10th July 2020: One of India’s largest and most essential industries, Education, has seen a major digital transformation in its operations to cater to the Indian student population due to the on-going Coronavirus pandemic. To cope with the difficulty in understanding various concepts in a linear online presentation, and to benefit the students and teachers, Alyss Edusolutions through the webinar has introduced 3D Animation in online classes to make learning more captivating and help students maintain a good attention span during online classes. The whole and sole purpose of integrating 3D technology in Education is to offer quality education while enhancing the learning experience of students and making topics much more perceptible.
The webinar began with a complete 360-degree introduction on the topic, ‘Training on effective usage of 3D Animation Content in Online Classes’, by Dr. Chunduri Ram Mohan, Founder, Alyss Edusolutions. In this webinar, Dr. Mohan showcased how integrating teaching content with 3D animation visuals will help teachers explain the concepts clearly to students. The expert focused on the need to introduce 3D technology in teaching methods to offer students a more inclusive and comfortable way to learn the concepts during this pandemic and beyond. Dr. Mohan also mentioned that Alyss envisioned the need for virtual labs 5 years before and developed virtual labs on few science concepts. Virtual lab experience enhances the understanding of various science concepts by students and becomes almost mandatory for online classes. Mr. Bhupendra Sharma, CTO, Alyss edusolutions, then gave a demo of a virtual lab on human digestive system, developed on 3D gaming platform. Alyss video content is developed on native 3D platform; this not only enhances the quality of visual experience but also becomes compatible with Google VR for future-readiness.
Dr. Chunduri Rama Mohan, Founder, Alyss Edusolutions, said, “Today, the educators are trying to offer Education through virtual platforms to proceed further in the academic year, but the impact on the learning of the students, especially who are in their formative years, is minimal due to poor attention span and no more real lab experiments. Though the older students have to manage and take interest no matter what, but younger students tend to lose interest. To improve screen time and participation, schools need to adopt online digital methods in teaching communication, the urgent need for high-quality online content for subjects like Maths and Science, and there is an urgent need for virtual labs.”
A majority of educators across the country have shifted to virtual learning; however, the online classes’ quality and effectiveness are not felt, as the students have several doubts that are left unattended, to ensure a seamless virtual class, adding little or no value in the learning. Going forward in the seminar, various distinguished industry experts Prof PP Chakrabarti, IIT Kharagpur, Dr. Biswajit Saha, Director, CBSE, Prof Subhasish Mitra, Stanford University, USA led the conversation on ‘Challenges of Adopting Online Classes for School Education,’ and shared their insights on the new situation arising from COVID-19 and where technologies can potentially help:
Prof. PP Chakrabarti, Professor, IIT Kharagpur, shares the insights from classroom learning that are difficult to be adopted in virtual classes, “All the subjects must be integrated into a digital framework. However, the mediums that we have Today also bring in to focus some of the important challenges. The most important challenge is the eye and direct contact with the teacher. The 2nd challenge is the teacher’s knowledge and grasp of the subject which the teacher uses to have an interaction with the students in the class, and when the students are talking about the concept, the teacher can correct them immediately.” He adds, “On the other hand, what a teacher will explain in using words and gestures, a student can learn at their own pace using 3D animations.” Prof. PP Chakrabarti, who is also the main architect behind National digital library of India(NDLI) that has more than 40 million digital copies of various books, research material, educational material and content has recommended Alyss, who is already a partner of NDLI, to offer its high quality 3D visual snippets to create a visual kit in NDLI that can be accessible to many more content developers.
Dr. Biswajit Saha, Director (Training & Skill Development), Central Board of Secondary Education, “Whether it is school, college or university systems, the learning is focused with respect to the assessment system, and the parents, teachers, and students stress mainly on it. The initiative taken by Alyss, to fundamentally adapt 3D animations into this learning, will add a joyful journey that the students can look into, and even if it comes in terms of assessment differently, I think it will be more meaningful.” Dr. Saha recommended Alyss 3D animation content to be available through Diksha to make it available to teachers and students pan India.
Subhasish Mitra, Professor, Stanford University, USA, believes, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.”, he further adds, “There are various ways to involve students so they can learn such as practical hands-on approach, in which they gain some experience by touching something or are smelling something in a lab or do by something in which they are actively engaged. So, one next big thing one can do is 3D Animation.”
In Today’s time and scenario, the most important thing for educators is to offer its students quality education over linear non-perceptible online classes. Dr. Chunduri Ram Mohan, in the webinar, addressed the challenges of 2D Education and recommended the implementation of 3D technology as it offers exceptional features that can augment the learning process for children and teachers.
Dr. Mohan further adds that animated educational videos improve students’ focus and concentration, enhance creativity in learners, motivate them to explore complex dimensions of knowledge, and enable them to express themselves even better than they would with pen and paper, based on an in-depth investigation on the performance and appreciation of one hundred and twenty-four students working in a virtual learning environment with 2D or 3D vision.
The event concluded with a round of questions from the participants on various possible challenges and benefits of the implementation of 3D technology, and how schools and educators across the country can adapt it to offer quality education to its students.
