India today is facing a crisis of job ready and outcome-oriented education which is imparted to its vast pool of young generation, ready to step into the professional world. The subject of education is very crucial and in this fast-paced world, where technology is transforming the face of almost every industry, it is not surprising that it is playing a crucial role in changing the ways we are going to learn in the future.
In this tech-generation, education is not just limited to classrooms. “University is not the only place where one can get this education”, says Vikas Gupta, MD, Wiley India. Young millennials are looking for newer ways of learning and are finding alternate methods that can be applied on a large scale.
Elaborating further, few key things that today’s generation expects for education are:
- The learning method should be personalized for an individual.
- Learning should not be just limited to classrooms and should be accessible anywhere.
- It should be available anytime.
- Education should be affordable for people of all groups.
- Education should be results-oriented and should focus on applications.
In addition to the above stated points, it’s critical that one needs to constantly evolve and re-skill themselves, in any field that they are working upon.
In today’s world traditional classroom learning is not the most effective learning process. That’s because every student has their individual speed and rate of absorption and the way of learning for a student could be different.
One of the most troubling issues for our country today is unemployment. “The quality of academic teachings in the university and colleges are not keeping pace with the requirement of the industries thereby resulting in population pool that possesses college education but their skills lag far behind from what employers are expecting from them,” says Vikas Gupta.
However, there are certain ways by which we can make sure that the talent which is coming out of college is job-ready.
Without any quality check or barrier, the college education is being rendered ineffective.
One way to overcome this issue is that someone from outside the college takes a quality check before a student leaves the college. “Placing at the exit stage, a government-controlled quality test will regulate the efficacy of college education in any field”, says Vikas Gupta of Wiley India.
Another challenge is the capability to unlearn and relearn. Once you graduate from a university program and start a job, it is frankly impossible to keep going back for re-skilling. In the fast-paced world of today, one constantly needs to re-skill themselves, no matter in what field they are working. It’s a continuous process to remain relevant in your professional life.
The questions we all now face is: How can we learn in such a situation? How can you learn while you work? How to make it as effective as possible? How can you learn anytime and anywhere?
The answer to all these questions defines future learning models. We need to look at learning from a unique perspective. In the new ‘effective’ learning models that we are envisioning, there are some key characteristics. These are:
- Learning can’t be in an isolated environment. It must be open, it must be social.
- Learning cannot and should not be one way. It’s a two-way process.
- Learning should involve applications, projects, real-life scenarios and simulations in addition to traditional assessments.
We today stand at a very critical point. Each of our previous generations had to go through different eras in the world. Our grandparents saw great wars and depression, our parents saw lack of quality education. The main challenge in front of our generation is to utilize the information which is flooded all around us, in a useful and skilled manner.
As educators, it’s our job to bridge the gap between college graduates and industry ready individuals.
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