Online Education - What traditional Indian education institutions need to know?

Online Education - What traditional Indian education institutions need to know?

2016 witnessed some major trends in E-learning and attracted some of the most popular online learning platforms in India like Udacity. This has also raised the bar of stress for the colleges and universities in India about how to compete with the MOOC ventures disrupting the Industry. In a country where having a degree was the main source of getting a job, online learning platforms have been successful in placing students in top companies. Where “Flipkart partners with MOOC venture Udacity for interview-less hiring” made the news headlines in VCCircle, private institutions have started looking for threats and opportunities in the digital learning space. Some have started developing online learning portals to compete with the MOOC ventures.

However, understanding where to innovate and where to compete are crucial parameters in developing a successful digital strategy. Simply replicating MOOC style online courses as a part of digital strategy might turn out to be ineffective. To be able to compete strategically, colleges and universities have to think beyond delivering recorded classroom lectures.

The first thing to understand is that delivering recorded classroom lectures cannot replace the real learning/ class environment. This is because  of the following reasons:

    · The learning does not happen in class listening to lectures only but also engaging with students, peer to peer interaction, study groups, group projects, professor feedback etc.

    · Only creating recorded classroom lectures might be okay if the goal is to make it accessible to students for future review but might not be a perfect solution for digital change.

The  core benefits of MOOC are:

     ·  MOOCs are flexible i.e. people can study at their pace, pause, take notes and review it in future and access it whenever they want to from wherever they are. Therefore, the idea of creating the recorded classroom lectures should rather focus on improving current teaching methods and student performance, where the current classroom sessions could turn into case study discussions, discussing homework and projects, skill and practical learning sessions etc.

     · The second thing is to understand where to innovate that considers the areas that are actually being disrupted by technology. As the value of degree declines and the value of industry-specific skills increase, MOOC ventures have tied up with major firms to recruit students with top skills even if they don't have a degree. Companies are creating their own learning courses that allow them to teach skills with projects that are required for a specific job role in the company. These factors are eliminating the relevance of a graduation degree that played a major role in getting a job offer in a company.

      · Finally, the digital strategy should be carved based on the objectives and where they need to compete to have a competitive advantage. This can be either by utilizing the technology to improve current methods of teaching or to make it open and accessible to everyone. Either the courses should focus on particular skills/topics or full   classroom lecture recording. Either the courses are offered for free or with a paying structure. Or if the goal is to offer courses from renowned faculty. 

Ms. Shruti Minocha

Assistant Professor

Dept. of Management Studies