How Information and Communication Technology has Evolved Education Industry

ICT stands for Information and Communication Technology. As such, there is no standard definition for ICT. In general, ICT denotes all devices such as Projectors, Computers, Networking equipment such as wi-fi devices that are used in the digital world.

Traditionally, the Education Sector in India has been averse to the usage of ICT. Part of the reason attributes to the average age of qualified faculties. Most of the decision makers in the educational institutions today belong to Generation X and they are not familiar with the usage of computers. Consequently, many of the senior faculties and decision makers are not even aware of basic computer usage, usage of internet or emails. And many of them fail to see the perceived benefit of knowledge of ICT, or how ICT can be effectively used for providing a better teaching-learning solution to all students. Chalk and Talk have been the most familiar way of teaching for such faculties, and adoption of ICT has been really low.

This, obviously does not take into account few premier institutions where the Faculties are familiar with different ICT based teaching-learning mechanisms due to interaction with international faculty members in a regular faculty exchange program, or their visit to foreign countries to participate in Seminars and conferences. Many of such faculties in the premier institutions have adopted to ICT based teaching learning as part of delivering the curriculum.

The Young Teachers

With the induction of faculties belonging to Millennial generation the situation did change a bit. The younger faculties are used to computers and find it easier to develop content using digital technologies. Moreover, there are a number of software applications made affordable to develop e-content for teaching-learning. Computing equipment such as powerful desktops and laptops have become more affordable, and many of the younger faculties, having completed their education in foreign countries, are familiar to ICT based teaching-learning. As a result of which the ICT usage has marginally improved many institutions in tier 1 and tier II cities and towns.

That brings us to the fundamental question, whether ICT is at all required to improve the quality of education. The Generation X faculties would stand by their opinion that chalk and talk is the best way of teaching and showing content in PowerPoint or by other means does not add any value to the process of teaching learning. Some of the faculties, especially belonging to Arts and Humanities, would even suggest that ICT is not applicable to teaching-learning for their subject.

ICT, however, is used as an important teaching aid for delivering quality lectures around the world in various ways. For example, in many of the cases, a practical illustration along with the theoretical details always makes it easy for the students to understand the subject. ICT techniques such as animation using easy to use tools makes it easy for the faculties to create illustrations. There are many videos and animations already available on the internet that can be used for teaching learning. Secondly, the lecture notes developed in PowerPoint can easily be uploaded in institutional LMS and referred to by the students as and when they require. The laboratory procedures may be recorded as videos and may be uploaded to the institutional LMS. The students may refer to those videos to prepare during the exam. Sophisticated mechanisms such as Lecture Capturing System can capture the entire lecture along with PowerPoint, videos and other artefacts used in the lecture and can directly upload it to the institutional LMS so that students may refer to it at a later stage...

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/322661

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by Idham Azhari