“Our goal can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success”- Pablo Picasso
Rightly pointed out by the famous French painter that, goals of any activity can only be fulfilled when there is a clear roadmap or plan laid out to fulfill the goal. Planning is an important component of any activity and this is something that one grows up hearing it so often. But do we really implement it while are planning to execute an important decision?
We say so because all education institutions understand the real worth of digital learning but when it comes to successful implementation of the solution, campuses simply go wrong mainly because there is no ample planning involved in the process. Say an institution plans to go all digital in its learning approach without taking into consideration, students’ access to computing technology. Don’t you think this could turn out to be a hindrance to the institution’s learning initiatives? This was what Kenneth C Green– the head of Campus Computing Project and its author pointed out. He said, ‘Besides a lack of student access to computing technology, the other obstacle holding up digital learning initiatives is that so many institutions lack a campus plan for “going digital.”
Another significant point raised in the project was that, at least two in five schools have no conclusive institutional plan before the implementation of any important initiative such as the digital learning. The situation gets even bad when it comes to public universities with counts going up to 51 percent. And when speaking of planning, it is not simply about pre planning process but planning out things once any project is executed. Say, after an institution has implemented successfully the digital learning project, they also need to check if it is working adequately in the departments. Monitoring the process is as important as it is evaluating the success of any project. IF the process goes off systematically, the end result is bound to be good.
The other pitfall in the way to successful digital learning is not adopting a systematic approach towards implementation of digital learning. Any change introduced in the institutions regular activity cycle leads to some amount of confusion at first and as time goes by things come into order. To avoid chaotic situation all at once, what if the changes are introduced phase by phase. Wouldn’t such a step be more logical from the point of view of posing less chaos?
In Georgia Highlands College for example, implementation of electronic portfolio project was a failure because they did not step forward as per planning. Read the entire story here. Hence, it is not always about not planning things but the approach in which the planning is executed. So both planning and systematic approach play a role in attaining success through any project implementation.
Last but never the least is offering adequate assistance and support to the teachers using this tool for pedagogy. This is perhaps the reason that much emphasis is laid upon professional training of teachers as the methods of pedagogical approach is fast transforming. Digital curriculum undergoes constant upgrading of the platform as and when technologies change. Such a shift can have an important impact on the existing content. To be accommodate such shifts, first and foremost the user must be accustomed to such change in the techniques, use of different digital tools as well as the different digital programs.
Further, educators need considerable amount of support in their efforts to advance digital learning in the classroom or integrate new software & technologies in their pedagogy. Thus, such areas also needs to come under planning so that enough support is provided to the faculty members who would be using the digital curriculum. For the teacher, it is indeed going to be really tough- deciding on new teaching practices plus figuring out what are its success rates simultaneously to negate the ones that are not favorable for greater student outcome and finally keeping the methodology which showed good outcome.
Thus, until all these wrong steps are rectified by the college authorities, it is really difficult to realize the value of digital learning.
So, what do you think about this? Did we miss out any other wrong step followed by campuses and which after evaluation turns out to be a great hindrance in the way to digital learning in institutions? Do let us know your thoughts on it through your comments.
