Thursday 24 March 2016

Application of Information Technology in Teaching and Learning



Teaching is an art. Presentation of material is the style of art. Producing quality in teaching is the essence of art. Teaching major components are content, communication and feedback.
            There is a close relationship between teaching and learning and to improve learning it is necessary to modify, improve and develop teaching quality. Teachers are key position to act as catalyst to initiate curricula, design programs and to meet future needs of the students. The qualification of a teacher in the present time should include competence in the designated teaching areas, technological awareness and effectiveness in teaching.

             There are various ways teacher can make use of IT to improve their teaching. They can make teaching a web-based learning. When the course is Web-based, the course web-site extends the classroom beyond its physical and temporal boundaries. The teacher is immediately connected to students’ discussion and other activities occur well beyond the classroom and well after class hours.
            Every age has its needs of development and education is an aid to such a development. It must be attuned to the age it operates in the 21st century, being primarily a knowledge manager of 21st century would be a knowledge worker with a mandate to lead, to facilitate, to motivate, to encourage and to empower his co-workers, students and the community. The students have to function as knowledge workers rather than subservient, uncommitted, non-productive, uncreative robots that carry-out tailor made task based on role ability. We need generators of knowledge, creators of knowledge, promoters of knowledge and self-teachers with skills to operate in a competitive world.
            Just as the development of printing Press forever changed the teaching enterprise. IT represents a fundamental change in the basic technology of teaching and learning. IT after great potential but in order to reap the benefits, institutions will have to transform themselves in fundamental ways.  
            A pertinent question is what can IT contribute to increasing learning? The most humble answer to this is that it offers economics of scale. After a front end investment, the cost of usages per incremental student is apt to be low. Moreover, access to very large amount of information can be obtained at low incremental cost.
IT after mass customization, Technology allows faculty to accommodate individual difference in students’ goals, learning styles and abilities.
            IT eases the limits of time and space for educational activities. Such activities as chat sessions with teacher, assignments on net are important especially for non-traditional students who after have job or family responsibilities limiting their possible school hours.
            IT enables self-paced learning with sensitivity to different learning styles and continuous assessment of students’ progress. The areas that can profit most from IT based strategies are those subjects that have large number of students and in the case of some multimedia programmes, those areas trigger further practice automatically so that students receive more instruction just in time when they need it most. IT provides the data needed to map the relation between cost and benefit, thus opening the way for experimentation and innovation.
            Because of its capacity to focus on individual assessment, IT makes the teaching and learning enterprise much more out-come oriented.
            IT will empower students to have greater control over the learning process. Students will decide, when to learns, how to learns, what to learner and how that learning is to be certified.

            Achieving information technology’s full potential would require far more extensive changes, which would be problematic. A small core of traditional institutions and traditional learners, who can afford may continue to seek out the traditional education that has been the hallmark of over system while the bulk of students deprived of these facilities for various reasons may take shelter under IT based teaching and learning.






            

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