It was just last year that college principals and policymakers started using "blended" learning like a catchphrase. It signalled the inevitability of an outcome born out of shuttered educational institutions in a pandemic. A good halfway house to address episodic disruptions in contact classes with the ebbing and re-emergence of a malignant viral disease. A common-sense deduction from how a once-in-a-century pandemic would transform teaching and learning methods. But now, after the second wave, what seemed like a foregone conclusion is up for a rethink and revision.
A draft note released by the UGC late last month and set up for public comment proposed a mode of learning in which higher education institutions can teach up to 40 per cent of the syllabus of each course online and the remaining 60 per cent in the offline mode. This will be in addition to the courses hosted on the online portal Study Webs of Active–Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (Swayam). As stakeholders responded to the note by June 6, a growing mix of voices highlighted the unsuitability and impracticality of such a move.
Various teachers' associations in Kerala pointed out the already existing digital divide and how it keeps students away from physical campuses for a longer time. All India Federation of University and College Teacher’s organisation (AIFUCTO) called it "unacademic" and pointed out how it threatened the “autonomy of the universities and the higher educational institutions.” Student bodies have signed online petitions to mark their protest against the decision.“UGC’s blended mode of education would widen the existing structural differences, reduce the objective of educational institutions to profit-making, and implement a bureaucratic surveillance network that would help the government curb opposing voices in higher educational institutions," noted a petition signed by All India Forum to Save Public Education, an umbrella body for many student groups, including SFI and other unions across universities.
A draft note went on to say how "blended learning shifts the teacher’s role from knowledge provider to coach and mentor. This shift does not mean that teachers play a passive or less important role in students’ education. Quite the contrary, with blended learning, teachers can have an even more profound influence and effect on students’ learning."
Nonetheless, teachers fear a reduced workload and a loss of appointments. Questions arise about how many of the older teachers are inclined or equipped with the necessary skills to teach effectively online. They point out that with the threat of a third wave looming large, and with the death of so many teachers and non-teaching staff across universities, there should be a greater focus on providing social security to aggrieved families. "At this moment there is no blend. We are doing only online. The pandemic is being used as an opportunity to try to force upon us something they were not able to do probably. Is this the right way of doing it? There are long-term repercussions on the workload of the teachers to be recruited for the next generation. If 'blended' becomes a permanent feature in a post-COVID situation, that is a dangerous path," said Rajib Ray, president of Delhi University Teachers' Association. He pointed that the timing of the NEP roll-out, from which blended learning flows out, is most inappropriate.
For blended learning to work, tech resources need to be reliable and easy to use, supported by the required IT infrastructure and the workforce needed to run it. There is the issue of cognitive load when learning resources are over-delivered in bulk. Also, an internet-friendly classroom is fertile territory for plagiarism with the constant urge to 'Google search'. Even in the West, remote learning, hybrid schooling, virtual teaching, etc., has been variously dubbed "risky" , "a logistical madness", "a failure" with schools and colleges still figuring out effective, well-planned ways and means to introduce blended learning without much success.
However, many stakeholders believe that it is indeed technology that is the great leveller. "It is adoption of technology that accelerates scope for inclusiveness. If we forbid use of technology for fear that a certain stratum of society will not be able to leverage it, as a country we will always remain in the laggards. We need to accelerate provisioning for the IT infrastructure and not prohibit advancement in adoption of technology in education," said Jaskiran, associate dean, BML Munjal University.