Role of ICT in academia: Reaching the unreached

Event report

The session was moderated by Dr Kokula Krishna Hari Kunasekaran (Secretary General, ASDF) and focused on the role of ICT in enhancing community outreach, academic and research collaboration, and education and support services in an academic setting. Kunasekaran believes that the education will use more artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to improve the learning experience in the future. According to him, many students use mobile phones during classes and it is important to deal with that in an educational way. Kunasekaran said that India is launching many satellites with educational purposes. Finally, he talked about the differences between Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the online courses offered in small colleges.

Mr Abdulla Musthaq (Chairman, AVID College, Maldives) started by talking about how the educational system works in Maldives and also about the AVID College and its programs. In his speech, he spoke briefly in his mother tongue, Divehi, and explained the importance of this language for the country’s culture. Musthaq believes that education quality can be enhanced by ICT, but, at the same time, it is difficult to retain good quality in an online course. He explained the system used in the AVID college, where students can study through the Internet, accessing lecture notes and doing the activities. When asked by the moderator, Musthaq agreed that open universities are an interesting approach, but he stated that Maldives is not investing in this idea yet.

In his participation, Dr Gunasegaran Sengodan (Chairman & Managing Director, Vidyaa Vikas Institutions, Republic of India) talked about the Indian initiative to build rockets and satellites. According to him, satellites produced in India are the cheapest in the world and the country is ‘number one’ in this field. Sengodan believes that the launching of satellites is a good strategy to provide the Internet to the educational system and to the end users in education. Also, he explored the concept of smart classrooms that use ICT to provide a better learning experience. Sengodan said that there are many commercial solutions that can be used to promote different approaches in the educational area.

By Nathalia Sautchuk Patrício