‘No substitute for campus training’

Historian and educationist Rajan Gurukkal says that campus education with face-to-face teaching cannot be substituted by the online mode.

In a chat with The Hindu, he said there is a need for the technology to evolve as there appears no alternative now other than online teaching and learning. It is a fact that many rural students are unable to access online teaching due to lack of connectivity. Nevertheless, this cannot be held as an excuse for teachers and students to put up organised resistance against the online move, the only alternative during a period of crisis.

Poor students have to be provided with tablets containing learning material and online lectures until connectivity is established. Online mode is going to stay as a new normal and strengthening of the online tools is not optional anymore. Teleconferencing seminars with experts appearing online were not common earlier. Today conference means teleconference and seminars are being substituted by Webinars.

“We have to make it part of the routine for which we need to develop the necessary technological infrastructure and build up in-house expertise. Institutions and governments have to bring about necessary changes in the organisational structure for facilitating the new normal in the higher education sector. We have to think about the ways and means of developing online teaching tools and providing training in their effective use. Some of the teachers use online teaching in amateurish ways of their own under the pandemic lockdown pressure. It is necessary to turn them into professionals,” he said.