Towards Digital Campus: Significance & Challenges

The campuses of educational institutions are the adobe of knowledge, where students and educators share the relationship of learning and training. In the new era when everything turning into digitalised form, the stakeholders of the education industry are also striving to switch to the digital world.

Dr J Francis Xavier, Principal, Jeppiaar Engineering College, Chennai, while introducing the topic said that digital campuses are encouraging students living in remote areas to take part in the educational process.

He also highlighted the cost-effectiveness feature of digital campuses, in which with one single resource many audiences can be addressed. Xavier also thanked the digital space to make global networking feasible.

Adding to that, Dr Gangineni Dhananjhay, Dean - MBA, Narayana Engineering College, Nellore (AP), talked about the challenges to creating and sustaining digital campuses where students desire to have a seamless experience with a single password for every facility.

Dhananjhay added that the digitalisation process should also be carried forward through the perspective of faculty as well. 

Dr Vasupradha Srikrishna, Associate Director - Meston Centre for Teaching and Learning, Madras Christian College coined the issue of intellectual threat. She said, “We are in the muddled zone to understand who wrote what?” 

Touching upon the intellectual threat, Srikrishna said that intellectual threat has always been there but now the replicability is stunning.   

AI and ChatGPT are the current trends in the education field, emphasising their effect, Dr Malini V Shankar, IAS (Retd), Vice-Chancellor, Indian Maritime University, said that it is going to affect education a lot and teachers will have to face this challenge more than students.

Malini said that teachers will have to change their entire mindset and approach to see what kind of questions and evaluation can be done better than ChatGPT.

She added, “The method of testing and evaluating needs to be drastically changed in order to compete with ChatGPT.”

Experts were presenting their viewpoints at 6th BW Education Annual Higher Education Conference held at Chennai on Wednesday.

Education has technological advancement but also a threat that can harm the legacy of wisdom, there the sector needs to utilise the resources and technology meticulously.