India aims to improve quality of education with Operation Digital Board

Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday launched Operation Digital Board to leverage technology in order to boost quality education in the country. The Operation Digital Board (ODB) aims at converting a classroom into a digital classroom and in addition to the availability of e-resources at any time and at any place to students.

"Operation Digital Board is a revolutionary step which will make the learning as well as the teaching process interactive and popularise flipped learning as a pedagogical approach," Javadekar told reporters here. The digital board will be introduced all over the country in government and government-aided schools from class 9 onwards as well as in higher education institutions. The process will begin from the coming session of 2019 itself, he said.

"It will also help in the provisioning of personalised adaptive learning as well as intelligent tutoring by exploiting emerging technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence and data analytics. An expert committee has worked out the optimum configuration of the digital classrooms under ODB," he added. The Union minister said that the biggest challenge facing the education sector in the country is maintaining acceptable quality standards across the country.

He said "Although we have a good number of premier institutions, which compete with the best in the world, a large number of higher education institutions and schools needs improvements in quality teaching-learning, as the students coming out of these institutions find themselves unsuitable for the requirements of the society and market. The spread of educational technology and connectivity has given an opportunity to resolve this issue and aim at equity in educational standards, Javadekar added.