Ajay Kumar Rathore founded Dhurina Ventures Private Limited, an e-Learning platform for state and regional competitive exams in 2019 along with Sachin Sardana, Murari Singh and Sanjay Singh with an aim to provide quality content coaching to aspirants residing in rural and tier 3 cities. Ajay has an extensive understanding of the Competitive Exams and related processes. In his previous stints, he gained in-depth knowledge of the Banking and Government job sectors. Previously, he was working as a P.O in State Bank of India and has also served as a Co-Founding member of Exam Block where his key responsibility was to provide offline study materials to students. He holds a Bachelor degree in Science and Master Degree in Computer Science from Kurukshetra University.
Can you hear me? Can you see me? These have become the most used and heard questions with the outbreak of Covid-19. The education sector is amongst the hardest-hit sectors in the current scenario. The pandemic has bought a paradigm shift in the education sector irrespective of one’s exposure to adapt, teach and learn. Digital has become the new normal across the education industry being the only means of a safer mode of connectivity and learning in this social distancing era. Online education has become fundamental for learners and educators.
Key challenges in E-learning
Comparing physically present in-room learning with online learning brings up notable challenges such as lack of human connection, missing collaborative knowledge exchange, in-person interactive expert supervision, and social disharmony, amongst many others. Addressing the challenge of internet connectivity and harnessing technology to provide a rich and holistic learning experience to students, learners and professionals is still a big question.
A large section of the Indian population is still not smartphone or computer literate. The rural public still finds it burdensome to afford technology-enabled phones or computers, leaving them behind in this tech-savvy era. Major parts of the country faces internet and connectivity issues, hindering the e-learning system. To deal with such problems, classes at many places are being conducted by sharing videos by experts and teachers over social media platforms, with convenience given to students to watch them at the time they want. This measure caters to the public at large but at the cost of quality.
All the students, learners, and professionals value the in-class physical learning experience much more than the virtual one. Most of the courses often include dissertation projects, hands-on lab testing sessions, and field trips to learn the practical aspect complementing theoretical studies. Due to fixated screen involvement followed by distracted usage of digital content, there is absence of any form of physical activity ultimately affecting the health in a longer run.
The disabled- students and learners with disabilities are mostly dependent on in-person physical in-room education and are least benefitted from online learning. Such students have to face concerns related to availability of study material in appropriate formats. Also, the experts and teachers are much anxious about the teaching methodology and effectiveness for the students with learning disorders and physically incapability. Thus, ineffective education may further aggravate the high dropout rates of these children from schools.
Opportunities these platforms offer
Though there may be few challenges still e-learning opens up tremendous opportunities for learners and teachers across geographies. The perfect balance of traditional in-room physical learning and online learning can helps pave a widened route to success.
It promotes productivity and creativity of students. E-learning simplifies the learning and training process through a technologically supported systematic approach. Online teaching mechanism involves video conferencing, virtual assignments, research, and projects. With the introduction of online learning, a learner has access to unlimited topics, experts, data, and learning material in niche subjects. Also, most of the private and public institutions have switched smoothly to online platforms.
Despite being a new face of education, online learning has provided a variety of opportunities for working professionals, students, and learners.
Online programs allow learners and students of different age groups to learn at their own pace, without self-consciousness and compromising on their responsibilities. Many students, learners, and professionals find online learning- a welcome change from the tight schedules and long-distance commutation.
Unification of education and effectiveness across online education is the need of the hour. With global recognition for comprehensive education policies, the government has introduced various efficient, manageable, and safer online resources, training programs, and schemes for the students, teachers, experts, educational institutions, and professionals. Moreover, the teaching community should come up together to form a nationwide formal and voluntary network of teachers, experts, and professionals to discuss, learn and socialize regarding online ways of teaching, methodology, working, aspects, and creating online repositories of essential resources and making it available for anyone, anywhere.
Also, the new edge technology like artificial intelligence could open up new possibilities of innovation and personalization, catering to different learning abilities and resources. With the MNCs and the private sector extending their support to the education sector, the industry is estimating increase the effectiveness of education through combating the challenges and supporting the advent of E-learning in India.