreds and thousands of students, faculty and staff on the same few acres, sharing classrooms and messes, engaged in the library or sports, social distancing wouldn’t have been practical. Consequently, campuses were among the first to be shut down to help flatten the curve. Millions of students, in the middle of their academic year, found themselves home under partial or complete lockdown. As it became evident that the fight against the pandemic will be a long-drawn affair, institutions began improvising to ensure that learning continued. They needed a way of remote teaching without compromising on interaction and quality. Voila! E-learning.
As a guest speaker in our post-covid online class remarked, the transition to online teaching was inevitable, but the transition time got compressed from a few years to a few days. Currently, our online classes are being conducted over a voice/video call. Access to lecture recordings and links for further reading are being given to facilitate understanding. Assignments, assessments and the course structure itself is being revamped to accommodate as many students and situations as possible. But is remote learning merely a contingency plan or a ‘new normal’? What will be its impact on higher education, and what are the new opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs in this arena?
It was time to go on the ground and understand the perspective of key stakeholders. The EDIPT model of Design Thinking refers to this first stage as ‘empathise’. According to Empathy on the Edge: Scaling and Sustaining a Human-Centred Approach to Innovation, “Empathy is a powerful force. Research shows that when we are empathetic, we enhance our ability to receive and process information. Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes — a part of our subconscious behaviour — causes measurable changes in our cognitive style, increasing ‘field-dependent thinking’.” While I had some first-hand experience, to immerse myself better, I decided to do a short survey to gauge reactions arising from this transition.
I identified three stakeholders whose views are crucial to determining the future of higher education — students, teachers/professors and parents. I sent out a form to my friends across universities, their parents, and educators. I set 10 questions to help me understand the positives and negatives of online education, whether concerns regarding productivity and screen time are valid, and if institutions were to reopen in the next six months, whether or not this form of learning would be preferable. I received a total of 77 responses, with 45 students, 14 teachers/professors and 18 parents.
Interpreting the results of the survey brings us to the next stage of the EDIPT model, define. We now analyse our observations and synthesise them to define the core problem we are going to solve. The following is my analysis of the responses I was able to collect:
- More than 80% of all three stakeholders have rated their current experience with online education >=3 on a scale of 1–5 with 1 being the lowest. This implies that the overall experience is above average, and there is consumer acceptability.
- Most institutions have made the jump to live classes via voice/video call. Several of them are also providing access to recorded lectures and additional study material and ensuring faculty availability beyond class hours to ease the transition. If institutions have accommodated these changes within a handful of days, perhaps with a little more time and effort, we can adapt online education to suit needs better.
- Surprisingly, there was a consensus among all students, educators and parents on what they considered to be the most significant positive of e-learning — flexibility in terms of location and environment. This feature should be preserved during the process of innovation. A close contender was access to a greater variety of courses and educators.
- Two issues came to light from responses to what stakeholders considered to be the most significant negative aspects of e-learning: a non-conducive study environment, followed by lack of personal contact between students, teachers and peers. A close third was limited scope for practical experiences. These thus form the crux of the problem entrepreneurs and innovators must step in and solve.
- Course restructuring seems to have had a slightly negative impact on the students’ interest in the course. This ties back to the issues of impersonal contact and limited practical experience that were highlighted as negatives.
- Approximately 70–80% of all respondents felt that reduced productivity/discipline and excessive screen time are pertinent problems. While excessive screen time is an unwanted consequence of online education, there doesn’t appear to be much scope for improvement here. On the other hand, the expected lack of productivity/discipline can be addressed while innovating.
- Around 80% of students and teachers/professors and 55% of parents expressed their preference for resuming regular classes on campus if educational institutions reopen in the next six months. Let’s see how we can change this.
Having mulled over these points, I came up with the following problem statement for which we can begin to enlist possibilities. Students need a conducive yet interactive flexible environment because that will decide whether the switch to online education will sustain post-Covid. If we successfully tackle the problem of the study environment, we gain the advantage of flexible location and time. A larger variety of courses and more educators become available when we eliminate geographical boundaries. A conducive learning environment also alleviates concerns of productivity/discipline and promotes interaction with peers and instructors.
The third stage in the EDIPT model of design thinking is where the magic lies. Having empathised with the end consumer and defined our problem, it’s time to put our grey cells in action and ‘ideate’. I brainstormed ideas: libraries to cafes, detachable tables to portable chambers to noise-cancelling headphones with blinkers. The ideal solution had to be one which would sit at the intersection of feasibility (implementable), desirability (for students) and viability (for business i.e. colleges/universities). Let me present an opportunity that meets all three requirements in a post-Covid world — Learning Hubs aka student-centric coworking spaces.
Coworking spaces currently are “membership-based workspaces where diverse groups of freelancers, remote workers, and other independent professionals work together in a shared, communal setting.” A research by Harvard Business Review suggests that the well-designed work environment and autonomy provided by these spaces is the reason that workers thrive in this environment. Coworking spaces have become all the rage as we march towards becoming a gig economy.
A simple Google search revealed that most of the current coworking spaces have been built to promote the start-up culture. While they are open to hosting students, there are next to none that are dedicated to them. However, professors and teachers, as content-deliverers, have already begun adopting them. As the article, The Gig Economy is making Waves in Education, reports, “Education and training is consistently among the top career fields for the number of flexible jobs posted each month, and has been since we started tracking these trends about five years ago.” The primary reasons for professors opting for freelancing are their high levels of specialisation and the rise in virtual education.
But education is a two-way street. If professors are being encouraged to embrace this ‘new normal’, why should students be left behind sitting at home?
Developing coworking spaces as study arenas for students enrolled in higher educations holds immense potential for entrepreneurs and innovators. Such an environment is conducive and flexible and facilitates productivity. It also encourages interaction and knowledge sharing. Coworking spaces need not be restricted to studying alone. Like-minded students can come together, ideate and perhaps even take up projects. Students who would like to pursue side jobs can also avail of this dedicated workspace. Online education, coupled with a convenient environment, does what universities do but better. Commute time is saved, one need not relocate, and costs are reduced substantially. Eliminating geographical constraints allows students to enrol in courses from across the world by stellar faculty to which they would otherwise not have had access. Colleges and universities too can now host students from across countries and cultures and have class sizes much larger than what physical campuses support. They can make up for the reduction in fee from boarding and other facilities through increased batch sizes.
A key question in my survey was: “Increased dependency on technology for education promotes ______ of low-income groups.” Respondents could choose either ‘inclusion’ or ‘exclusion’. 80% of students, 100% of teachers and 66.7% of parents chose ‘exclusion’. This is a common argument against online education: that it is restricted to the privileged few with internet and device access. But with a little innovation and a ‘jugaad’ approach, we can extend our solution to students from low-income backgrounds.
According to Why Students in India Drop Out, there are three primary reasons for students opting out of higher education. First, the poor quality of infrastructure and teachers. Second, inaccessibility of educational institutions, especially for migrants who need transfer certificates, residence certificates and other formalities. Third, and most importantly, their need to supplement household income and pursue domestic chores. Online education helps solve the first two issues, and coworking spaces are the answer to the third because they enable students to study and work online without forcefully migrating to cities.
A great example of such an initiative is ‘Learning Circles’. These are free study groups for people who want to take online classes together and in-person. It began in 2014 with Chicago Public Library partnering with the non-profit Peer 2 Peer University to make online education more accessible and interactive. Today there are over 816 circles across 189 participating cities that have offered more than 566 courses. The success of this program can be accredited to their choice of location. Libraries are infrastructurally equipped to be the perfect setting for community-based learning. Entrepreneurs can leverage the existing network of libraries to advance Learning Hubs. The community can also step in and help bridge the financial gap. Individuals can sponsor coworking spaces in suburban and rural areas or even sponsor courses for financially burdened students. Coworking spaces themselves can also waive the membership fee for such students who are regulars.
The world that emerges from this pandemic will not be the same as before. Battered and bruised, it will rely upon its innovators and entrepreneurs to chart a way forward. We will never go back to the old normal. But we will persevere and something new will be normal.
Who knows, in the near future, my university’s address may just be a URL!
