Distance education - Looks like 'blended' is the success mantra!

At the Edex Conference in Delhi sometime ago http://www.edgex.in/ there were many talks about the technologies for education. Wile I did not attend all the talks, got a feel of the mood.It was mostly a crowd of technology lovers who were keen to apply technology solutions to higher education. My opinion is that more technology can be applied in K12 than in higher education because the very nature of higher education.

It appears to me that the future is in blended delivery rather than only campus or distributed.

Another topic that will grow in import is learning styles and matching technology to learning styles. This is already happening with audio lessons, video rich content and the like which cater to learners who prefer a specific medium.

What struck me was that discussions have not yet started on matching technologies to subjects. For example subjects where a large body of knowledge exists and is relatively slow in adding new stuff may be better using a didactic video lecture as compared to some software which is best learnt through peer to peer counseling. Understanding what is relevant technology to teach/learn a particular subject is yet to start; though it surely will soon as there appear very serious well funded researchers in this area. My retail background gives me these ideas...remember some product categories are well suited for online and others need the touch and feel.

Am hoping my employers will be the first to offer audio lessons that are easily downloadable for the MBA program. It will be a good start!
Do write in and let me know. Your views/inputs can benefit my sparrow brain a lot

Management & Engineering education - Capacity first, Quality next - are we at the tipping point?

Having attended the edge conference http://edgeforum.in/edge2011/index.html, I got many ideas from the speakers and some thoughts stirred in my mind too. There has been for sometime an argument that it is important to create capacity for management and engineering education as the gross enrolment ratio is low, students find it difficult to get seats, and most importantly the number of young people and number of people with a variety of skills required in the near future determined by the national skill development mission/corporation

is huge.

The recent Parthenon report on 'Private Universities in India: An investment in national development, discusses among other things that in a sector where brands are critical assets, private universities spend between Rs.50K- 125K
to aquire one student. The good news is that this reduces to Rs.25K in the eighth year.
We get educated to find jobs. Is this peculiar to India? I understand that in many countries higher studies are taken up to enhance knowledge more than anything else. In India where resumes are read,and interviews are held to find ways to reject candidates in view of the number of applicants, any degree/badge can set you up at an advantage!

The present scenario is that many B schools are finding it diffult to find students and the marble/granite lined engineering colleges in South India are running like the fourth week of a flop film. Have we arrived at the tipping point? Does it make sense now to focus on quality education, real placement support and such global quality metrics or can we continue to survive doling out degrees for a cost?

My own guess is that we have reached a potential inflection point and the argument that we must first create capacity is no more valid since plenty of seats are available. Focus on building well rounded or T type human resources is what educational institutions need to concentrate on for the sake of society and hopefully for thier own survival!

As it is, as one speaker said at this conference 'More jobs are being created for Robots than humans'. The addendum I would like to add is that it is far cheaper to hire a human robot than a machine robot! Sadly,We are not creating people with passion or those with critical thinking skills or with creativity... Robots. That is another story that will need to change soon