Abstract:

Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC), a government foresight organization is preparing Technology Vision 2035 for India. The exercise focuses on 12 sectors of socio-economic importance to the country; education happens to be one of them- for which a roadmap is being prepared. Some insights were desirable on the impact of technologies showing up on the horizon, on the future education in India.

With every passing day newer developments on technology landscape are being reported, many of them in the domains like Information & Communication Technology (ICT), Computer Science, Sensors, Electronic devices, etc and concepts evolving around them. Most of them can have a varying degree of impact on education- either in isolation or in combination, besides in short- , medium- or long-term. Further, the field of education is very wide- with number of levels, specializations, stakeholders, delivery mechanisms etc. Therefore, a Delphi exercise was carried out which involves consensus building, for getting insights for the study.

Delphi is basically a structured brainstorming process carried out iteratively through rounds, usually two to four, with semi-structured or structured questionnaires. A range of experts/ stakeholders is asked for their input on a given subject, and through the iteration of questionnaires each is confronted with the inputs of the others, while observing anonymity. They are then asked to evaluate responses of the other experts and maintain/change their initial responses. This process is intended to lead to consensus (or lack of it) among participants on a chosen subject/ topic.

In all, 30 technologies were considered for making an assessment of the time-frame in which they are likely to evolve and get adopted; and also the likely impact. In the two round Delphi, half of the participants were from various Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), around three-fifth of them less than 25 years of age and half of them with background in IT & allied subjects. In short, young professionals conversant with communication technologies and computer science were evenly balancing the rest in this exercise.

Based on the convergent opinion of participants, 22 technologies were found as the ones which have potential to impact future education. Most of the technologies considered (Natural Language Translation, Context Aware Computing, Pico Projectors, Volumetric Screens etc.) are likely to impact in 5-15 years of horizon, except for Tablets which is tipped to make difference within 5 years and this has actually started happening. This likely impact was measured on a Likert’s scale. Few technologies like Real-time language translation, Immersive Virtual Reality etc. may take a little longer to start impacting education, at least not in the next 5 years. In all, the study throws pointers for the direction in which education in general will head. The full paper will report the results of the study in detail and also the application of these technologies in the field of education.

Keywords:

Educational Technologies, Future Education, Delphi, TIFAC.