Mumbai, 25th May, 2022: One of India’s leading edtech players, TeamLease EdTech, has today launched their report “Digital Transformation of the Teaching Community”. An in-depth analysis of the sentiment and impact of digital integration in teaching, the survey which was conducted with 1000+ teachers pan India, highlights that 30.58% of teachers are still not highly proficient with digital tools.
A comprehensive analysis, the study also delved deep into the tools and the operational knowledge of the teachers. As per the study, while 93.39% of teachers can operate virtual classrooms, 50.41% can conduct online assessments and 40.50% can use content authoring tools; on the other hand only 31.40% can manage an online LMS and 14.88% can operate virtual cloud labs.
The report further highlights that because of sudden transition to online teaching, majority of teachers (close to 79.34%) learnt by practice/doing. Moreover, teachers also equipped and prepared themselves by taking course provided by institutions (35.54%), from friends/colleagues/family (25.62%) and by undertaking self-sponsored courses (19.01%).
Sharing his views on the survey findings and the current digital teaching ecosystem, Mr Shantanu Rooj, Founder and CEO, TeamLease EdTech, said, “It has been over two years since we witnessed a sudden, unplanned, overnight shift to digital learning. Back in September 2020, six months into the pandemic, when we did a survey with 1200 teachers for our study on ‘The use of Technology in Teaching & Learning in Indian Higher Education Institutes’ more than 80% of the teachers were uncomfortable with online teaching. After two years, 30.58% of teachers are yet to gain complete proficiency. In India, there are 1,100 Universities, 42,343 colleges and 11,779 standalone institutions and 38.5 million students. With the aggressive push towards digitization in learning through the National Education Policy (NEP), and UGC’s recent announcements enabling more universities to go online; it is imperative that a higher percentage of teachers are highly proficient and better equipped with the nuances of online teaching.”
The report, which is a comprehensive study also delves into the sentiment of teachers about the future of digital intervention in education. Interestingly 90.08% of teachers foresee a use for the technical and pedagogical skills that they have acquired over the last two years. In fact, 66.94% of them felt that these new skills have opened better career opportunities for them. According to the survey findings, teachers have expressed their interest to continue using digital tools in the future for virtual classrooms (74.38%), online assignments (61.98%), pre-recording content (50.41%) and online examinations (39.67%). Moreover, 26.45% of teachers also want to use virtual cloud labs.
“Digital learning is here to stay and with a continual increase in the integration of digital mechanisms with conventional learning, upskilling and reskilling the teaching community on a regular basis will be crucial. More and more HEIs have realized the value of having formal training. Currently 79.34% of teachers are undergoing some form of training conducted by the institutes or taking Online/MOOC courses. However, going forward, the skilling endeavor needs to customized, especially to prepare educators for emerging digital competencies like AI, AR, VR, Blockchain, IoT, 3D printing, Metaverse and Web3 etc. As our survey indicates, 39.67% of teachers still feel that the training is inadequate and they need further skilling to enable them to teach their students more effectively”, added Ms Neeti Sharma, Co-Founder & President, TeamLease EdTech.
The report also dives into the challenges in the digital learning space. 75.04% of educators feel that students tend to lose interest during online classes and 44.63% of teachers feel that both students and teachers are still uncomfortable with digital integration. From an infrastructural point of view, 65.29% of teachers feels internet connectivity is a challenge and 50.41% of them feel that there is a shortage of dedicated laptops/smartphones with students.
“Digital Transformation of the Teaching Community” is a comprehensive survey led report capturing the impact of digital integration in teaching and the reaction/digital skill competencies of the teaching community. Conducted with 1000+ teachers pan India, the survey report is the second edition of TeamLease EdTech’s reports on digital amalgamation in education. In September 2020, the firm had launched a report on ‘The use of Technology in Teaching & Learning in Indian Higher Education Institutes’, conducted with 1200+ teachers pan India.
