Sharing Ideas
Deepak R.
The most important task of an educator is not teaching. It is but, imparting to the students, an ability to teach themselves. An ability to teach oneself involves ability to acquire skills, ability to search and find knowledge and ability to acquire a value system (Psycho-motor, Cognitive and Affective domain of education).
Many studies have shown that if we rank various methods of learning in the increasing order of the average retention rate it is (1) Lecture, (2) Reading, (3) Audio-visual, (4) Demonstration, (5) Discussion groups, (6) Practice by doing and (7) Teaching others or Immediate use (in that order).
The traditional classroom model of learning has been under severe criticism for many years now because of its almost exclusive focus on the first two methods of learning. Even though many of the teachers realize it very early in their careers, they are still forced to stick on to that due to practical infeasibility of any of the other methods in a class room of 60+ students and one teacher. In a (supposed to be) developing country like ours, the demand for a better staff to student ratio more often than not falls on deaf ears. And so, most of the teachers are forced to restrict themselves to the classroom model.
But this needn't be so from now on. The easy availability of computing infrastructure in educational institutions are already being utilized by many teachers for introducing the next two methods of learning into the classroom (audio-visual and demonstration).
The accessibility and affordability of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) does have the potential to make even the next method (Discussion groups) feasible in our educational institutions. Many universities abroad and some home have already realized the potential and has initiated online discussion forums for the students.
The objective of this session is to give a glimpse of the free software tools available for managing such discussion groups. We will also touch upon tools for setting up online classrooms, online tests etc.
Footnote: A teacher is a person who makes himself progressively redundant.