Essential Education – Taking Creativity Online

On the 18th of May 2021, IIAD’s Director, Dr. Jitin Chadha, was one of the esteemed panelists invited to participate in the ‘Essential Education’ webinar hosted by Supreeth Nagaraju, Head Education, Digital Media - India & South Asia - Adobe. This panel discussion addressed different challenges faced by the students, teachers and educational institutions over the past year. The webinar featured a discussion on exploring how education systems and learning has changed in response to challenges caused by the pandemic in the past year. The webinar also facilitated an exchange of views on the paradigm shift of switching from physical to virtual classrooms, upscaling tech specification, developing new strategies and processes to incubate the shifting model, and the dire need for digital literacy.

The panel featured some of the most notable patrons of the education industry Anant Chakradeo (VC of MIT ADT University,Maharashtra), Hrridaysh Deshpande (VC of Ajeenkya- D Y Patil University, Maharashtra), Sabu Thomas (VC, Mahatma Gandhi University,Kerala), Malini V Shankar (VC of Indian Maritime University, Tamil Nadu) and Dr. Jitin Chadha (Director Indian Institute of Art and Design’s, New Delhi)

Commenting on the current educational modification, Dr. Jitin Chadha talked about how the institute had to upskill itself to meet the modern demands of educating during a pandemic. He said, “We had a plan of outlay of technology over the next five years over a year ago, and we implemented that in the last nine months like most other institutions in the country. There’s a saying never to miss a crisis, so we took the opportunity to upskill ourselves with technology and, more importantly, how our faculty will use it, which is a harder part. Teaching online requires you to change the mindset and academic delivery.” He also discussed how the education system worldwide forced educators to shift from traditional teaching methods to an online teaching model.

Further addressing the educational reform at IIAD, he said, “We were fortunate that Kingston University was upskilling its faculty the same as we were. We could lean on them to upskill our faculty with their training development tool to be able to use it effectively. For us, the idea of education going forward is not the question of Offline or online. It could be teaching offline for three months and it could go online after that, which might go on for a while. It’s been a very interesting experience and we’ve found out that it is possible.It is an opportunity to upskill ourselves and address a wider audience outside the walls of our campus.”

It was concluded that the pandemic had caught everyone by surprise and that it was necessary to create a more robust educational environment to be able to combat such crisis situations. The way forward stressed on the use of technology as well as On Campus classes in the hybrid mode to meet the teaching learning requirements of the students.