Sometimes an ad hoc response to a crisis can open our eyes to immense possibilities that remained inadequately explored in ‘normal’ times. In the education space, the Covid pandemic brought with it the challenge of finding ways to make classes possible without classrooms. ‘Online learning’ became a buzzword, with institutions, families and communities exposed to it like never before. Now that we know aspects of the classroom experience can be replicated online on a massive scale, it’s time to throw open the doors of imagination to all that the online mode can do in enabling greater ‘democracy’ in production and dissemination of knowledge. For instance, can the metaphorical moat around the university—the archetypal fortress of knowledge production—be crossed both ways, so that its knowledge resources are accessible even to those who are outside?
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Among those outside are large numbers of school students, many of whom would never enter an institute of higher education. IIT-Delhi’s recent initiative for school students—Sci-Tech Spins—gives a peek into what the evolution of ‘knowledge democracy’ could look like. The online workshop was initially meant only for students of Kendriya Vidyalayas in the national capital region. Following a barrage of emails and letters from government and private-run schools across India, all requesting access to the workshop, Sci-Tech Spins was made open to all. The online workshop was also streamed live on YouTube. Participants included students and teachers from schools in Assam, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. The chat box is testimony to the enthusiasm of students who couldn’t enrol for the workshop and were watching it live on YouTube.
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Prof Pritha Chandra, associate dean (academics) for outreach and new initiatives at IIT-Delhi, says exercises such as Sci-Tech Spins, where school students interact with professors and researchers on academic topics, can break many myths about institutes of higher education, about “inaccessible professors and abstruse academic concepts taught in classrooms”. “These sessions also expose them to new disciplines, research areas and programmes offered by IIT-Delhi,” she says. Besides acquainting school students with the processes of learning at research-oriented institutes like the IITs, Sci-Tech Spins seeks to make science, technology and academics in general more interesting and appealing to young minds.
Sumita Das, a student in Delhi who joined the first session on September 11, feels it was quite a different experience from her classes in school. “In India, people are stuck with grades. In the name of basic education, we adopt a form that is less about learning and all about certification,” she says. To her, ‘knowledge democracy’ is freedom to self-determine what to learn and how, unconstrained by fixed institutional programmes and curricula.
Another participant was Manoj Reddy, who teaches science at a government school in an Andhra Pradesh village. One day he came across a Facebook post about the IIT-Delhi workshop. He didn’t want his students to miss it and asked them to be in school on the first day of the workshop, a Saturday. While the students watched the two-hour session on ‘design thinking for creativity and innovation’ on his laptop, he did a simultaneous translation in Telugu. He says the exercise opened the world of design thinking to his “class of brilliant minds that need some direction and resources”.
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(This appeared in the print edition as "Knowledge Democracy On A Digital Wave")
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