Blended learning to improve quality of primary education among underprivileged school children in India

Abstract

Access to quality primary education is a major concern in India. Despite of having reasonable infrastructure, issues of teacher absenteeism, poor accountability of teachers, ineffective teaching learning materials and inadequate teaching procedures are still the prevailing causes for poor educational quality in lower tier schools. Though private schools with their high-end infrastructures have tried to establish their domination in imparting quality learning, the latter continue to remain a distant dream for the underprivileged students. Studies have revealed that Internet-enabled, Web 2.0 based blended learning environments can stimulate student engagement, motivation, and learning. However ICT-based supports in Indian schools are provided either mostly to those who can afford it, or as sporadic government experiments which are either discontinued or undervalued. In this context, the paper presents an Internet-enabled blended-learning platform, which combine traditional models of classroom interactions with synchronous e-learning, facilitated by expert online teachers with digital audio-visual contents. The pilot study conducted using proposed blended learning platform proves that it is possible to provide quality education to underprivileged school students. The findings indicate that blended learning platforms in classroom settings, along with quality digital content, expert online teachers and on-site teaching assistants as class coordinator creates a learning environment that can improve learning achievements and well-being of students drastically, irrespective of their socioeconomic status.