Online education has been a savior and International school have made very good use.
The term ‘VUCA’ (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) created ripples around the world when it was first introduced in the Harvard Business Review article in 2014. We heard a number of forums discussing it, workshops training people to deal with VUCA situations, books being published and influential industry speakers speaking in seminars about it. But the world faced a real life VUCA situation only when Covid-19 hit humanity. A study by Mitika Nangia and Dr. Farhat Mohsin identifies VUCA factors in the pandemic era, in the Indian IT industry. In the same line of thought, since I work with an international school in the national capital region in India, being a part of the education industry, I noticed similar things. The pandemic caused massive damage and disruption to the educational institutions by forcing closure of schools but the educators, at all levels, learned fast and adapted to the new normal in almost no time.
The online education in schools came out as the way forward.
Online education in schools in Gurgaon not only that teachers could continue to impart education, they could add flexibility and self paced learning for students. Video transmission based classrooms have provided class recordings as such a common option. This has made it very easy for classes to be recorded and these recordings are then available for students to go over them again. This even enabled teachers, curriculum designers and school leaders to make use of class recordings to plan for differentiation and further inform teaching and learning processes.
Students and teachers have been able to better manage time. There has also been a challenge in achieving this feat. During the pandemic, students have been given unrestricted, monitored, high speed, internet data. This supply has given wings to their whims and fancies along with their creativity. Students have got a lot of distractions while searching everything under the sky, consuming all kinds of information, spending more time online. This highlighted the need for counselling support. The well resourced international schools have been able to better guide and counsel students while a big section of student society is adversely affected by this rather than being positively influenced. I strongly recommend each and every school to have expert counselors along with training all of their teachers into counselors.
The idea of self motivated and self directed learning that seemed a far fetched goal for a long time, seems a reality now. It used to be a novel idea when someone among colleagues came to share that he/ she has completed a new online course. This looks like talk of the town online education in schools in gurgaon. There are a host of webinars, workshops, online degrees and completely online institutions like University of the People. This is definitely a very positive change. Though it has been a forced change, it has been implemented well with the consistent support of teachers, guidance from the counselors and motivations from parents. The classrooms see communication and collaboration in virtual mode now. Students have developed confidence to face cameras. Class chats are a good source of notes of class discussions. Technology has provided more control options to manage distractions, for teachers to ensure the classes are disciplined and focused. Schools have generally faced situations where students would not turn on their cameras and would not participate in lessons but to deal with this, schools have come up with rubrics that assess the level of active participation and some schools have even gone ahead awarding some grades to acknowledge and appreciate the participation.
The development of an international viewpoint has always been at the core of education, especially the International schools, affiliated to the International Baccalaureate Organisation, Geneva. The development of a broad global mindset has paved the way for a better and more inclusive student generation that understands cultures, accepts differences and respects individuality.
Online education offers innovative and productive teaching and learning tools. It is extremely beneficial to pair students, with contrasting and complementary skill sets, in Zoom break out rooms to let them work independently. The e-books and digital notebooks have also shown the world a way to save the environment and go green. The jam boards, mood boards and various creative ways of taking students’ feedback are but a few things to mention among the many benefits of online education. A bigger change is the paradigm shift of focus from ‘teaching’ to ‘ensuring learning’.
Online education is here to stay for its innumerable benefits. This has truly made the world a global classroom. Teachers and students do not feel restricted due to the geographical distances or the borders. Innovation and creativity are the only limiting factors.
