pankajchavan

[pankajchavan]

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I started this blog with the objective of reaching out to different education audiences including Teachers, Students, Administrators etc. I see this blog as a space for teachers, students, researchers, parents and administrators to discuss about the innovative ideas, trends and issues in education and sharing resources for teachers and students.

[pankajchavan]

What can we learn from COVID19 situation? Reflecting on the different forms of the divide in the education space

As a response (someone may say it was merely 'a reaction') to the COVID 19 situation, the shift from the face-to-face to online teaching was very evident. It was experienced very differently by the different stakeholders of the education space such as students, teachers, schools and colleges, parents, government etc. 

In the process, where online teaching-learning became the most discussed thing, the issue of the Digital Divide surfaced very prominently, which almost used to reside at the bottom and largely remain invisible. 

I would say people overlooked many forms of the divide which existed in many different ways over decades, out of which digital divide is just one among them. In the light of such pandemic, people started talking about the related issues such as accessibility to devices, internet connectivity etc. concerning different sections of the society and how this is causing a digital divide between the rural and urban schools and between students from low-income and high-income families. 

May be due to this, suddenly everywhere the terms such as REIMAGINING education, REINVENTING education, and RELOOKING at education started popping up, through which most of the people think the issues such as digital divide and others can be resolved. 

But, this is not something new, there are many such issues that we have consistently faced, but they always got unnoticed due to one or the other reasons. And, those issues cannot be solved by the patchwork approach that we are trying to use at different levels and in various capacities. The problem is very fundamental, the core of which lies in the structure that different set of people have created around us over the decades and are still creating. There are many ongoing issues such as equity, inclusivity etc. in the education space, which someone may claim gets addressed by the acts like Right to Education (RTE) etc. But, I think it's a high time to think beyond such acts and hard-hit the more fundamental issues and the associated structures. There are many examples which highlight the various forms of the divide, some of which I have briefly mentioned in the coming paragraphs.

If we talk about the standard school curriculum set by the state or central boards, the curriculum always appears to be more urbanized. There is always a wide gap between the school curriculum and the realities of rural life. There is less emphasis on the development of curriculum and teaching-learning strategies relevant to the local context in which the school is located. The school curriculum provides little opportunities to encourage the different perspectives about the local problems and craft thoughtful solutions for them. 

But, there are not many explicitly visible efforts which take into account the various factors such as the importance of the local context of the rural school children, the link between the school and the community etc. 

Apart from the routine teacher training programs, what efforts are directed towards training teachers for enabling them to contextualize the learning and leverage the local experiences of the rural school students to make the curriculum more relevant to them? The students who are studying in urban schools are mostly non-first-generation learners, whereas, in rural schools, the students are mostly first-generation learners. But, still, the curriculum that we offer to both set of students is uniform, and there is no difference in the approach towards those students. 

Doesn't it create a divide among urban and rural school kids? Doesn't it make the education non-inclusive for the rural school children?

      Recently, there was news about the fees hike of IITs and NITs, which resulted in students’ strikes but at the same time received support from some sections of the society. The decision was taken back but the same issue will pop-up again sometime in the near future for sure. The fees hike can be justified in different ways, but the real question is with such decisions whether the poor will have access to quality higher education. 

Already, for underprivileged higher education has become a costly affair and almost a non-achievable dream for many due to the fat fees structures of the public higher education institutes.

Even if a student from an underprivileged background cracks JEE with his efforts and dedication, the next big problem which stands in front of him is the huge fees he has to pay to get admission into one of the top public institutions in India. And, it's not only about tuition fees; the cost of living is also involved as he might have to live in a different city. Someone will suggest that such underprivileged but talented students can get a loan from banks for higher education. But, such education loan based higher education has its challenges. 

Is there awareness about the educational loans for higher education in the underprivileged sections? Are there publicly available clear guidelines or instructions to the underprivileged about how to get an educational loan? All these questions have their root in the structure.

Moreover, even if a student gets an educational loan, they are in debt when they graduate. There can be a logical argument that the students when they graduate from the top institutions in India like IITs, NITs, IIITs etc. gets a highly paid job, and they can easily repay their loans. Someone may also talk about the scholarships that the students from underprivileged background get from the government. But, the problem is not only that. The entire structure makes this journey challenging for the students from the underprivileged background. Though the students are talented and hardworking, if they don't get the proper support structure to prepare for and crack the exams like JEE, they cannot succeed like their privileged counterparts. The government schools and colleges which such students attend definitely does not have the capability as well as bandwidth to provide the level of support structure required to prepare for such exams which decides students' future in higher education. Contrary to that the students from the privileged background gets a good support structure by paying 2-3 lacs to the JEE coaching classes. But, poor families are not in a position to pay this much money to the coaching classes. Still, no one think about or dare to talk about the whole coaching class business due to which the talent from certain sections of the society is getting underrepresented from years. 

Doesn't it create a divide among students from privileged and underprivileged backgrounds? Doesn't it make the opportunities more inequitable for the underprivileged students? Where is equity among students of different socio-economical background? 

But, we have never explicitly discussed about such divide publicly, we never questioned our governments about such divide, we never questioned our governments about why there is a need of a parallel education system of coaching classes when we already have schools and colleges in place. We blindly followed a herd mentality that if my kid has to get a quality higher education then I have to enroll him into a coaching class and pay huge money for that. Because of such mentality, the lower middle class parents struggle a lot to manage funds for their children's coaching and higher education fees. Whereas, for the lower class and working class parents it sadly remains a non-achievable task.

If we want to REIMAGINE or REINVENT something, then it has to be the blindly accepted structure. We should seek answers for some questions such as:

How can we provide equal opportunities in terms of quality education to the entire community? How to make higher education inclusive for students from weaker economic sections? What should be our approach towards the first generation learners in schools and higher education?

In my opinion, if we don't pay attention to these questions, then future may not look decent where only privileged background students will get a quality higher education, while the poor students will be deprived of the same, resulting into the increase in the divide further.

[pankajchavan]

A Teacher's Response to "Is Blended Learning going to get a workout? Questions which need answers to make it happen"

By Mangesh Urne, 22nd May 2020

Just finished reading the article. Beautifully written Pankaj.👌

Having experienced both modes of teaching learning in recent past, I completely agree, that blended learning is the way forward. It will allow us have a face to face interaction and instant dialogue with students in the classroom, while also enhancing the learning experience of students due to self paced learning possibilities provided by online education.

The opportunities arising from this are enormous.

1. It will force teachers and administrators to adapt outcome based learning. 2. With blended learning, better performance evaluation systems will become necessary. The archaic eat and vomit kind of examination systems should become obsolete. 3. Dealing with larger batch sizes will become easier. 4. Overall system should become simple and student oriented. 5. It will definitely improve students’ communication skills, technology skills and self learning skills.

At the same time, there are a few challenges.

To list a few, 1. Availability and affordability of technology 2. Teacher training. 3. Student perception, Integrity and feedback. We need to collaborate and work to overcome these challenges to reap the rewards of a very useful methodology of teaching learning process. 

To dwell on the question you ask in the end, ’ how do we train teachers in the current situation? ’, well, personally, using the LMS like Google Classroom, Canvas by instructure or any other isn’t really the problem. One can adapt to those eventually, with a little practice. 

The real challenge, is how to structure my course with respect to learning outcomes? how to develop the content which is relevant and engaging? and how to decide the evaluation strategies? A little bit of training in these regards will be very useful.

To conclude my humble observations, I feel that, this pandemic has come as a blessing in disguise for the Indian education system, if I may say so. It will force us to look at the current economic situation, our goals as a nation and the role of education in Nation Building with a bit more seriousness and sincerity. Blended learning is a small but assured step forward in achieving excellence in education process.

[pankajchavan]

Is Blended Learning going to get a workout? Questions which need answers to make it happen.

As discussed in my previous blog on ‘Building on the online teaching-learning experiences during COVID19: What can be the next steps?’ we discussed the issues associated with the transposition from face-to-face teaching to online teaching due to COVID19 and also discussed about the possible solutions that the education system should think of. Some of the major issues highlighted were: sudden shift to an entirely new model of teaching, lack of training in digital pedagogy, knowing science of both the face-to-face and digital learning etc. All this suggest a need for shifting to a more effective model of teaching-learning. For that, we need to look at the historical developments as well as the drastic changes happened in the current COVID19 situation in education space, and try to get a more informed understanding of how the future may look like.

Traditionally, the two models – face-to-face learning and online learning – were treated as separate models of teaching-learning due to difference in delivery methods/media used and the audience to which those models were catering.

For example, traditional face-to-face learning typically involved a teacher-directed environment with live person-to-person interaction in the same physical space. On the other hand, online learning emphasized self-paced learning and mostly involved learner-materials interaction with no or a small degree of asynchronous person-to-person interaction.

But, we need to think the ways to systematically draw upon the benefits of both the models of teaching-learning. The online teaching-learning efforts taken by our teachers and students during the current situation and the experiences gained in the process will be beneficial when we are returning to the physical classrooms. Those efforts and experiences will contribute to the understanding that the ICT tools and online learning components complement but do not replace face-to-face learning. To leverage this further, we have to look at the existing innovative models of teaching-learning and identify the model which will be useful in the current situation as well as in the long run.

One such model of teaching-learning is ‘Blended Learning’, which draws the benefits of both the traditionally separate models of teaching-learning, i.e. face-to-face learning and online learning.

Research has also shown that Blended Learning is more effective than either online learning or face-to-face instruction. The two major affordances that blended learning offers are better pedagogy and increased accessibility/flexibility. The face-to-face settings still have more focus on information transmission as opposed to interactive strategies. On the other hand, the online setting is highly dependent on student ownership, and the students are kind of left alone to absorb the large amount of learning materials provided to them, if not designed appropriately.

Blended learning can overcome various limitations of face-to-face and online learning, and at the same time, draws the benefits of both models of teaching-learning.

Blended learning offers the self-paced nature of work to students and at the same time establishes social interaction and human touch in the face-to-face classroom. With blended learning, the learning is not restricted to only classrooms; it also happens out of class giving opportunities to students to work at their own pace, reflect on the activities they are working on, discuss with peers online etc. This offers more opportunities for synchronous classroom activities which are student-centered. Such an approach promotes learner’s active and self-directed learning.

So, with this, many questions arise:

Who should drive these efforts? How do we train teachers in current situation? What level of blending should we start with based on our contexts?

The search for the answers to the above questions could begin with initiating and directing efforts on training teachers as soon as possible. For that purpose, the institutional support in terms of professional development, relief in instructor workload, technical support, funding etc. is of prime importance for successfully implementing the blended learning approach for the design of courses.

There were undoubtedly learnings for all of us during this pandemic situation, which will help us to make the education system more resilient in the future. And, this will depend on whether we make out something significant from it or just let it pass. If we want to make out of it, then the stakeholders of education, i.e. the institutions, administrators, and teachers have to work together relentlessly to undertake the institutional reforms to ensure the delivery of quality education to the future of the nation.

[pankajchavan]

Building on the online teaching-learning experiences during COVID19: What can be the next steps?

Due to the COVID19 pandemic, the schools and colleges faced closures. But, the teachers and colleges were required to keep the teaching-learning going even in such challenging situations to avoid academic loss of our students. Such unprecedented times made us switch from a very familiar model of teaching-learning, i.e. face-to-face learning system to a model of teaching-learning which is very new for the large proportion of teachers, i.e. online learning system. We all made great efforts to switch to online teaching in a short duration of time. Some teachers and students quickly adapted to the new system, whereas others took a little longer to acquaint themselves. 

In the process, the teachers, administrators and governments tried to come up with different solutions based on their contexts to keep the teaching-learning process undisrupted. But, most of the solutions were sort of quick fixes and worked in some cases whereas did not work in the others.  

Teachers used different technologies such as video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, etc., video creation tools, and communication platforms like WhatsApp etc. to manage the teaching-learning process. But, the focus always seemed to be more on technology and very less on the pedagogy. However, technology alone is not sufficient because, without the appropriate pedagogical considerations and strategies, the potential of these technologies becomes insignificant.

Teachers not only need to know which tools are relevant for the teaching-learning processes but also need to understand how to integrate them effectively. Teachers need to have knowledge of which tools are useful, in which context – i.e. for which teaching-learning outcomes, and how to integrate them with the pedagogical strategies.

This is the high time to think about solutions which will be useful for our teaching-learning systems in the long run. We don’t know when everything will get restored to normal. We also don’t know if there is going to be a relapse of the COVID19 after some time. Considering all these uncertain things, we need to rethink the ways to provide better educational experiences to our kids in the current as well as the post-COVID situation. The current COVID and the post-COVID situation could be utilized as an opportunity to rethink and redesign the higher education system. The academic days of most of the schools and colleges which have semester system are over now. Both students and teacher will have summer vacations soon.

The colleges and administrators should use this time to train their teachers to equip them with necessary pedagogical and technological skills. These skills will help us to deal with the upcoming unknown challenges and also in the long run to make teaching-learning a better experience for both teachers and students.

The education system – colleges, administrators and teachers – should consider this situation as an opportunity to transform itself by becoming more creative and innovative. The next academic year is required to start with an entirely new way of teaching-learning amid COVID19 situation at school and higher education levels. The teachers are required to know the science of both face-to-face and digital learning instead of blindly following either online or face-to-face model of teaching-learning. The schools, higher education institutions and universities have to become keener to collaborate with EdTech specialists to rethink the curriculum design and its delivery along with training the teachers. It will be interesting to see how the education system transforms itself in such a challenging situation.

[pankajchavan]

Uncertainties in PhD life!

The uncertainties that I have faced during my PhD journey till now are at different scales. They range from uncertainty about the work-life balance, the research project I am working on, the future career prospects, managing a family with 25k a month, to the uncertainty about what am I giving back to society. I would say, in my case, the uncertainty actually has always turned out to be a good thing. By saying this, I would like to take you slightly (not long 😉) back in my past before I share my experiences of uncertainties faced during my PhD journey till now. 

I was uncertain about taking a job offered to me with a so-called ‘good package’ after my undergraduate studies – because the back of the mind something was tickling about the problems that I faced as a ‘student’ during my undergraduate studies. That uncertainty led me to go for post-graduate studies – in order to get enough time to prepare myself to be a ‘GOOD teacher’ (That’s what I had thought during that time). 

After my post-graduation, I was initially uncertain about choosing an institute which I want to join as a faculty – which later on became easier by reflecting upon what my broader goal is and what I really want to do. 

However, due to many uncertainties and problems faced related to teaching-learning while working as a faculty, I took the BEST decision of my life – joining a ‘PhD’ programme in IDP in Educational Technology. I am saying BEST because being from a place and family where I was not even aware of what JEE exam is and then reaching here was altogether a different achievement for me.

So, what personally helped me while taking all such decisions in my life under different uncertain situations? There are two things I would like to stress upon, to which I always stick very firmly – first, always keeping in mind the broader goal that I want to achieve (saying the broader goal of life might be too much, but I think it really is for me), and second, accepting the uncertainty first and then trying hard to bring clarity into the situation and take decisions. 

Uncertainty about my research! Is this the research area I really want to work upon? What value can my research provide? What will really work in my thesis and how?

In the first year of my PhD, as I did not know much about the research area, I faced a lot of uncertainty situations – from feeling isolated while trying to understand my research area, what can really be the research contributions, what methodology, how to write a research paper, to what really am I contributing towards my broader goal? 

But, what helped me cope up with all such situations were my deep commitment to the research I am doing, reading, reading, and reading (not only about my research area!), and continuous interaction with my advisor and lab mates. The more I read about the research in my area, the more I realized that still there are lots of things to understand. More reading helped me to get better at sharing my ideas and opinions about my research with my advisor, lab mates and Research Progress Committee. Continuous interaction with my advisor (in his office, over a tea, and even while walking in a corridor) helped me immensely to deal with the uncertainties about my research, and even uncertainties not related to my research. 

Moreover, based on my experience, I can tell one thing for sure that everyone should have multiple Research Buddies – to discuss your research (before as well as after meeting with your advisor 😊), to get feedback on the final draft of your research paper, presentation (for a conference, Annual Progress Seminar). 

PS – Research buddies don’t always talk about research; they too go for tea, lunch, and even for a walk in the campus without any agenda! 😊 

Uncertainty about future career prospects! What about my employment? Where will I get a job after PhD? In what ways will the job that I will be taking in the near future will contribute towards my broader goal?

“If I want to be a professor in one of the top institutions in India, I have to think about what my life might be like if that doesn’t happen”. This is the approach that I mostly use to deal with the uncertainties which I experience. 

To deal with uncertainties I usually think about the two extremes of the consequences of the decision that I might take and how it may influence my broader goal. To just give you one example, one extreme is - what I know is I will at least get a similar job which I was doing before joining PhD, and the other extreme is I may get a good Postdoc opportunity and based on that I may join one of the top institutions in India. But, I keep on reminding myself that I will be happy with either of the extremes as my future because my broader goal can be accomplished with both ways. And, I am motivated enough to work hard and contribute to the education landscape based on whatever I am learning during my PhD.

My approach to deal with uncertainties: (Not sure if they can be useful recommendations for others, but these are my reflections)

Accept uncertainty 😊 and then try to bring clarity in whatever ways possible to uplift self-confidence

Though you face uncertainties, don’t stop to be hard working – Though faced with uncertainties, I keep telling myself that I had made a decision to leave my job (for which I still hear my parents saying “We don’t understand why you left your permanent job?), to work hard, to create knowledge and to make myself beneficial to the society.

In my opinion, feeling lost and confused is bound to come with the uncertainties you face while doing PhD – which is the starting point of either a small or a big journey – but that is the part of the process to strengthen yourself as a researcher and as a human being, to learn, and to develop yourself. So, embrace the uncertainty…and don’t freak out (too much).