The Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) is set to launch its second-phase training programme for teachers in techno-pedagogy.
The council, which had trained 1,800 teachers last year, has been focusing on providing exposure on the use of digital tools. While the agency earlier imparted training on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in outcome-based teaching, it now intends to conduct online workshops in digital portfolios on mission mode for 2,000 teachers within the next six months.
Indicators
Rajan Gurukkal, vice-chairman, said that various schemes initiated by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in recent times were an indicator that teachers who were not adept at using web-based techno-pedagogic tools and creating technology-enhancing learning environment could become redundant. Higher education institutions that lacked an optimised learning management system with digital portfolios also could become superfluous in the times to come.
Various tools
According to him, teachers will cease to remain knowledge-providers of a teacher-centric and top-down teaching system, but facilitators in a student-centric and bottom-up learning system that is gaining traction at a rapid pace. Teachers will have to gain competency in using tools like Popplet, Padlet, Miro, Whimsical, Google Drawing, Concept-based, Mind-map, Infographic, Coggle, Wireframe and Bubbl.
He also asserted online learning could be made equitable and accessible only through bridging digital divide. “Undoubtedly, technology-enhanced learning widens the digital divide and makes higher education exclusively elitist. Confining education to a minority through centralisation and electronic sophistication is what corporates demand. We can fight this only through mitigating the digital divide and updating higher education technologically,” he said.
The declaration of the Internet as a basic right and the K-FON project aimed at providing high-speed Internet connection free of cost to the economically disadvantaged sections and affordable rates for the others were historic moves in this direction. “It is also vital we updated our institutions in techno-pedagogy and join hands to provide laptops and other devices to the marginalised. The failure to do so could result in our State universities and colleges getting pushed out from the mainstream,” he cautioned.
