Ubiquitous learning: fall out of technological advancement in learning

Information technology has made a paradigm shift in the way knowledge is generated,
stored and disseminated to a large and distant audience in real time, and competency /
level of knowledge acquisition, tested through communication and collaborative
technologies. The positives such as learning anytime and anywhere for anybody, devoid
of barriers of high cost and physical distances, and enabling simultaneous wider reach,
improved quality and standards in the content, variety and delivery are obvious.
Technology has also enabled wider participation and collaboration by the academic /
research community, in the creation of new frontiers of knowledge cutting cross
conventional disciplines. IT has also enabled moving towards a unified world,
demolished the monopoly power of the privileged few, by enabling easier and affordable
access for anyone, leading to equality of opportunity.

Opportunity to learn and contribute unobtrusively, has enhanced participation from those
preferring to remain anonymous or maintain low profile, without barriers of age, pre-
qualifications, or other similar impediments. This has encouraged surfacing of isolated
pockets of quality knowledge base and teaching skills, available and open to use by
audience far from the source.

Amidst all the positives, the technology package has brought in, its share of negatives,
from a long term societal point of view. The underlying potential adverse impacts of the
purposes, for which technology is used, are disturbing. The negatives could gather
momentum and manifest in a few years or a couple of decades from now, and are likely
to hit the developed world, more than the developing world. This apprehension is based
on certain trends in the education domain, on the use of Information Technology (IT)
taking advantage of the low cost labour (knowledge resources) in the developing world.

There is currently the prevalence of, the practice of outsourcing home work assignments,
research work by PhD scholars, data and case study analysis and report writing, by
students in several parts of the world, to cheaper BPO /KPO destinations, such as India.
Even online exams are being outsourced to subject specialists in the BPO / KPO centers,
individual teaching faculty / experts in India, operating unobtrusively and innocuously
from their homes, who take the online exams, on behalf of their clients: students
registered for the test, in the USA or other countries. This has become a line of business
in the BPO / KPO segments, under the broad banner – e tutoring .

In this new paradigm, students simply forward via e-mail their class assignments, home
works, case studies for analysis, data search requirements, report writing, and taking on
line exams, to outsourcing / e tutoring centers / subject experts, to be completed, at very
nominal costs. The service provider is also guided by the student, on how much score
they should aim at, in the on line exams / quality of the assignments done, to sync with
their own known performance in the class, to dispel any suspicion by their teacher. The
outsourcing agent is paid incentives / imposed penalties depending on how close he / she
is able to meet the desired goal.

The long term implication of such practice is scary. The student who out sources his / her
work, resorts to unfair competition and gains an unfair competitive advantage, vis-a-vis
his/her peers in the batch, assuming all students do not resort to this practice. The
competence level, as assessed through the evaluation of the assignment solutions
submitted / online tests taken, are a misrepresentation of the true competence of the
candidate, who makes a claim on the scores, which are actually scores attributed to the
knowledge of the experts, who have worked on these, unobtrusively. This leads to the
assessment process getting reduced to a farce, unfair grading of students, unrest among
the student community, misleading inferences on competence of the candidate to perform
a task, erosion of credibility of the examination / evaluation system, danger of
incompetent candidates put on critical jobs needing minimum competence levels and in
the long run, resulting in a situation where society is left with few competent people to
handle technically demanding jobs.

The evaluation and examination system will fail to perform its role of defining
benchmarks and assessing competency and delivering truly competent human resources,
to meet needs of various sectors in the economy. This is likely to create a huge shortage
of competent employable experts, akin to the issue of non-employability of freshers
passing out of technical institutions, at present, in developing countries, like India. We
can expect and should prepare for severe shortage of qualified personnel with
competency to deliver, in the long run.

A scenario of the above nature but of a different manifestation, was feared in the wake of
the explosive growth of the BPO / IT our-sourcing industry in destinations like India,
where the IT and related sectors could suck out qualified candidates, from all other
technical disciplines, driven by the short term lure offered by the IT and outsourcing
industry. This has now been realized as a sub-optimum utilization of scarce technical
resources, developed at high societal costs and also reverse resource flow. The scenario is
akin to trading our long term (Human) capital build up and strategic interests, for short
term consumption income.

Outsourcing activities do not add to human capital value of the service provider
personnel involved, but only meet short term business needs of service providing
business organizations, in developing countries and labor needs for fulfilling menial jobs
at low costs, of client organizations, in developed countries.

The long spell of IT and ITES boom has done its own damage in shifting the balance of
educational preferences, employment choices in favor of IT sector, to the detriment of
other productive and strategic sectors. This damage caused to the developing world
during the IT boom era can be expected to be inadvertently, paid back to the developed
world in the emerging e tutoring driven practices, mentioned above.

This shortage of skilled technical personnel in non IT disciplines is already felt and has
started tilting the balance in favor of non IT technical education and employment
opportunities, after a lag of more than a decade. This is clearly evidenced by the
increasing remuneration levels in sectors such as Physical infrastructure, Retail, Telecom,
Real Estate, Manufacturing and Hospitality.
There is a need for human capital accounting systems at the national level, just like a
financial accounting and production accounting systems, to track and take stock of
accretion and attrition of quality human resources. Such an accounting system shall
assign differential weight-age to various skill disciplines, their deployable quantity and
quality, and take periodic assessments through a Balance sheet / Score Card, to assess
their productive worth, at various longitudinal stages. The outcome of such an exercise
shall be used for assessment of governmental performance, and tracking and reporting at
global level, similar to the Human development index. Arresting and reversing this trend
is a major challenge. The developing and developed world need to introspect and act on
how to tame this undesirable trend.