2 MOOCs for Agriculture

Transcript

Hello Friends. I am sure you are being motivated by the experiments of Digital Green, that we discussed in our previous class. How a grassroots professional or the farmer can also be a development messenger. In this discussion we will be taking up the concept of MOOC, specially for agriculture. Agriculture is one of the important sector in the Indian economy. As on date about 18% revenue that is being generated with the agricultural operations. Agriculture is contributing to the extent of 18% to the Indian gross domestic product. So we can realize the importance of agriculture. And it is supporting more than 50% of the population.

Introduction

• And because of that, it demands attention in terms of human resource development as well as capacity building. Traditionally people are trained in agriculture. But technologically they need to be trained and their capacity are to be built, so wherein the human resource development activities are very very essential. But the existing, the traditional education system as well as the capacity building system. Are they sufficient to train this huge amount of population? So that’s what is the question mark. And that is where the concept of MOOCs is coming in.
• So the concept of MOOC can satisfy this particular need of the society by giving appropriate information to the huge amount of population.
• Basically it is an online platform that provides free access to numerous high quality basic as well as the advanced courses in that particular domain. So it is an educational platform, it is a learning platform for all. So number of people can be part of this particular system.
• And generally the courses are being offered by the renowned faculty from the premier institutions of the country.

MOOCs Means

The term MOOC is an acronym. The elements involved are.

• The first element is the massiveness. So why we call it as a massive, because it allows access to large number of learners. In the traditional education system we have limitations like, in a particular class we cannot have admissions maybe, 50, 100, 250, 200; Whatever it is, the numbers are fixed by the competent authorities. So we cannot think of beyond that. But in case of MOOCs we can have number of people. It maybe in few thousands or few millions, so it may go beyond that also.
• Then openness. What is that openness? So in a formal education we have number of restrictions, that these are the age limits and these are the prerequisites to offer this particular course or to be part of this particular educational mechanism. So but here there are no restrictions. So that is how it is open. There are no restrictions as well as there are no prerequisites.
• The third element is online. Because we are serving huge number of people across the geographical area. So online digital platforms are the only way wherein, we can reach these many number of people
• Then basically it is a course. It has its own syllabus, it has its own educational content and it has its own methodology to deliver. And they conduct the test and ultimately certificates are also being issued. So that is why we call it as a course.

Put together it becomes a Massive Open Online Course. That is MOOCs.

Agricultural Education in India

Now coming to the Agricultural education in India. Agricultural education in India is being imparted with the help of 75 State Agricultural Universities, 4 Central Universities with the faculty of agriculture. Some colleges which are affiliated to the traditional universities. And number of private institutions which are affiliated to different State universities. So this is what is the educational infrastructure that we have in case of agricultural education. They are admitting the students based on their own criteria. Somebody is having the National level entrance test. Somebody is having the State level entrance test. So like that the student’s are being admitted.

1. But the basic issue is whether all these students are having an access to the quality learning material. Number one
2. Whether the University has the competent professionals for each and every topics that are covered as a part of the syllabus of agriculture. These are some of the issues that MOOCs is looking into, so that how can we overcome these lacunae. Because there are a number of colleges wherein the number of faculty members itself is very less. Even though there are sanctioned posts, but the posts are vacant.

And even though the field posts are there, the expertise or the specialization as well as superspecialization of that particular faculty member is not matching with the course. Number of such issues are there with each and every educational institutions. But how to overcome these things. Basically we can say that the paucity of the faculty members in the State Agricultural Universities or in general, the agricultural education system. How can we overcome them? So the best alternative that we can think of is, development of MOOCs.

• So there are certain e-mediated efforts in case of agricultural education. Just to quote some of them.
  • The concept of e-PG Pathshala, launched by the University Grants Commission. So the number of lectures that were video recorded and they are put on this particular platform with the help of Inflibnet, and so they are accessible to all. Topics are available in Pdf format. Any student, any learner can download them. The video lectures are also available. But they are not offering a particular course in the form of MOOCs. But the video lectures are available, the Ppt’s are available, the Pdf format in the form of notes are available.
  • Then coming to the agMOOCs platform. Which is one of the important platform in providing the MOOCs for the students of agriculture. So far 14 courses have already been developed by registering, about 2 lakh students have already been benefited out of these 14 courses. So still the efforts are continuing to offer the latest developments in the courses as well as according to the syllabus of students of agriculture and allied sciences.
  • Swayam is another platform which is again managed by University Grants Commission, so wherein the people are educating themselves with the help of this Swayam. Now the Swayam is also becoming mandatory for the students and they are also offering the courses as a part of your syllabus. So universities are slowly entering into those mode. So that student maybe belonging to arts stream, science, or law, management etc etc faculties. So they can offer the courses online. And they can get the benefits of that.
  • The National Platform for Technology Enhanced Learning is focusing on the engineering education in India. And they have also developed a number of courses. The entire undergraduate as well as the syllabus has been covered with this NPTEL courses.
  • Some efforts are also being made through this National Institute for Agricultural Extension Management. They are also offering courses on the teaching skills and the communication skills. Then the NAARM has also offered some courses for the benefit of faculty members as well as students.

So these are some of the efforts that are being made in Indian context. And with some efforts in case of agriculture sector. Basically so now I will be discussing the outcomes of the study, that we made specially on the agMOOCs, the courses offered under agMOOCs.

The objective of that study was to assess the learner’s perception and feedback about the courses offered on agMOOCs platform. So before we exactly enter into the study, Let us look into the features of this agMOOCs platform,

Attributes of agMOOCs Platform

• So which is agMOOC is a user friendly format.
• The registration process is very very simple. You need not fill into huge forms with lot of formalities. It is very simple. In a couple of seconds you can complete that.
• And it has an access to all the courses offered. Once you register. Maybe you are registering for a particular course. But you can access all the courses that are on that particular platform.
  The contents are available in audio, video as well as the Pdf formats and agMOOCs app has made the accessing the course of agMOOCs platform very very simple. So it is an excellent example for m-Learning also. Which we discussed in one of our previous discussions. So wherein just by using this app you can have access to all the courses.
• Then there is a mechanism of monitoring of attendance. So as a learner your attendance is also being monitored on this particular platform. If your attendance is less than 80%. So even though you complete the examination successfully. You will not be offered certificate because of your lack of attendance. So that kind of systematic monitoring mechanism is there.
• Then offline availability of the course contents is another feature, which helps students who are facing some issues with the connectivity.
• Then there are number of announcements that are being announced by the administrators at regular intervals, they are always available on the announcements section.
• Then static as well as the dynamic resources are also there. The static resources as I have already said, the PPT’s are available, videos are available. As well as the dynamic resources are also available. Maybe the weblinks and you can move from this link to that various other platforms also.
• Then forums are there to put your views and get answers to the doubts. Students can always ask the question. The number of questions that we are facing for MOOCs that are being offered. And those things are being addressed by the concerned course instructors.
• The Hangouts for chat with the fellow learner. So this provides an excellent opportunity for every learner to have their own community, to establish new friendships and new circles on their own.

So these are some of the features of this agMOOC.

Methodology

The methodology used for this study was,

• Of the 14 courses that were offered, 2 courses were offered from 20th Feb to 31st March, 2018. Which has observed the registration of 4884 learners across the country.
• So each and every student registered was given an opportunity to provide the feedback. So of the 1098 active registered learners. So I said active registered learners, it means whose attendance was being monitored, who were having more than 80% attendance. So that is the number that I am counting here. Out of which 952 learners have given the feedback, which amounts to around 87% of the learners have given their feedback. So that is what just I am trying to put before you.

Result and Feedback

The first effort to have the crosstab of age and gender participation in agMOOC courses. Because this was one of the curiosity that the team was having. So whether is the gender limiting factor. Or the age a limiting factor. So looking into the results, so we can say that, there is no restriction on gender as well as age, because we can find the participation of each and every age group. Starting from 17 years to more than 65 years of people who were participating in this particular course. And gender was not an issue again.

And when we ask the learners to provide the reasons for participating in the course. So 66% of them said that to increase their knowledge base as well as awareness. Because right now they have number of sources of information in addition to their formal education systems. Of which more than 66% selected the agMOOCs platform, because they have that inquisitiveness, as well as they want to learn more about this particular concept, as well as they want to be part of this system. So this is what is the outcome that we get.

Then 18% of the respondents said that they are part of this course because of their professional development. And if you look into the device with which they accessed the MOOCs courses is, so a majority of them used the mobile app. So which is another welcome step. We say that m-learning provides connectivity anytime anywhere based on your time of convenience. Majority were using the app and the beneficiaries of that.

Then so if we look into the distribution of learners based on the perception of easiness of using the agMOOC app. You can say that 79-80% of the respondents, so were of the opinion that it is very easy. So of which more than 55% said that it is very easy and 29% also agreed to this particular view. So if you look into their association, there is no association between the gender and the perception of learners regarding the easiness of agMOOCs platform, it means so male as well as the female participants did not have any difference in the perception of, in use of this agMOOCs app.

So when you look into the distribution of learner based on the gained knowledge on agMOOCs platform. So majority of them said that they are sharing the contents as well as the outcomes of this course with their friends. And the next category was they shared it with their fellow students in their class. So that becomes a motivating factor for taking up the further courses. So this is how we can see the participation of the learners.

So if you look into the distribution of learners based on perception regarding the pace of content delivery by the course instructors. The pace was according to the need of the learner. So this is what was the opinion of 513 out of 900+ learners. And about 210 respondents said that it was very comfortable with them; it was most comfortable with them. So it means that the majority of the learners perceived that the pace of content delivery is as per their needs. Then looking into the examinations that are being conducted on this particular platform. Whether they feel it as a relevant or not, because many times we observe that students are scared of examinations, but when under online platforms, online educational efforts. So what is their perception regarding the examinations. So majority of them said that either most relevant or relevant, and only few remained neutral, and very few said, negligible learners said that it is not relevant, because they wanted to have that freedom, because they wanted only to gain the knowledge.

Conclusion

To conclude, so we can say that

• gender and age neutral technology, that’s what is the electronic mediation. With the ease of use, has the higher penetration rate in the society, so this is what we can observe with the penetration of MOOCs, and the concept of MOOCs, specially in the case of educational sector.
• The findings are encouraging specially for the instructors. Because the learners have shown their positive attitude towards the concept of learning the new platforms of learning.
• Then it is an excellent opportunity to reach the unreached. So specially the students who are in the remote areas. Specially the colleges and the universities where there is a paucity of faculty members. Under such circumstances this is one of the excellent opportunity.
• Then ultimately we can say that providing such platforms is to internet communities and motivate the population to harness the benefits of this particular concepts is one of the opportunity that the entire community has. So they can make use of the existing platforms. And also they can create new platforms under the concept of MOOC.

With this we will be coming to the end of this discussion on MOOCs for Agriculture. And in the next discussion, we will be talking of open educational resources.

Thank You.