OVER THE LAST couple of years, the ministry of human resource development, the University Grants Commission and various other regulatory agencies have been attempting to ensure quality in education with the help of accreditation and ranking agencies. But these efforts always met with systemic resistance.
Today, because of Covid-19, online pedagogy, among other mantras of quality in higher education, has come to the fore. Many options like massive open online courses, credit transfer and e-governance have remained underutilised by institutions. But the pandemic has left us with no option. There are visible changes in the attitudes of teachers, students and other stakeholders to create a mental and physical viability for online pedagogy.
However, stakeholders at all levels of education have faced challenges during the preliminary phase of online teaching. Now that we have realised that online teaching is going to stay on as the future mode of education, government agencies and institutions need to develop policies, provisions and practices for it.
When innovations occur, quality check has to follow as a response system to fructify the results of innovative pedagogy. Institutions and stakeholders need to regularly assess what an innovation facilitates. The answer to this question will lead to quality assurance. Regular stock-taking through a transparent feedback system is a handy tool to conduct such validity checks.
Generally, academic administrators focus on teachers, while the attitudes and behaviours of students are ignored while considering innovative practices in pedagogy. Teaching is popularly considered to be synonymous with lecturing, while learning is thought to be synonymous with listening. But in the online mode, teaching and learning has to be a collaborative exercise, wherein teachers have to go beyond lecturing and students have to participate actively in the teaching-learning process by following the exercises, activities and instructional materials uploaded online.
The pandemic provides teachers and institutions with a window to change the hackneyed systems that have stopped being fruitful. Virtual pedagogy will ensure that lack of infrastructure and space will become less of an excuse for non-performers. But internet access remains a major road-block for many students and teachers. Virtual space needs to be developed in place of physical space to facilitate effective learning.
The government and institutions need to divert their funds to ensure internet access to teachers and students. These funds can be easily created because running costs of campuses have reduced significantly because of negligible physical presence of teachers and students in campuses. This will lead to equity and will ensure that the ‘Covid-19 batch’ does not suffer for no fault of its own. Additionally, internet and learning management system service providers need to collaborate at the government and institution level.
A significant paradigm is the examination system. At present, most institutions are perplexed with regard to conducting examinations. The pandemic has given us an opportunity to revisit the entire idea of examination, testing and evaluation. We need to decide whether we want to test or assess our students. Testing and evaluation need to be subordinated with the spirit to assess a student rather than to pass a judgment on a student. Assessment is more constructive and positive. We must not forget that the examination system has a washback effect on pedagogy. When our students are tested they study to pass the test, but when our students are assessed they study to perform. Therefore, we must switch over to assessments that are formative. The pandemic is likely to have a lasting impact on our lives and minds. Therefore, we need to minimise the burden of this impact by creating an ecology where judgmental and penalising tendencies are weeded out.
Khan is chairperson, department of English, and director, Internal Quality Assurance Cell, Aligarh Muslim University.
AS TOLD TO ABHINAV SINGH