NEW DELHI: The demand for non-traditional education is growing but there is a shortage ofqualified educational technology (ET) professionals and researchers. With an aim to bridge the gap, IIT Bombay will introduce M.Tech in Educational Technology (ET) programme from the upcoming session.
“While the country is moving towards digital learning, there is a shortage ofqualified ET experts in various research labs, curriculum design roles in schools and colleges, industries for creating educational applications, training departments for online and remote trainings, and content creator industries for creation of technology-enhanced learning material and field implementation works,” says Veenita Saha, research-scientist and spokesperson, ET, IIT-B.
The primary reason for this dearth is that ET is an emerging discipline and there are not many dedicated courses at the undergraduate or postgraduate levels.
The programme will screen learners from diverse background with who have keen interest in improving technology-based teaching and learning. “Educational Technology is an interdisciplinary field. The broad objective of the programme is to build specialised ET workforce with student expertise in theories of learning and pedagogy, analysis, design, effective implementation and evaluation of learning environments, instructional design, research methodologies and translating research into practices,” says Sridhar Iyer, head of the department.
Course Structure
The two-year programme will constitute course work, emerging educational technologies, research methods and statistics, designing learning environments and adaptive learning. It will also have on-field projects.
The candidates will work on research that has been categorised into four areas, namely technology-enhanced learning of thinking skills (TELoTS), teacher use of educational technologies (TUET), educational data analytics (EDA) and emerging technologies (EmergE).
Challenges
Apart from lack of qualified ET professionals to design informed solutions to existing challenges in our education system, another is the effective integration of strategic pedagogy and technology.
“Efforts are being made by our department in training of teachers across India as part of one of our focal research areas, named Teacher use of educational technology (TUET). More than 10,000 teachers have been trained through large-scale workshops and massive open online course (MOOC) initiatives in research-based pedagogical strategies, technology integration and analytics,” says Shah
JOB PROSPECTS
The graduates will find roles in industries that develop technologies supporting education such as learning management systems, adaptive learning systems and technology-based learning materials including e-books, interactive learning content, intelligent tutors.
ELIGIBILITY
First class degree in BTech /BE /BPharm /BArch /AMIE in any engineering discipline; four year BS in any science discipline; MSc /MA /MCA; IntMTech / Int ME /Int MSc / Int B.S - M.S OR Dual Degree in engineering/ technology along with a valid GATE score in any discipline
