Digital Disruption And Student Engagement

The Indian education system has faced unprecedented challenges in bringing and engaging students in the online educational delivery system due to the pandemicin the last two years. The pandemic accelerated digital disruption and adoption in the academic world. Even teachers in Junior School got habituated to using digital media (for example, WhatsApp and Google Meet) to encourage students to join classes online and submit their assignments.

Most higher education institutions quickly responded to the need of the hour, i.e., adopting digital platforms (Zoom, Google Meet, etc.) to connect students for imparting education. Although it solved the immediate purpose of reaching out to students virtually during various phases of lockdown, several questions continue to plague the mind of educators. Some of these questions are- "Are these students engaged enough to consume and internalize digital content?"

The most common words I have witnessed on the Zoom platform before starting classes are, “Am I audible? Am I visible?”. We have spent almost two years on the digital platform. We still witness challenges in engaging students (be it KG students to PG Students). 

Thus, the intriguing and critical questions that we all want to explore are as follows: what is the future of these platforms when the pandemic becomes a history? Should we still use these platforms as a core delivery platform or a backup platform? To what extent and where will these platforms be used in the future? How can we engage students on the platforms?

It is likely that these platforms are here to stay, especially for quick information dissemination, international collaboration with students from other universities, various programmes involving academics who might not be physically present at a given place on a given date, etc. Digital learning is a vastly advanced technological medium providing a learner with a great deal of flexibility. It allows them to study at any time at any speed, suiting an individual learner without worrying about timetables and schedules. While in December 2019, Zoom had 10 million daily participants. In October 2020, the video conferencing platform had 300 million users who used the virtual platform of human communication because of the rapidly unfolding pandemic. Education will see an unprecedented shift towards a blended form of learning with both the modes (online and offline) co-existing to suit requirements. So, it is likely that these mediums are here to stay, and students and academics are likely to make the most out of it.