Around 30.58 percent of teachers are still not highly proficient with digital tools, after over two years of rapid digitalization. This was revealed by TeamLease EdTech, in its report titled “Digital Transformation of the Teaching Community”.
From teachers lack of training (as they had to jump into online teaching due to the pandemic) to children's lack of interest in digital learning to challenges of the internet, here's a slew of reasons why online teaching continues to be a challenge in India, as revealed by the survey.
Highlights of the study
Due to the sudden transition to online teaching, majority of teachers (close to 79.34 percent) learnt by practice/doing
Around 35.54 percent teachers are equipped and prepared themselves by taking course provided by institutions, from friends/colleagues/family (25.62 percent) and by undertaking self-sponsored courses (19.01 percent)
Around 75.04 percent of educators feel that students tend to lose interest during online classes and 44.63 percent of teachers feel that both students and teachers are still uncomfortable with digital integration
From an infrastructural point of view, 65.29 percent of teachers feel internet connectivity is a challenge and 50.41percent of them feel that there is a shortage of dedicated laptops/smartphones with students
While 93.39 percent of teachers can operate virtual classrooms, 50.41 percent can conduct online assessments and 40.50 percent can use content authoring tools
Only 31.40 percent can manage an online LMS and 14.88 percent can operate virtual cloud labs
Around 39.67 percent of teachers still feel that the training is inadequate further skilling is needed to enable them to teach students more effectively.
Sharing his views on the survey findings and the current digital teaching ecosystem, Shantanu Rooj, Founder and CEO, TeamLease EdTech, said, “It has been over two years since we witnessed a sudden, unplanned, overnight shift to digital learning. Back in September 2020, six months into the pandemic, when we did a survey with 1200 teachers for our study on ‘The use of Technology in Teaching & Learning in Indian Higher Education Institutes’ more than 80 percent of the teachers were uncomfortable with online teaching.
"In India, there are 1,100 Universities, 42,343 colleges and 11,779 standalone institutions and 38.5 million students. With the aggressive push towards digitization in learning through the National Education Policy (NEP), and UGC’s recent announcements enabling more universities to go online; it is imperative that a higher percentage of teachers are highly proficient and better equipped with the nuances of online teaching.”
Future of online teaching
The report, also delves into the sentiment of teachers about the future of digital intervention in education. Interestingly 90.08 percent of teachers foresee a use for the technical and pedagogical skills that they have acquired over the last two years. In fact, 66.94 percent of them felt that these new skills have opened better career opportunities for them.
According to the survey findings, teachers have expressed their interest to continue using digital tools in the future for virtual classrooms (74.38 percent), online assignments (61.98 percent), pre-recording content (50.41 percent) and online examinations (39.67 percent). Moreover, 26.45 percent of teachers also want to use virtual cloud labs.
Ms Neeti Sharma, Co-Founder and President, TeamLease EdTech said, “Digital learning is here to stay and with a continual increase in the integration of digital mechanisms with conventional learning, upskilling and reskilling the teaching community on a regular basis will be crucial. More and more HEIs have realized the value of having formal training. Currently 79.34 percent of teachers are undergoing some form of training conducted by the institutes or taking Online/MOOC courses. However, going forward, the skilling endeavor needs to customized, especially to prepare educators for emerging digital competencies like AI, AR, VR, Blockchain, IoT, 3D printing, Metaverse and Web3 etc.”
Methodology of report
“Digital Transformation of the Teaching Community” report was conducted with 1000+ teachers pan India. The survey report is the second edition of TeamLease EdTech’s reports on digital amalgamation in education. In September 2020, the firm had launched a report on ‘The use of Technology in Teaching & Learning in Indian Higher Education Institutes’, conducted with 1200+ teachers pan India.
