Getting Schooled!
Being a Student in Platform Era
As another academic year comes to an end, I thought of discussing how the platforms are transforming studies and students’ life. The entire discussion would centre around characteristics of student as given the following sloka-
काक चेष्टा, बको ध्यानं, स्वान निद्रा तथैव च ।
अल्पहारी, गृहत्यागी, विद्यार्थी पंच लक्षणं ॥
A loose transliteration could go like this- Kaag Chesta (Perseverance of a Crow), Bako Dhyanam (Concentration of a Swan),Shwan Nindra (Light Sleeper like a Dog),Alp-ahari (Light Eater) and Grih Tyagi (Less involvement in Home matters).
Towards the end of this newsletter, I would also share my reflections on being a faculty during pandemic and lockdowns.
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If you would like to read a summary of the 45 posts in 2020, please do read this newsletter.
DTW
During the Week, Stoa School shut down their 12 weeks MBA and launched a revamped 24 Week program, community for life cohort. This is a new kind of experiment popular with coding programs but seems to be getting some traction in business education as well.
Student life and platforms interact in mainly three different dimensions- Content, Leisure/Mindfulness and Food/Accommodation. In this newsletter, use of term student is mostly in the context of higher education and executive education though some of it might be relevant for school or vocational education as well.
And this student life would be lot different than what is depicted in Bollywood aka Student of the Year 1 or 2!
Content for students is driven through free, freemium and paid platforms offering courses of all levels and domains. Recently , we have seen a consolidation in the space with Byju’s making multiple strategic acquisitions across skills, education levels and domains. Their recent acquisition of 33-year-old coaching institute Aakash Educational Services for close to 1 billion dollars cements their presence in test-prep segment thus challenging Unacademy’s status as a leader . Of course, international players like coursera and edx have made college campuses their focus trough their university collaboration programs while YouTube and Wikipedia continue to be favourite source of “free" content. For school education, the government of India has launched DIKSHA, or Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing. This appears to be a super app of school education in India covering content, teachers' training, assessments etc.
Other intervention called National Teacher Platform (NTP) helps institutions, groups and individuals catering all stages of school education including pre-primary, primary, upper primary, secondary and senior secondary enroll as members of the platform, and can contribute to the creation, curation and use of resources on the platform.
Leisure platforms includes social media platforms like Facebook rooms, zoom hangouts or Netflix Party. Of course, regular dating apps have features specific to students who are key target group for them. Most of the event/meeting platforms like meet-up, eventbrite etc regularly promote student-focused interactions. Multiple other platforms like dare2compete offer innovative challenges, engaging events and gamified hiring assessments to thousands of students. There have been attempts to spark fitness especially during pandemic through initiatives like Khelo india app under FitIndia Campaign.
Food and accommodation challenges were relatively easily solved with most of the students staying home. Of late, some campuses have partially opened thus providing the much needed social interactions to the students. Accommodation platforms promoting co-living solutions for student have been popular before pandemic and seems to be regaining favour of investors and users alike. With the emphasis on creating a social life around food and accommodation, co-living spaces have been attracting lot of traction over PGs or even short term lease rentals.
Enterprises like Isthara have taken extra measures to deliver the best for their residents even in these challenging times.
Of course, the other “regular” platforms can also be seen as offering their services to student as a target group but their offering might be either too expensive or simply too “old-age” for them.
OTW
Over the Weekend, I had my last session for the academic year 2020-21. It has been a tradition to take semester end group picture so I ended up posing in front of the smart board in my lecture theatre with my students joining online.
This year has been an extraordinary year in multiple ways and though it has been particularly hard on our social life with consequences for learning and development yet it afforded unique upsides. As a faculty, I struggled with lack of personal touch and missed the energy of a live classroom in the same physical space. I definitely felt the absence of vibes and instant feedback on discussion and ended up poorer in terms of post class discussions/chats/networks. Except for few gentle souls who kept the conversations going even beyond the class hours/days, I could not forge significant personal bonds unlike other normal years. There were no serendipitous interactions in corridors or in events or just casual walk-ins into office. There were neither pre-class social chit-chat nor even hanging out near student’s desk to catch up on their reading or Netflix bingeing. And of course, I had to eat all my lunch and snacks on my own!
But like they say- “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”- I ended up leveraging technology to bring more current news and analysis in classroom discussion. One of the significant difference has been the guests appearing in the class over video-conferencing. I am full of gratitude for all the former students and friends for taking time out to discuss current issues with my students through virtual initiatives like 3030, MountainSpeak, Pre-placement Talks or even just dropping in regular classes. It added so much energy and knowledge to the class and I am definitely more informed because of your deep industry insights. I also offered quick 5 weeks-10 hours signature courses on topics of mutual interest which might help the current students build their resumes and broaden their understanding of business and society. It has been a wonderful journey and I look forward to an exciting time ahead.
Best wishes for the graduating class of IBS Hyderabad MBA2021.
I Love You
Shailendra
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PS- Over last few months, I have been using calendly to set up formal/informal calls with friends and family. You could use the following link to set up an interaction. https://calendly.com/shailendrabisht/catchup
I would take this opportunity to thank you sir for making us love mm more. I personally used to wait for a whole week just for your lecture. Other than just the marketing news you made us aware of other subjects too. I felt blessed to be your student. Waiting to meet you and learn from you next year.
Thank you would be a small word to express.
I will now consider myself lucky to be a part of brick and bench kinda normal student. It's been 2 years of my post grad but I still miss your 'industry visit project', Archna ma'am's delicious dryfruits for munching, your strong opinion on girls should be financially independent NO MATTER WHAT!, during the class conversation on cases and marketing news, Sunday running session followed by Aloo Paratha in Mess II :P. I am grateful to you for all your advise, for introducing me to running and gaining more knowledge.
Thank you Sir :)