Limitations of On-Line Learning

Dr.S.SUNDARARAJAN, Associate Professor, Department of MBA, Sankara College of Science and Commerce

India has been under lockdown for more than a month in a desperate attempt to contain the covid-19 pandemic. Even when the lockdown gets lifted eventually, the government may not allow large congregation in restricted physical spaces. It is almost certain that educational campuses will not be fully populated anytime soon.

The need for online learning

Universities and colleges were in the middle of the second semester of their academic year when the lockdown was enforced. There was a great deal of anxiety, particularly about the graduating batches of students, in case the ongoing session should be declared a “zero semester”. This prompted a number of local initiatives in response to the necessity. There were periodic attempts from individual teachers to reach out to their students and keep them engaged. A few universities made quick arrangements for teachers to continue to hold their classes virtually through conferencing services such a Zoom. The transition to virtual modes was relatively less difficult for those institutions that had even prior to the lockdown, adopted learning management system platforms like Blackboard or Moodle. All the above were well-meaning attempts although somewhat unplanned, to keep the core educational process going through this period.

Strategy to enhance enrolment

There was a report in the media on April13^th, 2020 quoting the chairman of the UGC as saying, among other things, that to maintain social distancing, online learning and e-education were the only way out, and that it was the need of the hour for students, teachers and education system as a whole. This statement was clearly meant to prepare the higher education community for the necessity of a protracted and indefinite period of closure of campuses. However, close on the heels of this, it was also reported that online education was likely to be adopted as a strategy to enhance the gross enrolment ratio in higher education. It is important for improvement in the gross enrolment ratio in the country. This prompts several questions about the appropriateness of what may well be an effective contingency measures to tide over the pandemic crisis to be deployed as a long-term strategy for enhancing enrolment in higher education. The following are three such questions: one, how far will online education help support greater access to and success in higher education among those who are on the margins? Two, how equipped are online and other digital forms of education to support the dept and diversity of learning in higher education? And three, is there an unstated political motivation for this apparent shift in strategy? We will address these questions briefly here.

Higher education today has an unprecedented influx of students who are first-generation aspirants. They have no cultural capital to bank on while struggling their way through college. Access is not merely enrolment; it also includes effective participation in curricular processes, which for those on the margins would mean first, to negotiate through language and social barriers. These students are also from the other side of the digital divide which makes them vulnerable to a double disadvantage if digital modes become the mainstay of education. Unless they receive consistent hand-holding and backstopping from teachers and peers, they tend to remain on the margins and eventually drop out or fail. It is therefore necessary to think deeply and gather research-based evidences on the extent to which online education can be deployed to help enhance the access and success rates.

What learning involves?

Acquisition of given knowledge that can be transmitted didactically by a teacher or a text constitutes only one minor segment of curricular content. It is this segment that is largely amenable to online and digital forms of transaction. Disciplines, particularly at the undergraduate level, lend themselves somewhat to such transaction but learning in higher education means much more than that bookish knowledge. It involves development of analytical and other intellectual skills, the ability to critically deconstruct and evaluate given knowledge, and the creativity to make new connections and syntheses. It is also a means to acquire practical skills, explore, inquire, seek solutions to complex problems, and learn to work in teams and more. All these by and large assume direct human engagement not just teacher-student interaction, but also peer interactions, including informal ones. Learning often happens through osmosis in social settings. Deconstructing given knowledge in relative isolation is never the same as doing it through a dynamic group process. Arguably, some of this can, to some extent, be built on to a digital platform. But curricular knowledge has a tendency to adjust its own contours according to the mode of transaction and the focus of evaluation.

While digital forms of learning have the potential to enable students to pursue independent learning, conventional and digital forms of education should not be considered mutually exclusive. Several institutions of open and distance learning had been established in India and other countries during the mid-1960s to 1980s. This was a consequence of explorations for less expensive models for provisioning access to higher education to new generations of aspirants.

Endnote: Higher education in India should be blended of virtual as well as face to face learning in the class room. There are many discussions happening in the class and students can get multi-dimensional ideas, views and innovative thinking from their peer groups. Because online learning may be suitable for 10 to 30 percent remaining 70 to 90 percent should be in the face to face interactive mode of learning in the classroom, then only students can understand the concept right and in-depth manner.