Information technology: The new standard for educational institutions

If one were to go back two decades, the vision of classrooms would have 60 students packed in a classroom, a teacher holding a chalk and duster in her hand, screaming at the top of her voice. Very rarely there was a collar mike facility. Classrooms were small and dingy, corridors were cramped and open grounds and sports facilities minimalistic.  

While many tier 3 city schools are still in this state of infrastructure, the last decade saw educational institutions build differentiators on quality of physical infrastructure. Swanky building, marble and granite floors, open spacious and airy classrooms, acres of sports development became the new benchmark for progressive schools.

It was at this time that real estate companies started to enter the educational arena. Since they had the knowledge and the expertise of building quality infrastructure and schools had started looking like commercial spaces, real estate investment became the order of the day. It is altogether a different story that just physical, tangible high-quality infrastructure does not determine the quality of an educational institution. The class pedagogy and teaching-learning interactions are paramount. Besides, the expectations of monetary returns that real estate investors wanted from education did not match and soon a decline of interest among real estate sector became visible.

However, infrastructure, whether soft in terms of human capital or hard in terms of land and building, continues to play a significant role in determining quality since learning spaces are important.

In order to cater to new-age learners, physical spaces are now blending. Offline learning is being substantiated and complemented with online learning. Information technology’s role in imparting education has become so integral to the teaching-learning process that it is being acclaimed as the new infrastructure benchmark for quality schools.

It all began ubiquitously through the teaching of computers in a computer lab. Soon it pervaded into the classroom though the use of projectors and white boards. The ICT in the classroom became a fad. ICT had some clear benefits, the use of more than one sense of learning – the multi sensory approach led to heightened academic performance and brought about 15-20% enhancement in student outcomes.

Soon, the idea of virtual labs for experiential learning through experiments emerged. Labs for English, Physics, Maths & Science become online resources. Often, cyber competitions require students to use advanced software like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Image Ready and Jquery.

For any idea to go viral, it needs to be beneficial and yet cost effective. IT Infrastructure is providing easy-to-use solutions with a certain degree of cost effectiveness, since in most cases, the capital costs are made either through staggered payments or monthly EMIs.
Above all, the largest visible benefit is that IT has made classroom interaction more interactive, absorbing and engrossing.

The writer is  an entrepreneur and an educationist.