Blended Learning in Indian Higher Education: Challenges and Strategies (original) (raw)

2014, International Journal of Applied Research and Studies (iJARS) ISSN: 2278-9480 Volume 3, Issue 2 (Feb - 2014)

Higher education in India is facing the greatest challenge of expanding intake capacity substantially from 13 percent to 20 percent as envisaged in 11th Five Year Plan(2007-2012).The other challenges that knowledge based societies are likely to face are learners from diverse backgrounds and their needs ,time availability, flexibility in course content and innovative use of Information and Communication technology. Blended Learning is a mixed educational paradigm and offers promise for addressing these challenges. It offers great flexibility and great effectiveness as it can choose the best medium for every objective. It will expand access to an institution’s educational offerings and increase enrolments and reduce operating costs. Blended learning is shifting information transfer paradigm from teaching to learning. It requires learners to be responsible for discovering, constructing, practising and validating the acquired knowledge in social collaboration with peer group and teachers. As a result, the focus of the classroom shifts from a presentational format (i.e., lecturing and information dissemination) to one of active learning (i.e., discussion and debate). Since blended approach combines face-to-face and computer based learning opportunities, teachers are able to use variety of instructional techniques. Computer-based technologies can be used to selectively present case studies, tutorials, self-testing exercises, simulations, or other online work in place of some lecture or lab material. The traditional Indian education is undergoing slow transformation. Hence new educational models based on constructivism may be used in parallel with traditional learning by introducing a blended learning approach in higher education. However, the challenge is to make the blend not only effective but also efficient. The present paper is an attempt to look into challenges posed by technology and corresponding strategies to make blended learning effective in higher education institutions in India. Key Words: Higher education, Blended Learning, constructivism, simulations.