Online Higher Education in India

I have been excited about online education from a long time. I recall my nervous beginning of giving a lecture on Computer Architecture course almost 35 years ago with students sitting in dozens of location and watching me on TV, and asking questions through telephone. When I returned to India, and joined IIT Kanpur, I tried something silly about 25 years ago. I sent out an email to lots of companies, offering to teach their employees Computer Networks for free. There were many registrations. And the model was that I will take a regular class in IITK. I would record my lecture (audio only), would transcribe it, include some pictures, etc., and send that material by email. My external "students" liked it, but it was too much work and I stopped it after a few weeks.

In early 2000s, I recorded all the Computer Networks lectures twice, once in a studio environment, and once in a classroom environment, and these were used by a lot of people to learn networking. But till now, I have not offered a real online course, and I will remedy that shortcoming soon. However, my learning has moved online. While I continue to learn new things through books and other printed material, or by attending lectures in person, more of my learning takes place through stuff available online, from Khan Academy, Webinars, Coursera, and so on. And I am convinced that increasingly, everyone will get more of their learning online.

But can we offer a full degree program online. Frankly, even I was skeptical till last month. But Covid changed that. And yet, I am not suggesting a fully online degree, but a hybrid model in which one spends some time on campus and some times learns from home.

What are the typical concerns with online learning?

1. Is learning from lecture as effective when the lecturer cannot have a personal interaction.
2. Can learning be as effective when there is no peer learning, no interaction in hostels, for example.
3. What about labs.
4. What about non-curricular aspects of learning, having fun on campus, teamwork, making friends, creating networks.

Let us first address the issue of effectiveness of lectures. If I give a lecture in a physical classroom to a bunch of students, and I give a lecture using video conferencing to the same set of students, what would be better. Quite likely, the lecture in the classroom. But that is not the right way to look at it.

People have looked at effectiveness of small versus large classes, and initially they asked the question: If I were to give a lecture to 50 students versus if I were to give a lecture to 100 students, which class would have learnt better. And the answer was the class of 50 students. But then the question was changed. If an average teacher were to give a lecture to 50 students versus if a rock star teacher were to give a lecture to 100 students, which class would have learnt better. And this time the answer was the class of 100 students.

Similarly, the question in the context of online learning ought to compare a physical classroom lecture by an average teacher versus an online lecture by a rock star faculty. The answer is likely to be an online lecture by a rock star faculty.

What a college (at least a private one) can do is to recruit the best teachers at twice the salary of "average" teachers, and ask them to handle a class size which is four times of what the "average" teachers were handling. If you look at load on a teacher in a typical decent college, there is a faculty to student ratio of 1:20, and each student is doing roughly 5 courses a semester. So on an average, a faculty is teaching about 100 students in a semester, typically in two courses of 50 students each. A rock star faculty can easily teach an online course with 400 students. That is pretty trivial, in fact. So everyone benefits. Students get better lectures. Institutions save money, not only in terms of faculty salary, but also in terms of physical infrastructure, and can share some of those savings with students and reduce their tuition. Faculty salaries go up substantially. So the job attracts best people.

The second point about peer learning needs to be handled. The online pedagogy will have to be different than classroom pedagogy. In classroom teaching, students are invariably meeting outside the class, in the corridors, in hostels, in library, in cafe, and they will ask questions, clarifications, from each other, thereby enhancing learning. Someone teaching online will have to encourage this explicitly by having discussion boards, may be some points for greater interaction there, by asking collaborative assignments, and so on. And the model that I am looking at for now, there would be some opportunities to get together on campus as well. More on that in points 3 and 4.

The third point is about labs. In the simple model that I am proposing, I am assuming that students will be coming to campus occasionally to do labs. If the college is primarily a local college, we could ask different batches to come to campus on a different day, like 1st year on Monday, 2nd year on Tuesday, etc., or consecutive weeks, like 1st year in 1st week of the month, 2nd year in 2nd week of the month, etc. In case of institutions with students from all over the country, we could ask them to come for one month at a time. Like 1st year in 1st month, 2nd year in 2nd month, etc. So we would complete all labs easily, giving enough time to students to explore, do projects, etc., and yet require only 1/4th of the infrastructure on campus, at least hostels and classrooms.

The fourth point is about extra-curricular, campus experience, etc. I would modify my approach a bit and insist that first year students stay on campus full time even if most of the courses may still be online.

So here is the overall scheme:

First year students live on campus full time. The lectures are online, but there could be some interactions in person. The labs are held regularly. They get to know their peers, make friends, etc. Once they know each other, they would continue to interact in future semesters when they are spending most of the time working from home.

Depending on how much you value on-campus experience, you could make second year off campus or on campus or give an option to students. If they are off campus, they need to come to campus for some time during the semester, as mentioned above.

For third and fourth year, one of the issues would be that there are many electives, and hence class sizes are small, and given that our strategy is to hire rock star teachers at double the salary, it would not make much financial sense to ask those faculty members to teach small classes. They could teach some classes but we could collaborate with other institutions and offer cross registration so that each class becomes a reasonable size. This could be done through organizations like Coursera, and not necessary through mutual agreements. Our faculty could offer a course which can have registration from other places, or we could offer our students an option to register for a course offered by some other university. Again, these batches would spend some time on campus, scheduled in a way that 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students don't come at the same time. Also, if anyone wants to spend the entire semester on campus, we may allow it with an extra cost.

We could now make another change. I am assuming scheduled, synchronous lectures for the first year. May be second year, too. But from 3rd year onwards, the courses are not through synchronous lectures, but through recorded lectures, the standard MOOCs. The idea is that after 2nd year, they are more responsible and don't need a strict timing. Also, by the end of 2nd year, they would have learnt some basic skills that they can even think of taking up a job and doing the rest of under-graduate degree in part-time mode. This will really help students from financially weaker backgrounds.

Now, one may feel that the quality issue has not been addressed adequately (though I believe that all this with rock star faculty can deliver even a better quality). To the extent there apprehensions are justified, we should also look at the benefits - significantly lower cost to the student, requires much less physical infrastructure on campus, thereby allowing campuses in the middle of big cities to expand their intake, and ability to learn any time from any where. The last point enables students to take up jobs and move to part-time education, a big plus for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. On the other hand, it also enables to finish degree sooner than four years, for someone who can spend more time on his/her education. So, even if there is some marginal decrease in quality (that I cannot perceive), the advantages are tremendous.

There are challenges, of course. Initially, rock star faculty may not want to shift to a college offering online education even at a higher salary because it is not clear whether this model will be a success in the market. UGC regulations may come in the way for now, though they are constantly updating their rules. The bigger problem will be accreditation and ranking. AICTE requires a teaching focused college to have a faculty student ratio of 1:20. They need to change that and find other proxies for quality teaching. Similarly, NIRF and other rankings consider faculty-student ratio as a strong proxy for quality of teaching, and the entire model here has been conceived based on hiring fewer top class faculty who can handle larger online classes.