Wish to enrich yourself? Think MOOC.

Wish to enrich yourself? Think MOOC. 

The standards applied to providing education to the people in India are changing in a broader sense. The factors responsible for these are mainly ever-increasing numbers of the young populace, the astronomical expenditure incurred on the education and the necessity of providing quality education in the remotest part of the country.

Knowledge is of two types, deductive and experiential. The basic education and the knowledge one gets from his own environs is deductive knowledge whereas experiential knowledge is that which is learned in order to earn a livelihood. In both of these cases, one has to have a dedication towards his teacher, guru or mentor, by whatever name you address him or her.

The conventional Guru-Shishya method of teaching could be the best method, a gift from our sages, to inculcate the knowledge in their disciples. Lord Krishna even had to go through this system in the Ashrama of Rishi Sandipani.

But the modern methods have made a turnaround in this scheme and are offering knowledge in various ways, making the best use of the information technology and digital media. Having understood the immense reach of the webs, through Internet, Indian universities,  Statutory, Deemed to be and Private are offering online education in a variety of ways. Generally, a student registers him/herself in the study center or the franchise and then he can pursue the course of his choice, whenever and wherever he wishes to do so. IITs and IIMs have been offering online education at Postgraduate level, and that too in a qualitative way. Professional institutions such as AMIE and IETE are not far behind in offering the courses which help students become knowledgeable and at the same time, employable.

The ever-increasing use of computer and Internet has made Distance Education, a buzzword. There are virtual schools and universities offering the online syllabi of the bachelor level and are doing fabulous work. The leaders in this field are none other than Stanford and Harvard universities.

This online education system is student-centric and all the novel methods are utilized to make the learning very interesting.

As of today, the figure of students pursuing higher education is 3.5 crores, out of which 12% are into distance education. Presently 4% of GDP is spent on education. This expenditure can be brought down if a boost is given to distance education. We have only IGNOU offering distance education at a grand level and all others seem to be small players and bit unknown. 

Distance education is for them who cannot attend regular school/colleges and still,

there is a flame in them to pursue higher studies.  Of course, there is a downside in this type of education where dummy, copying, plagiarism, and the quality of study materials raise questions. But if there is a zeal to make people literate in the remotest corner of the country, then these minus happenings have to be curbed by being vigilant. 

To conclude in the words of James Bates, " If you cannot create interest in the minds of the learners, they will have lost an opportunity to learn some deep wisdom and few nice words which would be precious for them. So tell them, show, write, exhibit and make use of it on a day to day work is the right method of teaching".