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Virtual classrooms now expand to coaching institutions

Learning has reformed over the years due to scarcity of good teachers and learners' willingness to adopt newer technologies

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Aditya Kumar (17) is a Class XII student of Maharashtra State Board and also preparing for JEE exam to get admission in premier engineering institutes. He has enrolled in a two-year preparatory course of a popular coaching institute.

All Aditya does these days is –sits at home, logs in to his institute's website at his own comfort, and follows the recently uploaded video lectures of Maths, Physics and Chemistry. This is his revision time and lectures of his favourite teachers come handy as they can be paused and repeated as many times as he wants.

On other days, when he goes to the coaching institute, his entire class attends lectures via video-conferencing which is relayed from an audio-visual centre set-up at the same branch but on another floor. Sometimes, lectures are relayed from the main and other branches as well.

The faculty members being in his world-class audio-visual centre deliver their lecture in the real classroom and Aditya and hundreds of other students spread across India attend it simultaneously. Giant screens, high resolution cameras, microphones and 8 mbps data speed together make the classroom much more interesting for the teenagers who are increasingly becoming tech-savvy these days.

Even in the virtual classroom run via video-conferencing, Aditya can see his teachers and vice versa, he can ask questions to the teacher sitting miles away. The same lectures are then uploaded on the website for the students for future reference.

"Learning with a great teacher in the virtual classroom is more beneficial than attending lectures of a traditional classroom where a boring teacher is physically present. And the same lecture is available online as well," says Aditya.

Cost-effective

Virtual classrooms, which have been part of some universities and elite institutions like IITs till now, are now part of several coaching institutions.

As per an estimate, about one crore students appear for various competitive exams in India every year to gain admission into undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses and to get into government jobs.

Since all competitive exams are difficult to crack given the limited number of seats, a large number of students opt for extra coaching classes. As most of the good coaching institutes are centered around a few cities such as Delhi for UPSC, Kota for JEE and Bangalore for GRE, a large number of students relocate to these cities.

While the number of aspirants is rising fast, coaching institutes struggle to find good teachers. In such a scenario, virtual classrooms offer affordable solutions. A handful of teachers are now educating hundreds of students sitting across various centres at one go. "Aspirants are also loving it," says Smriti Raut (16) from Delhi who admits being "screen addict" and loves reading books and watching movies on her mobile and laptop.

Pravin Tyagi, managing director of the IITian Pace denies that shortage of good teachers has made him switch to virtual classrooms. He says, "While 80 per cent teaching in our institute is still being offered traditionally, we have shifted 20 per cent of it to the video-conferencing mode. This helps me to offer quality education to all my 20,000 students at 80 centres with maximising our own teaching talents."

IITian Pace has spent nearly Rs18 crore at six centres in Mumbai to establish high-quality video-conferencing equipment. He says,"Since we have the excellent technology, students are liking it. Some of our students in rural areas who attend classes through video-conferencing have topped also in the JEE exams."

Different from online classes

"The video-conferencing mode is different from those online classes which offer poor video quality and speed, making it a frustrating experience. Many of them have shut down for the same reason," said a teacher from Rao IIT which is using video-conferencing extensively.

Similar is the case of virtual classrooms offered by IITs and some other top institutions under the "Virtual lab" promoted by Ministry of Human Resource Development under the national mission on education through ICT. "We disseminate our lectures in mechanical, electrical, electronics, civil and computer engineering to students at regional colleges," said a IIT Bombay teacher associated with the Virtual lab.

Not easy tansition

However, there are some practical difficulties too which has restricted many institutions from leveraging the technology even as shortage of teachers is affecting them badly. For instance, it's not easy for all teaching professionals to migrate to online mode quickly. Some are camera shy, many others reject the technology. "But we need to understand that society has evolved with time, and so must teaching," says Rajendra Sinha, a teacher at a coaching institute in Patna.

Virtual classrooms have certain limitations too. While students don't get many opportunities to ask their doubts in the virtual class, teachers are often clueless about students reactions and emotions which plays a crucial role in the way of teaching in a traditional classroom.

Aashish Pawaskar, Professor at Sydenham Institute of Management, Mumbai University admits the flaws. "It is very important for a teacher to know whether students are able to grasp the topic. If not, they he/she explains it in a different way. In the virtual classrooms, you miss this crucial aspect of teaching."

Traditional classrooms also help develop a bond between students-teachers which helps not only students but teachers as well. "This is not possible in the virtual teaching," says Pawaskar.

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