PRAGYATA Guidelines

PRAGYATA Guidelines | UPSC

HEADLINES:

Union HRD Minister virtually releases PRAGYATA Guidelines on Digital Education

WHY IN NEWS:

Guidelines on Digital/ Online Education provide a roadmap for carrying forward online education with enhanced quality: Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’

MINISTRY? :-Ministry of Human Resource Development

SYLLABUS COVERED: GS 3: Education

LEARNING:

For PRELIMS go through the eight key steps . Remember the aim and objective . Do not forget multi-modal online course initiative by MHRD.

For MAINS do you think there is urgent need of Artificial Intelligence integrated platform for teachers and students ? If yes how should be this implemented ?

ISSUE:

Guidelines recommend a cap on duration and number of online sessions in a day for students from Class I to XII

PRAGYATA GUIDELINES ON DIGITAL EDUCATION

PRAGYATA Guidelines | UPSC

COVID-19 pandemic has led to secure disruptions in normal life, including closure of schools.
It has impacted over 240 million children of the country who are enrolled in schools.
Extended school closures may cause loss of learning.

REMODELLING LEARNING

To mitigate the impact of the pandemic, schools will have to remodel and reimagine the way teaching and learning .

We also need to introduce a suitable method of delivering quality education through a healthy mix of schooling at home and schooling at school.

AIM

PRAGYATA guidelines have been developed from the perspective of learners, with a focus on online/blended/digital education for students who are presently at home due to lockdown.

OBJECTIVE

These guidelines on Digital/ Online Education provide a roadmap or pointers for carrying forward online education to enhance the quality of education.

Guidelines will be relevant and useful for a diverse set of stakeholders including school heads, teachers, parents, teacher educators and students.
The guidelines stress upon the use of alternative academic calendar of NCERT, for both, learners having access to digital devices and learners having limited or no access.

THE EIGHT KEY STEPS

The PRAGYATA guidelines include eight steps of online/ digital learning .

Plan- Review- Arrange- Guide- Yak(talk)- Assign- Track- Appreciate.

PRAGYATA Guidelines

PRAGYATA Guidelines | UPSC : PRAGYATA guidelines ensure the safety and academic welfare of the students.

These steps guide the planning and implementation of digital education step by step with examples.
Online education has filled lot of gaps during the pandemic but utmost care has to be taken while using digital technologies to educate the students.

OUTLINE SUGGESTIONS

The guidelines outlines suggestions for administrators, school heads, teachers, parents and students on the following areas:

Need assessment
Concerns while planning online and digital education like duration, screen time, inclusiveness, balanced online and offline activities etc level wise
Modalities of intervention including resource curation, level wise delivery etc.
Physical, mental health and wellbeing during digital education
Cyber safety and ethical practices including precautions and measures for maintaining cyber safety
Collaboration and convergence with various initiatives

GUIDELINES FOR SCHOOLS

RECOMMENDED SCREEN TIME

PRE PRIMARY CLASSES : On a given day for interacting with parents and guiding them, not more than 30 minutes.
CLASSES 1 TO 12 : Recommended to adopt/adapt the alternative academic calendar of NCERT at http://ncert.nic.in/aac.html
CLASSES 1 TO 8 : Online synchronous learning may be undertaken for not more than two sessions of 30-45 minutes each on the days the States/UTs decide to have online classes for primary sections
CLASSES 9 TO 12 : Online synchronous learning may be undertaken for not more than four sessions of 30-45 minutes each on the days as decided by States/UTs.

These guidelines for school heads and teachers describe the need assessment, planning and steps to implement digital education while ensuring cyber safety and privacy measures.

It also outlines the support to be provided to students with special needs.
Main emphasis is on balanced online and offline activities keeping the screen time as an essential parameter in accordance with the level of students.

GUIDELINE FOR PARENTS

Need for physical wellbeing
Mental health.
Cyber safety measures for children at home.

Guidelines for physical health and mental wellness is stressed across the guidelines for all stakeholders measures so that children do not get overly stretched or stressed.

PRAGYATA Guidelines UPSC

Students also get affected negatively (postural defects, ophthalmic issues, and other physical problems) owing to prolonged use of digital devices.

PRAGYATA Guideline

Also it provides sufficient Do’s and Don’ts regarding ergonomics and cyber safety

The Guidelines also emphasize the need to unify all efforts related to digital/ online/on-air education.

MULTI-MODE ACCESS

PM eVIDYA envisions to unify all efforts related to digital/ online/on-air education, benefitting nearly 25 crore school going children across the country.

THE INITIATIVE INCLUDES

DIKSHA– The nation’s digital infrastructure for states/UTs for providing QR coded Energized Textbooks for all grades, MOOCs courses, and quality e-content for school education for students, teachers (One Nation, One Digital Platform).
SWAYAM PRABHA– One earmarked TV channel per class from 1 to 12 (One Class, One Channel)
SWAYAM– Online courses in MOOCS format for Open school or NIOS
DAISY- Special e-content for visually and hearing impaired : Developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website/YouTube
ITPAL : Online Coaching: ITPAL for IITJEE/NEET preparation
NATIONAL TEST ABHYAAS : It is a personalized adaptive learning application for students enrolling in competitive examinations conducted by the National testing agency.
NIOS : It has developed more than 270 videos in sign language across 7 subjects to provide educational access to learners at secondary level and Yoga courses.
MUKT VIDYA VANI : Internet radio is an audio service that is accessible from anywhere in the world. Mukt Vidya Vani (MVV) i.e. Open Education Radio facility will provision educational and informational content for better learning.

The web radio will ensure learners with a stream of audio that can be paused/replayed.

RADIO VAHINI FM 91.2 MHZ : The Community Radio Station of NIOS is a means of extending education to school dropouts, learners enrolled through ODL, urban women and to marginalized sections of the society with access to radio.

Radio Vahini broadcast is available 24×7 and reaches up to 6-10 kilometers covering approximately 10 lakh listeners including learners

CBSE PODCASTS : Shiksha Vaani is an audio-based learning initiative of CBSE and is available via Android App store.

IASbhai WINDUP:

In a country like India characterised by multifarious diversity and constraints in terms of availability of resources (ICT infrastructure, electricity, budget, skilled manpower), switching over to digital modes of education is full of challenges.
A local, decentralised planning and implementation is the need of the hour for which various States/ UTs level organization such as SCERTs, School Boards, DIETs, BIETs, CTEs, IASEs and National level organisations such as NCERT, CBSE, NIOS, KVS, NVS need to join hands for a change that will sustain post COVID-19 also.
Such collaboration will help to continuously enhance the quality of education and skill development of the large student population and we can leverage the demographic dividend in coming years.

SUGGESTED READING : ONE NATION ONE DIGITAL PLATFORM

SOURCES:THE HINDU & PIB | PRAGYATA Guidelines | UPSC

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