Advertisment

We’ll see an acceleration over 10 years

As we go forward, we are going to see a lot of Deep Tech coming into education. These include Artificial Intelligence-Machine Learning.

author-image
Pradeep Chakraborty
New Update
Acceleration

As we go forward, we are going to see a lot of Deep Tech coming into education. These include Artificial Intelligence-Machine Learning and Augmented Reality-Virtual Reality. To maintain the sanctity of the data, blockchain comes into the picture

Advertisment
PG

Pradeep Gupta, CMD, Cybermedia, welcomed the audience. Technology has today become the determinant because of the onset of Covid-19. Sectors that have been impacted maximum are those that had used minimal technology. A complete transformation took over as campuses were closed. There were risks associated with students coming to college, and with large gatherings. The entire education system went through a transformation because of technology.

Education is one thing that could not stop due to the pandemic. The industry adapted itself and rapidly adopted different kinds of technologies. This transformation is irreversible! Some of the changes that happened are permanent in nature. Many EdTech unicorns also came up in the last two years. As we go forward, we are going to see a lot of Deep Tech coming into education. There are AI/ML, AR/VR, etc. To maintain the sanctity of the data, blockchain comes in. The transformation of the last two years will get accelerated over the next 10 years. Many more changes will come in every part of the education system. We are going to get a completely new and transformative EdTech system over the next 10 years.

Advertisment

Session: Innovation in academics

Exploit ICT & collaborative classrooms

All classrooms should be smart, with digital media, tablets, etc. With smart classrooms, collaborate across institutes in hybrid learning

Advertisment
Dr Desai

We need to emphasize unstructured learning. Most formal education is highly unstructured. We can learn a lot from unstructured learning.

Dr. UB Desai, Founding Director, IIT Hyderabad, said: Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they are born in another time! That’s the perspective we need to keep in mind. Richard Feynman said: Teach your students to doubt, to think, to communicate, to question, to make mistakes, to learn from their mistakes, and most importantly, have fun in their learning. We need to think differently!

Advertisment

The perceived role of higher education is to convey knowledge. You can create and develop ideas, create knowledge, inject new thoughts into society, develop future citizens, create a better society, learn to learn, innovate with new technologies, publish world-class papers, and prototype products.

New requirements for education are a combination of technological know-how, problem-solving, critical thinking, soft skills, perseverance, collaboration, and empathy. One can also have lifelong learning. We can learn the importance of unstructured education. The future may be hybrid because of the pandemic.

Academics today should capture T-education — breadth with depth, critical thinking and problem solving, flexibility, foster multi-disciplinary education, have wider choice of electives, very early exposure to new science and technology development, etc. We should foster research at the undergraduate level. We should also do learning by doing (Breaker Lab). We need to encourage creativity, design, critical thinking, empathy, perseverance, and collaboration.

Advertisment

Exploit ICT and collaborative classrooms! We need to implement collaborative classrooms for all courses and make lectures interactive. All classrooms should be smart, with digital media, tablets, etc. With smart classrooms, collaborate across institutes in hybrid learning. We can make live things interactive and use AR/VR.

We need to emphasize unstructured learning. Most formal education is highly unstructured. We can learn a lot from unstructured learning. The challenge is to incorporate that in the academic program. We need to evaluate and give credit to unstructured learning.

The future needs experiential learning. Teaching and learning will involve a lot more project work, chosen by students. Classes will involve group discussions, problem posing and solving, posing challenges and tackling, etc. We need to create an environment where students can challenge teachers.

Advertisment

We also need to build dynamism and modularity. For dynamism, make the education system agile so that it quickly responds to changes in science, technology, and the aspirations of the youth. NEP 2000 talks about modularity. Future education will have to be modular in nature. The length, breadth, and depth of the module can be variable, depending on the subject.

NEP 2020 also talks about mobility, non-linearity, and design thinking. Modularity and flexibility can enable mobility and credit transfer. On achieving a certain number of specified credits, one can get a degree. A student can design their pace of study, and choose and change their path to education and specialization. Finally, creative design is becoming as important as engineering. The divide between engineering design and creative design is being bridged.

There is too much obsession in India with learning. We don’t have any better model for large scale. We need to have continuous or soft evaluation. We can give a lot more weightage to projects, and on doing things. We need to give creative projects so that reports cannot be bought in the market. A bell-shaped curve exists for everything, irrespective of the evaluation system. We also need to pump in less information for students. We have 125-135 credits at IIT Hyderabad. Quality is very important.

Advertisment

We have fractal academics at IIT Hyderabad. There are courses of mainly 1-2 credits. Many high-tech courses are in the first year. We generate excitement in students in the very first year. We can facilitate interdisciplinary learning. There are a large basket of non-technical courses, such as LA or liberal arts, and CA — creative arts and design. An example of the first semester at IIT Hyderabad was given. Students love this, and there can be problems with number management.

Fractal academics has been a success. Learning by breaking and making should happen. The objective is to get excited early in the academic program. We need to bring fun back into education. We also need to have creative arts and design courses.

Session: Education Policy in the New Normal

We have leapfrogged by at least 5 years

We are poised at an interesting time in history. While technology, digitalization, and innovation have been going on, the pandemic enabled us to leapfrog NEP 2020 is revolutionary

sushma paul

Said Sushma Paul Berlin, Co-Founder, and Chancellor, Apeejay Stya University: Today, eyes are everywhere in education. Education can make a contribution to the economy, post the pandemic if done in the right way. We are poised at an interesting time in history. While technology, digitalization, and innovation have been going on, the pandemic enabled us to leapfrog by at least 5 years. NEP 2020 is revolutionary and has encapsulated many of the transformational endeavors we have led at Apeejay.

During the pandemic, at Apeejay, we had computers in the classrooms, we were fully on the cloud. We were experimenting with a lot of knowledge management systems. We experimented with a lot of work on digitalization, smart campus, etc. The pandemic allowed us to put all of that in place, and sensitize all our stakeholders into the use of and working with many of these innovations.

As we go deeper into innovative opportunities before us, we are looking at AI and other instruments for educators. They are still in the nascent stage.

It was a learning process for us. As we went along, we better understood what worked well, and what did not. We were able to innovate along the way. For the education sector, the pandemic laid bare an opportunity in a crisis. It turned evolution into a revolution, and incremental steps into transformation. Today, when we are poised where only constant is change, the way students learn has completely changed. The old methods are no longer sufficient to keep them engaged. Students are being bombarded with knowledge from everywhere. What value does an educational institution bring in? How does it work in engaging students?

Industries themselves are going through a revolution. We hear about Industry 4.0! That means: All digital innovations and processes are being implemented within industries, as they are being implemented anywhere else. We need to relook and re-invent how we are integrating offline, online and virtual education in different ways. What are the kinds of policies that are needed to implement them and benefit all?

The educational authorities and government made themselves as flexible as they could during the pandemic. Keeping in view the flexibility in NEP 2020, the government has been talking about Bhiksha, Swayam-related education through radio, and different kinds of initiatives for differently-abled persons. There are alternative modes of learning. They have gone so far as to say that the traditional education system could be provided virtually through Moksha, and other means. But, that is not enough!

While NEP 2020 is very welcome, we have many years to go before we can see implementation on the ground. We definitely need an enabling policy with flexibility, where institutions can work with different modes of education and hybrid learning. Offline courses may have elements of virtual education. Virtual education may have elements of physical contact. As we go deeper into innovative opportunities before us, we are looking at AI and other instruments for educators. They are still in the nascent stage. At Apeejay, we are experimenting with some of them. We have already used AI-enabled solutions and found marginal success. We have found them useful in plagiarism detection, language translation, complex examinations, etc. We will see the true impact of AI/ML in education over the next few years, as use cases slowly become the norm.

We are truly excited about learning-need identification and examination analysis. We need to do definitive work with the help of Big Data. There is a big opportunity for the government to help pool anonymous learned data to help train machines and learning engines on large data stores to accelerate development. We need to have the process as NEP is getting implemented down the line. The devil is in the details! We need to ensure there is inbuilt enough flexibility for institutions at the local level to customize and work around solutions without compromising learning outcomes.

Education has always been around the teacher. What matters are teachers who can facilitate students to help themselves, and to learn for life. We found many of our teachers had to rethink and rework their approaches towards technologies and education, and to work on virtual mode. Fortunately, they were well trained in technology. We needed to figure out virtual technology platforms and ethics systems. We also had to see how do we evaluate students through virtual learning. Challenges were many! How to keep students engaged, without sacrificing on content. We could invite and have important personalities with us from across the world. Ultimately, what matters is: how is the student being engaged by the facilitator! Virtual is a platform where a smaller number of people are better engaged. We have to think about how to make that possible in the normal course.

There is a huge opportunity for students to get access to famous personalities from across the globe, but also have access to the best teachers from remote locations. They are able to hear lectures from great people. Another area is assessment. The Apeejay team needs to be congratulated for coming up with a fool-proof system for conducting an examination. With the modal learning system we have, we were able to stop several malpractices, etc. Extra restrictions could be put into those settings. Examples are the use of safe browsers, the use of cameras with 360-degree scans, locking screen systems, etc.

Many students had gone back home during the lockdown. They were trying to connect via remote locations. There were network problems, connectivity issues, etc. They had to be resolved. We were able to manage fairly well. This is also an area where the government can play a great role. The digital divide issue also cropped up during this period. There is a case for facilitating very low-cost devices, and the necessary bandwidth across the country. There is an opportunity for using digital and technological advances in a manner where education can be delivered cost-effectively across the country. Teaching can also be brought in through these various modes. This is the need of the hour!

The digital divide cropped up during this period. There is a case for facilitating very low-cost devices and the necessary bandwidth across India.

At Apeejay, we tried to send video copies across to various institutions. We tried to bring through Zoom and others, some of our lectures to some nearby villages. There is a big opportunity for bringing together public and private institutions, and government onto a platform where education can go through to various parts of the country. In the post-pandemic era, as an industry, there is no going back to the past. We have also discovered how effective the tools can be for imparting education. There can be collaboration, working together, sharing ideas, working on documents, etc. Anyone coming out of an educational institute needs to be enabled to be working in a hybrid environment, and be exposed to all technologies. We also need to look at knowledge from one view. Students can also go back and see how they can improve themselves. Start with what is necessary, go on to what is possible, and soon, we will find that we are doing the impossible.

Session: Intelligent security engineered for digital-age education

Take a look at the cyberattack environment

Valan S Intelligent security engineered for digital age education

Who is attacking you, and why? There can be criminals seeking financial gain. Nation-states could look to steal personal data and IP for strategic advantages. What are they stealing and targeting?

Valan Sivasubramanian, Manager, Systems Engineering, Fortinet, said: Global EdTech spending will increase by 12% between 2020 and 2025. It will almost double in the next 5 years. We can reach $404 billion by 2025. Top drivers include student demand for technological innovation, security challenges, and an increase in remote and distance learning.

We will be going digital. Students can spend 140+ hours/week on tech devices. 72% of students connect at least two devices to the campus network at the same time. 40% of higher education students would like to use mobile technologies more often than they do now. 67% of remote learning students use mobile devices to complete coursework. 63% of higher education institutions can look at cloud options first when considering new investments.

Today, we have a disparate and diverse ecosystem. This consists of an academic branch, research branch, and administrative branch. This provides a unique attack surface. Combined with digital technologies, it creates the perfect storm for hackers. Students could get exposed to explicit content, malicious URLs, and unauthorized access. Hackers can exploit the weaknesses in the systems. Phishing and botnets are playing a much bigger role here.

Have a look at the cyberattack environment. Who is attacking you, and why? There can be criminals seeking financial gain. Nation-states could look to steal personal data and IP for strategic advantages. What are they stealing and targeting? It can be either email, PII on staff and students, technical resources, sensitive research, and IP. So, what will it cost you, students, and staff? There can be reputation loss, financial loss, identity theft, and research loss, etc.

We need to protect against all of this. Your network and security challenges can be many. You need to protect against new threat vectors, segment network environments, keep an open and secure environment, ensure scalable and high-performance networks, manage limited resources, manage bandwidth, and manage compliance. The networks should be highly scalable.

There are some important questions to be answered. How do I secure my digital environment, while keeping it open?

There are some important questions to be answered. How do I secure my digital environment, while keeping it open? What are the different network and security requirements for each site, branch, and user? How much performance is needed? What level of protection do we need? How can we guarantee secure connectivity for staff and students, and how can I control all devices connecting to the network?

Point solutions are not the answer! System upgrades and patches can adversely affect the infrastructure. You should have a unified approach. There are best practices for a comprehensive security approach. You can get visibility across the digital surface, protect against sophisticated threats, simplify compliance, and adopt an intelligent and structured security architecture.

Fortinet offers a broad, integrated, and automated security fabric. You need to have a unified approach. You can have security around the core network with all the components tied together. Different parts of the network can be segmented. You can identify and secure users and devices. You can have security devices and endpoints and secure the high-performance branch and campus. You can secure the access layer, and have robust monitoring and reporting. You can simplify compliance and management.

Fortinet security fabric ensures access at the university campus and remote sites in a secure manner. Security technologies should also be up to date. There should be a focus on secure SD-WAN, SD-Branch, and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTA). Its FortiNAC allows visibility, control, automated response, and lower cost of ownership.

Fortinet focuses on secure remote learning. Access to the network has to be secure end-to-end. Key elements of a secure remote learning environment include VPN and endpoint security, secure web apps, multi-factor authentication, segmenting the network, monitoring malicious activities, and user and device authentication.

The education industry has chosen Fortinet several times. There are over 500 educational institutes and 340K customers globally. Some customers are the University of Cambridge, University of Georgia, Oregon Tech, Arizona State University, University of Oxford, etc. At Cambridge University, Fortinet has boosted Internet security for over 11,000 UG and 5,500 PG students across 31 autonomous colleges. It has also strengthened the University’s Internet security defenses. The University of Oxford relies on Fortinet to protect its IT infrastructure. Fortinet is helping secure the digital world for students and staff.

Session: Education Policy in the New Normal

Pandemic forced furious pace of change

Technical education provides the tools for the sustenance of civilization. It does through one or both approaches—practice—or research-based higher education

prof. Raj

Prof. Rajesh Khanna, President, NIIT University said: It is imperative that the new set of doers and thinkers are wiser than the present generation. Education is the chosen method and happens everywhere, all the time. We are here to talk about formal education. Society is shaping formal education. The biggest challenge is that we need to realize that one method of education — informal — and formal, and provide enough resistance from turning into a vicious cycle, than any benevolent one. The course correction lies with both the society and the education system. Each one should help the other. Formal and informal education should also help each other.

Technical education provides the tools for the sustenance of civilization. It does through one or both approaches — practice- or research-based higher education. A system connecting the present with the next generation has been found to be the best way to achieve this. It has been the best one and has worked well. Technological developments were gradually being implemented. They were also meant to increase the dimensions of interaction. There can be multimedia interaction, with slides and presentations, voice, and movies. A richer interaction is possible. It also facilitated the availability of content.

The major technological developments were focused on increasing the dimensions, enhancing the senses, removal of barriers and constraints, and easy facility of content. Technology integration was taking place at steady pace. Some other research was going on, such as cognizant, and how the mind functions and learns, and teaching interactions. It aided the change and technological integration.

Two years ago, the pandemic struck and disrupted everything! It forced a furious pace of change. The world reacted swiftly and effectively. Almost all formal education, everywhere, was converted to the online mode. An ecosystem to facilitate all this also developed quickly. People contributed by adopting that change. Data, device, content, and even policy, were put in place. The education system somehow managed to function. Policies were quickly changed in colleges to allow students to graduate in time, also to carry on with their learning. They need to understand the digital world, before they can be effective, and even sustain.

We also hear of flip lectures today, where the typical hybrid nature of education will come into play. They are the way to go.

There were major fallouts. Technology got integrated into the education system. The challenge that remains is the unprecedented integration of technology into education. It has happened along the width. However, it has still not gone to the depth that is required for a good, functioning, and effective education system. The width was covered very well. The depth still has challenges. Also, online education is not enough to empower. The component of societal and personal experience is missing from online education. Next, there is only so much that can be experienced online. The domain of knowledge dictates how much can be understood and experienced, or taught online. We need to question how to go about it. The teaching and learning process is not complete in the online world. There is no solution, as we need to have in-person interaction. We need a hybrid world of both online and in person.

Technology integration brought about online education. In-person interactions bring in the other part. This balance depends on many different issues and will be solved at different levels. There is no right answer regarding the balance. Physical engineering and chemical engineering require in-person education. You need to deal with matter and materials. You need to see how they behave and look at all the properties. Imagine that these can be shown through videos, that process does not work. You need to see all that in person and experience them. There are associated laboratory experiments, as well. They would need a strong in-person component. That is happening today. The labs are the most important and are considered first.

Computer science and engineering include AI/ML, cyber security, sensors, IIoT, etc. They can perhaps be taught online, and here, technology can be very useful. A higher percentage of the online components will be there. Then, we see the situation on the ground. The availability of data, device, and content, and special-temporal constraints of teachers and participants, etc., are there. This balance between online and offline can even percolate below. We also hear of flip lectures today, where the typical hybrid nature of education will come into play. There is an in-person interaction, with hybrid mode.

While the domain itself can be taught online, the teaching itself is an issue to be solved. That needs an in-person interaction. The brain responds to different cues in face-to-face interactions during the teaching-learning process. While we can have a lot of content in the multimedia mode, to complete that, we will need in-person lectures. Flip lectures are perhaps, the way to go.

A flip lecture mode where every learning session is hybrid — is the way to go. The mechanics of the teaching-learning process cannot be overlooked. There will also be an online mode where students and participants have access to recorded things. There will also be a series of in-person or hybrid interactions. Mechanics of learning is the major driving force.

Session: Lifelong learning in the New Normal

Continuous, lifelong learning important

Technology itself has grown so fast that various roles are getting redundant. New and exciting roles are coming up that enable people to switch jobs. One-time education isn’t going to cut it!

phalgun

Said Phalgun Kompalli, Co-founder, upgrade: There are three key pillars to any education system. First, people should have access, second, people should be able to afford that access, and third, once they do it, people should also have quality outcomes. The old generation did one job for 40 years. The newer generation changes about 3-4 jobs in about 7 years. Today, people are looking for a much more adventurous and professional journey. The risk appetite has increased. Second, technology itself has grown so fast that various roles are getting redundant. New and exciting roles are coming up that enable people to switch jobs.

One-time education is not going to cut it anymore! Continuous, lifelong learning becomes very important here, as it allows you to stay relevant. It also provides you with more opportunities to pursue more exciting careers. At UpGrad, we have built a platform that enables lifelong learning. From 18-80, you have a robust, vigorous platform at UpGrad that can help you with lifelong learning.

We have a long way to go on this vision. Lifelong learning is very important for you to pursue exciting careers. Technology is also evolving very fast, and there are so many new things to learn. For example, if you are into software, the shelf life of stacks is evolving so fast that you will need to constantly upskill yourself in order to remain relevant. Having lifelong learning becomes very important.

We do not come with a mindset of lifelong learning. We need to think of this as an exciting opportunity for great learning. We can invest a few hours for picking up new skills, and new knowledge to do well in our careers. We are also very lucky to have access to the different kinds of things today. There is access to world-class material online from top experts, top universities across India, etc. National universities are now going online. Students can now have access to great learning material.

We are realizing there is a constant need to upskill yourself and have lifelong learning. You can set yourself up for great professional success. It is very exciting to be constantly learning, as it opens more windows and doors in your head. We are also looking at making the process of lifelong learning less boring, and less cumbersome, and much more exciting for learners.

A lot of people have curious to find out something new. They will enrol for a lot of courses. However, people have a problem with committing long-term, and even learning that is structured. We, as a community, can do more to push the immersive experience of learning for working professionals. We can also provide support services for students, such as academic and non-academic. We can handhold them to successfully complete a program. We still have a lot of work to do.

While people are excited about new things, they sometimes find it very difficult to keep the motivation going over a long period of time, say, three months. We are building online experiences and pedagogy to build engaging experiences for people.

Session: Transformation of the industry and skills

Make students ready for Future of Work

Looking at the “Jobs of Tomorrow” report by the World Economic Forum, demand for human and digital factors are driving growth in the professions of the future

Mona B

Mona Bharadwaj, Global University Programs Leader, IBM India, said people may remember the Doordarshan logo. Most of us had one TV and one telephone in the family. Dads probably had only one job. You may also remember some of the wonderful brands that existed, such as HMT watches, Bajaj scooters, Dyanora TV, Nokia mobiles, Rajdoot bikes, etc. All of them had some really good quality. In 1998, there were about 1.70 lakh Kodak employees. In a few years, digital photography came into being and drove Kodak out of the market. Kodak also went bankrupt. What happened with all these wonderful brands? They were out of the market as they did not change over time. This is such an important thing today. Such is the case with any industry that does not accept changes and transform. The pace at which society is changing is forcing the industry to cope. That, in turn, is pushing education institutes to transform as well.

Until a few years ago, companies taught or conditioned employees to operate in alignment with their business model in a structured, business-oriented manner. There was top-down decision-making. There were job descriptions with set responsibilities. Everything was fixed and static. Usage of fixed teams was prevalent at that time. It also taught the employees skills in that company’s culture. Until the digital era, clarity of decision was conveyed in a structured manner, and executed in a stable environment that was not receptive to constant change. There was a need to speed things up and have more ways to address the changing needs of customers very quickly. It led to the advent of the digital era.

The digital era introduced the need for more business and new skills. It also brought a more flexible culture. Remote work, always-on access, transparency in work, less hierarchy, and even pop-up teams operating across organizational and cross-functional boundaries happened. An operation had to operate within an ecosystem of partners. All this required agility. Different management styles also came into being, which also encouraged a more agile environment. There was autonomous decision-making, more experimentation, peer-to-peer coaching, flexibility in structures, etc. Essentially, the organizational and cultural competencies needed to shift, so they could reflect the new ways of working. This was historically about how the industries and the skills transformed and evolved.

What does the scenario look like today? Executives are now tasked with continuous innovation, and succeeding in this constantly evolving landscape. They also recognize that navigating it requires individuals that communicate effectively, apply problem-solving skills, critical-thinking skills, and drive innovation using new technologies. They also draw and act from the insights available from vast amounts of data. It also calls for a lot of creativity, empathy, ability to change course quickly, and a propensity to learn, and seek out personal growth.

The future of work is expected to be more transparent, flat on-demand, and competitive. Transparent is obvious. When we say flat, it means less hierarchy. There is more decision-making at each level. On-demand implies that teams will be assembled and dismantled based on the needs of a project. Competitive means the whole world will be the hiring ground for an employer. We have the onus of making students ready for that future of work.

India’s economy is expected to grow at a very fast pace. Rapid industrialization means there would be requirement of around 250 million people by 2030. As of 2021, India is said to produce 1 million engineering graduates. India’s technical education infrastructure includes 3,500 engineering colleges, 3,400 polytechnics, and 200 schools of planning and architecture. Today, over 35% of India’s population is below the age of 20. India could potentially emerge as a global supplier of skilled manpower.

Looking at Jobs of Tomorrow report by World Economic Forum, demand for human and digital factors are driving growth in the professions of the future. They predicted that 7 professional clusters would emerge in tandem. These clusters are: Data and AI, engineering, cloud computing, people and culture, product development, marketing, and sales and content. On one hand, these reflect adoption of new technologies giving rise to greater demand for roles in data and AI economy, and new roles in engineering, cloud computing, and product development. On the other hand, emerging professions reflect the continuing importance of human interaction in the new economy, giving rise to greater demand for care economy jobs, roles in marketing, sales, and content production. As well as roles in the forefront of people and culture.

Needless to say, the workforce that India is looking to provide the world, skills are of great importance today. Today’s skills can protect us from the vast uncertainties the future may have. Key technology skills, supplemented by good decision making, negotiation, problem solving, good communications, networking, etc., create a distinguished combination for an accomplished career.

There are many ways to enhance skills of students that are needed today. One also needs to focus on exponential learning through hackathons. Gandhiji had announced a design competition back in 1929, with Rs. 1 lakh as prize money. This happened when he encouraged people to take up the spinning wheel. He was looking for engineers that could input raw cotton into machines and produce yarn as output. He had some conditions. He recognized what technology could do. Maybe, he was ahead of his times. He may have been the original sponsor of a hack to design a better charka. Today, students stand to gain a lot by participating in hackathons.

For academic institutes, working hand-in-hand with the industry is a key way of making students better skilled for the future. IBM and other companies have some very useful partnerships with academic institutes. You should also use those to become better skilled. Institutes grab opportunities for courses, mentorship, internships, etc., from industries to make students ready for a better tomorrow. The future really belongs to those who are ready for it!

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

Advertisment