ONLINE TRANSITION

COVID-19 may have fast-tracked India’s transition to online learning, but for it to be a real success, we’ll need to bridge a yawning digital divide besides creating a more robust infrastructure, new learning modules and more

- KAUSHIK DEKA

Every day, from Monday to Friday, Malhar Mazumdar, 13, a Class 9 student at the Mother’s International School in New Delhi, is ready to go to school at 9 am sharp. Except that he doesn’t step out of his room. He gets dressed in his school uniform, puts on his headphones, switches on the webcam and logs in to a digital classroom. It’s a restless, animated grid of faces—his classmates and a teacher. The classes are 40 minutes each and the school day ends at 1.50 pm, after which he spends a few more hours online to complete assignments. Malhar could make himself invisible in class by switching off the mic and camera, a privilege he never had in a physical classroom. Yet, he longs to return to regular classes. He misses his friends, the activities between classes and the focus a physical classroom provides. “At home, I get distracted often,” he says.

Welcome, Malhar Mazumdar, to the brave new world of online education in India, where necessity has become the mother of innovation. Education experts in India have long recommended replacing the blackboard and chalk with the screen and keyboard, but with little progress. COVID-19, however, has fast-tracked digital education in India. With social distancing becoming the new norm, physical proximity in a brick-and-mortar classroom suddenly poses a mortal danger. School managements and teachers, therefore, are scrambling to board the online bandwagon, and computers and connectivity are fast replacing desks, chairs and pencils in the education lexicon.