Dr Sajad Hussain Din

e-learning can be used to restructure the education system in our country. The education system of our country is primeval and can be improved by many ways, among which e-learning is the most significant. The superannuated way of learning, i.e., face-to-face learning can be replaced with online learning. This form of pedagogy has many advantages, such as expediency, augmented interaction, more course options, and lower cost. The detriments of such mode of teaching are lack of face-to-face communication, higher need for self-discipline, and more work for instructor.
There are various platforms such as moodle, blackboard, webcity, adobe captivate prime, litmos, dacebo, slack and microsoft teams, which are used as learning management systems and communicating tools. In order to teach effectually, the essential skills are instructional design, organisational design, time management skills, online communication skills, aptitude to inspire communications and collaboration. The online courses should be designed in such a way as to build camaraderie. The learners and the instructor should know each other and participate in frequent discussions. Some learning outcomes should be established in line with the curriculum. More activity, in the form of verbs like describe, demonstrate, outline, design, contrast and create, should be used in assignments.
An efficacious way of e-learning is to follow Bloom’s Taxonomy which says: create, evaluate, analyse, apply, understand, and remember. Shared learning and teaching resources should be curated, which include course roadmap, course expectations, assignments, websites, e-books, articles, blog posts, videos and podcasts. The learners should be able to contact the instructor through the learning management system or communication tools such as Slack. Benefits of pupils communicating with each other are that they learn from each other, answer each other’s questions, troubleshoot technical issues, and practice important online collaboration skills.
The assessment should be both formative and summative. Formative assessments should include knowledge check and quiz, one-on-one conversation, surveys, rough drafts and project checks. Summative assessments should check whether the learner has achieved the level of proficiency through tests, final exams, final presentations and final project. Most importantly, teachers should be ready to narrow the gap between tech and teach, or in other words, be ready to put the tech into teach.

The writer is Principal, SSM College of Engineering, Pattan, Baramulla [email protected]

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