Hybrid Learning Is There To Stay: Dr Suresh Mony, Director, NMIMS (Bangalore Campus)

The current crisis is not only seen affecting the health of the citizens in the country but is also seen hindering various sectors. The nation-wide lockdown and the ascending health crisis were affecting the education of the students as well, with their universities being shut and their syllabi stranded, till the time the industry decided to initiate a revolution and switch to the virtual mode.

To have a discussion on these lines, BW Education organized a panel discussion on “Future of Higher Education”, in association with BW Businessworld. The eminent panellists were: Dr Suresh Mony, Director, NMIMS (Bangalore Campus); Vishnu Karthik, CEO, Xperiential Learning Systems and Director, The Heritage School and Bharat Agarwal, President, Vishwakarma University. The session was moderated by Dr Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld & exchange4media.

Sharing his experiences about the last few months in the times of COVID, Bharat Agarwal, President, Vishwakarma University, said, “We all understand the last eight months have been at home and at work simultaneously. We at Vishwakarma had been honestly pushing and initiating a lot of digitization for our administrative as well as for our teaching-learning processes for more than three-four years now.”

He credited COVID-19 for removing the resistance that was faced from teachers, students and other stakeholders in the process of getting digitized.

He further informed, “Beyond the 3-4 days of lockdown, everyone went online – the students, the teachers. Beyond the teaching-learning, which is primarily - the transfer of knowledge, newer engagements were developed and evolved. Projects started happening, group discussions started happening and very importantly recruitments started happening.”

Vishnu Karthik, CEO, Xperiential Learning Systems and Director, The Heritage School, appreciated the New Education Policy 2020. He stated, “I must acknowledge some of the levers NEP has focussed on, is the right thing. There is some reform about higher education, especially around the change in the way, testing is going to happen to K-8 kids and to higher education. The NEP is focussed on shifting away from standardized testing or high-stake testing to a testing agency and focusing on foundational skills as a pattern.”

Dr Suresh Mony, Director, NMIMS (Bangalore Campus) suggested, “Hybrid learning is there to stay. Even if there was no COVID, most B-Schools or universities will adopt hybrid learning. We have to ramp up the technological infrastructure which is poor in this country. So, universities have to assimilate technology, embrace technology and also the government has to really put up the infrastructure that is from the university point of view. The faculty have to go the extra mile in assimilating technology, which was not there earlier.”