Webinar: Metamorphosis of Education

‘Metamorphosis of Education’ was held on 27th September 2020. Prof. Sugata Mitra was the main speaker of the webinar, along with Prof. Mabel Quiroga as the challenger and Prof. Prabu Aggarwal, President, NIIT University as the moderator.

Prof. Mitra, a TED award winner in 2013, is known for the Hole-in-the-wall and Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) experiments. He has earned multiple awards such as the Dewang Mehta award for innovations in IT from the Government of India (2003).

Prof. Mabel Quiroga, Director, and Founder of SOLE, Argentina. She is a language teacher, teacher trainer, and education innovator with more than 30 years of experience in the field of language teaching and technology.

The webinar discussed the three pillars of education, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment and how they changed due to COVID-19. They further spoke on important aspects such as digital learning, student retention, fatigue, parental concerns, and the dire need for the current education system to change. Prof. Sugata Mitra talked about the necessity of change in curriculum, the importance of pedagogy amongst teachers and learners, and various other important aspects of the current educational system. They discussed the importance of digital self-learning and the ability to learn through the seemingly endless resource of the internet. Prof. Sugata Mitra explained the necessity of change in today’s misconceptions of education and believes in challenging the teachers as equally as the students to create a perfect platform for learning.

There was a large number of audience present and some very pertinent questions were asked, such as “What can be the model of education that caters to the delivery of individual needs?” or “ How to reduce the stress on the present evaluation system so as to enhance genuine and authentic learning among students?”. The audience was thoroughly captivated by the learned opinions and explanations of the speakers.

This webinar was held under the label ‘Educatomic’, an initiative of NIIT University driven by NU students.