Online learning grows 50% in 2016; tech, English take lead

Online learning grew by 50 per cent in India this year, and technology and English were the most sought-after skills, says a report.

According to Coursera, a provider of online courses from top universities, out of the 10 most popular courses, technology constituted 70%, followed by English for career advancement.

Coursera has 1.8 million learners from India, out of 23 million registered learners globally, making the country the second-largest base of online learners after the US.

Compared with 2015, Coursera has seen a 50% jump in registered users, especially among technology learners, it said in a release.

“Considering the crucial role played by the IT industry, employing over 13 million people in India, it’s no surprise that 7 out of the top 10 online courses in India are technology-focused,” said Nikhil Sinha, chief business officer, Coursera.

He added that “over the next few years, online courses and credentials will become extremely common and even requirements to be considered for job roles that need specific skills”.

Coursera is an education-focused technology company that offers courses and learning experiences from the world’s top universities and education institutions, including Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, University of Virginia, and ISB.

Source: Hindustan Times, 28-12-2016

Evolutionary Enlightenment

ANDREW COHEN





Traditional enlightenment is what I learned from my teacher, but Evolutionary Enlightenment is what I have discovered over the last three decades.During this time, I have found a new source of emotional, psychological and spiritual liberation that easily exists within anyone's reach. To put it simply , enlightenment is evolving. It is no longer found only in the bliss of timeless Being; it is found also in the ecstatic urgency of evolutionary Becoming. We are all part of a developmental process that had a beginning in time, and that is going somewhere.When we apply the perspective of evolution to the nature of enlightenment, it changes everything. From the perspective of the eternal timeless ground, the traditional teachers are right. The highest spiritual truth is that nothing ever happened, you and I were never born, and the big bang never occurred. That's enlightenment. But from the perspective of evolution, the entire picture changes. Time is a linear process. Fourteen billion years of development have produced all of manifestation -the entire known universe and everything that's contained within it, including its greatest mystery: the capacity for consciousness itself. Our own emerging desire for spiritual freedom is not separate from the impulse that is driving the entire process. I call this the Evolutionary Impulse. Evolutionary Enlightenment calls on us to awaken to both the timeless peace of Being and the relentless passion of the Evolutionary Impulse.

Some laugh it off, others fume at NAAC score

New Delhi: TIMES NEWS NETWORK





DU Teachers See Ratings As A Ploy To Further `Privatisation Agenda'

Many in Delhi University have taken the National Assessment and Accreditation Council's (NAAC) ratings with a healthy dose of scepticism. It's not surprising that the CGPA scores and the inevitable ranking of them do not match either the public perception or the actual worth of the institutions judged. Consequently , St Stephen's ranking below less popular colleges in DU is mildly embarrassing but not to be taken too seriously.“The quality of teachers hasn't gone down,“ said Nandita Narain who teaches mathematics at the college. “Students come to us for the lectures, tutorials, extra-curricular activities and the atmosphere. We haven't lost any of that.“ She maintained that the interaction with faculty members had gone well but the one with students may have been less cordial.
St Stephen's, as another senior teacher pointed out, was going through a phase of turmoil when the NAAC process was undertaken. Practically all of 2015 was spent in unsavoury battles with various students--one over an e-magazine and another, a sexual harassment case--that went to court. This, together with attempts to amend the college's constitution led to “severe polarisation“ in the college.
“NAAC requires you to have an internal quality assessment committee, which includes the most senior teachers. The committee formed had new, junior teachers and most of the data was not provided at all,“ he said. The tea cher alleged that the former principal had himself complained of the faculty being “fossilised.“ “He (the ex-principal) was trying to tell everyone that the college is going to the dogs because of the teachers,“ he said. “The NAAC score is a complete misrepresentation.“
NAAC may not capture the real picture even in times of peace. As Narain opines, members of the Delhi University Teachers' Association at least don't take the NAAC terribly seriously“. “We see this as a ploy to further their privatisation agenda by linking NAAC to funding. Those doing well will be pushed toward autonomy ,“ she said.
Academics fear this will be used to “de-link“ the colleges with better grades from the universities and get them to “generate their own funds.“ “This means dismembering the university and could mean massive fee hike,“ said Rudrashish Chakraborty of the English department at Kirori Mal College. That, in turn, will impact diversity that NAAC seeks to reward.
Chakraborty doesn't believe the NAAC score reflects the real picture. He helped with the process at KMC, that's received a 3.54 score--the third highest in DU so far--more out of “loyalty to the institution“ than any faith in the value of the accredita tion. “NAAC follows a one-size-fits-all norm, a uniform set for universities and colleges.That can't work. It doesn't take into account the material conditions of different institutions and how they survive.The only objective of this is to give legitimacy to private educational institutions in terms of grades,“ he said.
Both Chakraborty and Narain point out that there's “disproportionate weightage“ to research in undergraduate college and to parameters over which colleges may not have a lot of control--infrastructure for public-funded institutions, curriculum, leadership when they are ruled centrally by the university administration.
“The criteria have to be finely calibrated keeping in mind the diversity of the education system but these considerations are hardly factored in,“ said Chakraborty .“NAAC doesn't have a mechanism to recognise the contribution of teachers in the classroom, that is, good teaching which benefits students. It ends up promoting self-interest in the form of individual research and projects at the cost of collective interest, especially that of students.“
Facilities for research for non-science subjects are hard to come by too and how do you increase support for students without funds? “This is a very mechanical way of looking at things. There's nothing academic about it, no depth or serious exploration of the actual problems. Where there should be a surprise visit, we have a three-day carnival,“ he retorted.
The good it does is incidental to the actual process and purpose of the exercise.KMC and several other colleges refurbished and augmented their infrastructure for the NAAC assessment round.“It brought the college that had been in a state of decline together. It arrested that decline. It created a bond between all the stakeholders--teachers, students, parents--and created a social bond in the professional space,“ added Chakraborty .

Source: Times of India, 28-12-2016

Bahrain to host 8th World Education Summit

Bahrain Bayan School and Elets Technomedia will jointly organise the eighth edition of ‘World Education Summit (WES)’ in the Kingdom of Bahrain from March 8-9, 2017.

To discuss the modalities of the mega event, Dr Shaikha Mai Al Otaibi, chairperson of Bayan School; Dr Ravi Gupta, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd and Seema Gupta, Project Manager of Elet’s Digital Learning magazine, met with Dr Majid bin Ali Al-Nuaimi, the Education Minister of Bahrain.

Dr Al-Nuaimi stressed the importance of the pioneering project which, he said, “will benefit the educational community in Bahrain and abroad”. The Organisations and Committees director Kefaya Al-Enzour also attended the meeting.

WES-Bahrain 2017 will see vibrant sessions on various aspects of school, higher, vocational and technical education besides skill development. The Summit will witness presence of Global Educational Thought Leaders, Policy Makers and Industry Leaders to discuss and deliberate upon various aspects of the development of knowledge society.

Bahrain Bayan School is among the top schools of the Arab monarchy in the Persian Gulf that focuses on values and culture.

Recently, His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, Bahrain inaugurated a state-of-the-art science and technology building at Bayan School.

Source: Digital Learning, 23-12-2016

A little bit of hope

The lifting of the ban on a newspaper, a birthday phone call, are small steps. They could be a beginning

For Kashmir, this has been a year of greater tumult — from the death of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and the political uncertainty that followed, to the violence, clampdowns and casualties after the killing of home-grown militant Burhan Wani in South Kashmir. As the year ends, however, there may be reason for cautious hope. The Jammu and Kashmir government has lifted the ban on Kashmir Reader, imposed three months ago on grounds of being a threat to “public tranquillity”. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has also promised to review the cases against young men who are currently incarcerated and did not commit “serious crimes”. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Nawaz Sharif to wish him on his birthday and Pakistan released 220 Indian fishermen.

The growing chasm between the government and the people of Kashmir became stark almost immediately after Wani’s death on July 8. As Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti told this newspaper in an interview (IE, December 18), “I knew that it would have repercussions (Wani’s death)… But it will go to such an extent, I had never thought…”. The chief minister has expressed anger, helplessness and sadness — the politics of Kashmir and the aspirations of its people were being influenced and shaped by political actors from beyond the constitutional and democratic spectrum. The use of pellet guns by security forces left around 100 dead, 1,000 partially or fully blind and another 12,000 injured, many of them young men, even children. Security forces too faced casualties — some estimates put the injured at thousands. Over 500 people were arrested under the Public Security Act — including human rights activist Khurram Parvez, released later — and about 6,000 people in all.

The publication of a newspaper and a birthday phone call are small steps, but they could be a beginning if they are built on over the next year and beyond. They could indicate that the governments, both in the state and Centre, can look at Kashmir from beyond just the prism of strategic and security interests. Political and diplomatic measures will be key to bringing back dialogue as a way to solve differences. Hopefully, these steps are a precursor to that conversation.

Source: Indian Express, 27-12-2016

India’s missing girl children

It is a cruel irony of a fast-growing India that there are fewer and fewer girls as a ratio of total births, as a result of complex factors that include parental preference. New data from the Civil Registration System of the Registrar General of India point to the hardening of the pattern, with a fall in sex ratio at birth from 898 girls to 1,000 boys in 2013, to 887 a year later. This depressing trend is consistent with evidence from the Census figures of 2001 and 2011. What is shocking is that the overall data mask the horror of particular districts and panchayats falling well below the national ratio, especially in the zero-to-six years assessment category. The scourge has, in some cases, prompted the Supreme Court to take note of the situation, and the National Human Rights Commission to ask for an explanation from State governments. In the understanding of the Centre, which it has conveyed to Parliament, girls stand a poor chance at survival because there is a “socio-cultural mindset” that prefers sons, girls are seen as a burden, and family size has begun to shrink. The BJP-led government responded to the silent crisis with the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ campaign, which focusses on the prevention of sex-selective abortions, creation of opportunities for education and protection of girl children. Now that the scheme is set to enter its third year in January, there should be a speedy assessment of its working, particularly in districts with a poor sex ratio where it has been intensively implemented.

A wider assessment needs to be made on why States such as Tamil Nadu with a strong social development foundation have slipped on sex ratio at birth (834), going by the CRS data for 2014. The cradle baby scheme was started in 1992 in Tamil Nadu to raise the survival chances of girl children by encouraging mothers to give them anonymously for adoption. Yet, the latest numbers, together with the persistence of the programme after 24 years, and 260 babies being abandoned in just one centre over a six-year period, make it clear that national policy has achieved little in real terms. Clearly, there is a need to go beyond slogans and institute tangible schemes. Enforcement of the law that prohibits determination of the sex of the foetus must go hand in hand with massive social investments to protect both immediate and long-term prospects of girls — in the form of cash incentives through registration of births, a continuum of health care, early educational opportunities and social protection. Half-measures cannot produce a dramatic reversal of the shameful national record.

Source: The Hindu, 1-12-2016

Ending the Manipur blockade

The blockade of the national highways leading to the Manipur valley, called by the United Naga Council (UNC), has been in place since November 1. This has severely affected life in the State, with shortages and escalating costs of essential supplies such as fuel and food, even as demonetisation has exacerbated problems. Blockades like this are not new to Manipur. In 2011, there was initially a hundred-day-plus blockade enforced by Kuki-led groups, and countered later by Naga groups, which together had a debilitating effect on life in Manipur. This time the blockade is in place to oppose the creation of new districts by the Okram Ibobi Singh government. On December 9 it issued a gazette notification for the creation of seven new districts by bifurcating seven (of a total of nine) districts. This decision had as much to do with long-pending demands — in particular, for a new Kuki-majority district to be carved out of the larger Senapati hill district — as with easing administrative access to far-flung areas from the district headquarters. With State Assembly elections around the corner, the decision by the Congress-led government was also a desperate measure to woo the hill residents. While residents and groups in the new districts have welcomed the decision, the UNC has protested, alleging that areas with a Naga population have been divided and that the lack of consultation is a violation of commitments made by both the Centre and the State in various memoranda of understanding.

Already, just as in 2011, counter-blockades have been called by other groups, this time in the Meitei-dominated valley, and there has been violence both in the hills and in the valley. The State government last month sought the Centre’s assistance to end the blockade, given that New Delhi has been in peace talks with the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) group that supports the UNC. While the Centre has sent paramilitary forces to both Nagaland and Manipur, the inaction in clearing the blockade of the national highways is puzzling. Efforts to impose a political solution through blockades that cut arterial routes supplying essential goods to various areas of Manipur are a cynical ploy. Such action heightens ethnic polarisation and threatens, once again, the fragile peace in the State. Ideally there should be a dialogue that involves all major stakeholders — the State government, groups that support redistricting, the UNC and the Centre. But first, there should be zero tolerance towards all such blockades.

Source: The Hindu, 22-12-2016