The cohort-based learning restricted within the confines of a rigid syllabus deprives the students of a hedonic feeling of learning. In the context of higher education, Ezra Pound,the famous poet of the 20th century once said, “Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.”I concur with the view as without a pursuit for knowledge men (to be treated as a gender-neutral identifier for students)the learning motivation will remain as a mirage. All modern learning theories like the theory of constructivism or media richness theory or the theory of connectivism have emphasized the role of learner maturity as one of the determinants to ensure higher learning gain, especially in a networked environment.Sometimes I feel amazed to see how a mobile device used for entertainment fails to qualify for a learning device. The CII report of 2020 suggests that since March 2020 the consumption of mobile data has increased by 20% - 25% and the average time spent on the mobile phone has risen to 4.3 hours per day which is an increase of 27%. More interestingly, we are spending an additional 40% of the time on a video streaming platform.
To supplement this fact it’s also worth pondering that the growth of OTT platforms in the entertainment space also gains acceptance from the people at large during the pandemic and to fight the monotony of life’s drudgery. I have said this before and would like to reiterate that if anyone has an idea in the back of their minds about the resumption of normalcy soon and restoration of the earlier teaching-learning ecosystem and educators can get back to the chalk-n-talk mode of teaching – it’s a wakeup call for them as the pedagogic style has undergone a tectonic shift, a generational change where the educator is no more a sage on the stage, rather a facilitator of a complex adaptive system (CAS) earlier known as institutional learning. We may need to create technology intervention at various intervals of a course to measure the learning outcomes and map it with the expected learning gain for the students.
In 1980, Knowles has given the idea of a learning continuum where a student starts the learning sojourn through assistive learning and moves on to self-paced learning thus enjoying every phase of it and gains maturity in the process. I had propagated the ideas of Learning Continuity where it was suggested that each student in any cohort falls into any of the four quadrants of a learner matrix depending on their learning habit i.e., induced (less time and content), rote(less time but huge content), traditional (enough time but less content) and matured (maximum time and huge content). Interestingly, the matrix posits that the position of the learner in the quadrant is not stationary and it may change dynamically depending on subjectivity and the learner’s grit.
The objective of the learner is to move from an induced state to a mature state where maximum engagement with the content is achieved and the maximum time is allowed to the learner so that the learner can develop necessary insights into the subject and self-learning habit is also inculcated.Learning is a continuous process and keeps occurring ubiquitously inside as well as outside the classroom, in the presence and absence of a teacher. However, engagement with the content, maximum allowed time, learner’s grit and technology intervention enhances the learning experience securing learning gain thereby.
It is high time that the policymakers call for not only a pedagogical course correction rather a drastic redesign of the teaching methods by creating necessary interventions of assessment and evaluation criteria. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has brought in a spell of fresh air and perhaps would be able to achieve the targeted outcome through multiple iterations post-implementation.
Keywords: Learning continuity, online teaching, online learning, pedagogy, learner matrix
Author Biography
DR. DEBARSHI MUKHERJEE
The author is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Business Management, Tripura University. He is the State Coordinator of the AICTE sponsored Student Induction Programme for Tripura. He has been nominated as a Mentor by AICTE for newly inducted teachers of technical educationand as an expert for AICTE’s NEAT 2.0 initiative.His research interest lies in developing blended learning models and ICT intervention in tertiary education. He has worked extensively in curricula design and Innovative Andragogy Development over the last two decades. Besides writing regularly for newspapers and portals on contemporary issues he has also deliberated in the different television/ radio shows in Tripura and Bangladesh.
Represetational Images - The way they are teaching us in online classes, I’d either become Dr.Salunkhe or Dr.Mashoor Gulati / FB Page, Ujjwal Jammu News / commonwealthtimes.org