Education vertical

Education space can be broadly categorized into 2 main areas:

School

The School is the main institution of education. It provides the infrastructure for providing the learning to the students.

The schools are mostly divided into grades K-12 (KG to 12). The students enroll in these grades. Each grade sets the standard of learning for the student. This standard is usually aligned to a specific Standards set by the Government like CBSE in India.

The School has classes which is where students of a particular grades are provided lectures and courses. The School also provides various other learning activities like student attendance, student- teacher interaction, student-student interaction.

There are support activities like management of classes, class infrastructures (like benches, chairs, blackboard etc.) and laboratory infrastructure etc. these support activities are provided by the School support staff.

Other Supported functions of a school

• Library

• Transport

• Special Programs

• Cafeteria

• HR

• Finance

The school software support all the activities mentioned above. It usually has components for

• Administration for administrative activities of Schools like 
• managing staff, 
• managing students 
• managing infrastructure
•  Teaching activities
• managing classes
• taking attendance
• enrolling students
• grading
• promoting students
• disciplinary activities of students
• Special programs
• It may also have integration with supporting application like
• Library Management
• Transport management
• Cafeteria management
• HR
• Finance

General users of the software is Staff, Administrators, Teachers and Students

Curriculum

Curriculum refers to set of courses and their learning content which is imparted to the students.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum

“Curriculum means two things: (i) the range of courses from which students choose what subject matters to study, and (ii) a specific learning program. “

The first case is mostly applicable to the higher (collage education) where students enroll in various courses based on their chosen field.

The latter case which is more applicable to the primary and school education, the curriculum collectively describes the teaching, learning, and assessment materials available for a given course of study. This curriculum is mostly aligned with school’s chosen Education Standards (CBSE Board) accordingly with school grades. Most of the school aligns it with the age of the student.

Curriculum can be further divided into learning and then assessment material. Learning material is the comprehensive content for teaching the students in terms of stories, problems, scenarios…

Lessons

The Learning material is usually organized in books in forms of chapters and lessons.

The course is organized in form of a lesson. Each lesson is based on the some learning objective. For e.g. learning objective of teaching objective of addition of 2 digit numbers will have lesson demonstrating the concept of addition using several aid tools, carry over concepts etc.

Lesson is followed by lesson assessment to evaluate the concepts learnt during the lesson to measure the objective achieved.

Assessments

Assessment is evaluates the student’s learning. This is assessment material is again in form of assignments, test, quizzes and exams. The teacher’s grades the student learning based on the student’s response to assessments and assesses the student’s achievement against the learning objective.

The main assessment can be done periodically quarterly, half-yearly or yearly.

After yearly assessment, the students with the passing scores are promoted to next grade.

Standards

Standards are created to ensure that students from one classroom to another are taught the same basic information in a particular subject. It allows students studying in one school to get transferred to another school half-way through school year without any hindrances.

The stakeholders for this part of education are:

• Users: Student and Teachers
• Governing Bodies : Government and State
• Learning content Producers: Companies producing learning content or course Books
• Tool Vendor s: development of learning software LMS, LCMS.

The process of Learning

Standards & Objective --> Learning Design --> Learning Production (Publishing Course Books) --> Learning Deployment/Delivery (Lectures/Teaching) --> Learning Assessment

Technology Enhancements

E-Learning

E-learning is the process of imparting or delivering learning on computer based systems using technology. It involves instead of books software like LMS (Learning Management System) and LCMS (Learning Course management system) for online learning.

In e-Learning, instead of books, LMS which provides a online learning content in sequence. The student can read through the learning content at his own pace and in sequence. The LMS system also in between assesses the students on the things read. The LMS system are so advanced that they based on the assessment judge the students learning capacity pace the content adaptively.

Recently with advancement in technology of broadband and internet, e-learning is slowly picking pace as an alternative to the classroom training.

E-learning or web-based training uses internet for delivery of the learning content and allows students to access course materials, reference information and take assessments at their own pace and at their own location. This choice of pace and location has been making e-learning very cost-effective by eliminating the need of presence of expensive teacher.

However, e-learning cannot replace the classroom training it can only complement it because it is only suitable for motivated students or by student for refreshing the courses.

Virtual Classes

Virtual classes concepts is also picking up with the e-learning. It enables the classroom by effective collaboration of the teachers and student using internet’s collaborative technologies like live-meeting, video conference, chats and sharing desktop.

The new LMS software also allows whiteboard concept similar to blackboard of a class by allowing the teacher and students to scribble learning, share notes and comment on each other at real-time.

It allows opening a e-book and allows teacher to highlight, underline concepts while giving lectures in voice and student can ask teachers questions on chat by “rasing their hands”.

The notes, scribbling on the e-book, and chatting content is stored and shared by the student to make his notes for assessment and exams.

Virtual Classes is an innovative concept removing the constraint of physical location and lack of infrastructure of school and classes.

It has been in use by IIMS and IIT professor providing premium lectures distance learning course overcoming the problem of distance and missed admission due to filling of seats.