25 Feb Is the “Guru” Touch Missing in E-Learning?
Excerpts from the speech by our Vice-Principal Ms. Helen. C Mary at the 16th World Education Summit held on February 21-22, Hyderabad
A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind and touches a heart.
As Mahatma Gandhiji quoted “Education means all-round drawing of the best in child and man in body, mind, and spirit.”
This can be well connected to Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains:
- Cognitive – Mental skills
- Affective – Growth in feelings or emotions and
- Psychomotor – Physical skills.
As we educate students, we work on all-round development and which is possible only with the GURU present in the classroom.
In e-learning, the GURU touch is missing as it caters to just cognitive domain. There is no scope for development of affective and psychomotor domains.
Synchronous e-learning to a small extent caters to affective domain as there would be a teacher/ trainer present at the other end during webinar/virtual classroom / video conference. But then there is no scope for catering to psychomotor domain.
There are 3Qs that we are aware of.
- Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
- Emotional Quotient (EQ), and
- Social Quotient (SQ)
EQ and SQ make one manage better than the other.
But there is a 4th Q which is important – The Adversity Quotient.
The Adversity Quotient (AQ)
It is the measure of your ability to go through a rough patch in life and come out without losing one’s mind.
So Educators do not prepare the road for the children, but prepare the children for the road.
Without a GURU/ teacher present in the classroom all these would not be possible. In this technological era, a teacher should also be equipped with technological skills to use that as a tool to make the teaching learning process effective.