The challenges faced by India in the domain of higher education are not unique. Like any other developing country, our premier institutions (imparting technical and business learning), face problems related to inadequate capacity, infrastructure and faculty. The IITs and IIMs, our global-class educational institutions, are unable to cater to the needs of India’s vast student populace. Limited seats make these schools of higher education available to only a miniscule percentage of learners, leaving the others out in the cold.

The outcome is that India just does not have enough “relevantly” skilled students and professionals. While we are producing graduates and technical talent in large numbers, the majority of these students haven’t had the opportunity to train at the country’s best institutions and are often not “employable.”
 
Beefing up infrastructure of India’s crème-a-la-crème schools of advanced education is fraught with problems. The high costs involved and the paucity of adequate funding, stand in the way of making learning from these schools broad based and covering the largest umbrella of people.

What then is the solution?

Luckily for the world, the advent of the Internet has virtually transformed the learning scenario. The Internet, with its always on, always available character and anytime, anywhere accessibility, has created a new hope for taking training to the geographically dispersed and unreached student community.

The arrival of relevant technology is now making it possible for learning to be taken to the doorsteps, or is it desktops of users, in a manner that is self-paced and convenient.

When the Internet first arrived on the scene and educational institutions across the world began to understand its potential—it was harnessed predominantly to deliver Web-based, one-sided, single-dimensional, asynchronous learning to students. Distance education was mainly about using the Internet to supplement the popular face-to-face learning phenomenon. What this meant was that students were unable to connect with either their peers and teachers or leverage the power of the face-to-face learning experience. 

Availability of bandwidth and its gradually lowering costs, coupled with feature-rich, advanced software and hardware, is enabling some of the country’s leading institutions to now provide learning that is interactive, and emulates a live classroom. High bandwidth communication networks are allowing the transmission of two-way full motion video, audio and data interaction and helping replicate a physical classroom, “virtually.”

Today, students can sit “face-to-face” with highly talented teachers without actually being physically present on the scene. Rather, teachers and students need not even be in the same classroom, city or yes, even the country. Separated by significant distances, they can be linked and brought together by cutting-edge technology. In this new high-tech environment, students can experience learning almost in the same way as they would if they were in a normal classroom, querying their instructor and answering questions.

A studio can capture the live audio and video of the expert faculty and transmit it to the dispersed classrooms. The faculty, in this scenario, will be able to see all those present, initiate a chat, speak to students, and ask them to get involved with the work sheets. As in a real classroom situation, the entire body of students can be controlled and moderated by the faculty from the central studio.

The students on the other hand can raise their hands to interrupt the teacher, clarify their doubts, browse the power point presentations, submit quizzes, send assignments and use the white board or any other application sharing facility.

Synchronous, online learning, is bringing faculty and students together, in real-time.

Graphical Representation of Synchronous Learning Model

Synchronous education in fact can prove to be a boon for academia, working professionals keen on continuous learning and students. By enrolling for the online programmes offered by the country’s leading colleges and universities, they can now access quality education, without actually being physically present in the classroom. Working professionals, in particular can be the chief beneficiaries of this new, evolved form of distance learning. They can upgrade their skill sets or acquire new ones from prestigious institutions, at their own pace and time and without having to travel to another location.

As far as the teachers are concerned, they can share their knowledge with a larger body of students and professionals using limited resources and infrastructure and improving student learning outcomes.

Institutions such as IIT Bombay, the Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, Pilani (BITS) and Career Launcher have already deployed such learning delivery methods to broaden their horizons and bring in more and more students and professionals into their fold. .

IIT Bombay (IITB), for instance, launched its synchronous Distance Education Programme in 2002 through a satellite network using IP-multicast, simulating a classroom environment in 12 engineering colleges across the country. IITB also recently announced another synchronous education model with Internet Streaming, which allows participants to access the learning from the comfort of their desktops rather than a conventional classroom.

The BITS synchronous learning model, meanwhile, is being offered through its Virtual University, which provides IP-based Live Interactive Lecture Sessions, Meetings and On-demand facilities to students registered in various Distance Learning Programmes.

Synchronous learning however, can become viable and effective only when technology providers in the private sector and formal academic institutions come together with schools of higher learning in the non-formal sector and work to achieve common goals.

Collaboration between the serious education providers in the country—from both the formal and non-formal sectors—is a must. Together, they can share their best practices in the distance learning space, alongside high quality courseware and state-of-the-art learning delivery methods, to make synchronous education viable and beneficial to a larger and larger pool of students and professionals.