MHRD comes out with live on-line teaching guidelines and norms

The school continue to remain closed since March 2020 due to lockdown mandated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The classroom teaching made a shift toward online education for which and schools were not trained. There were complains about bad on-line teaching and ill-effects of over-dose of digital screens.

Consequently, MHRD has come out with 'Pragyata Guidelines' for digital education for live online classes as follows.

• Classes 1-8: Maximum of 1.5 hours per day; 2 sessions

• Classes 9-12: Maximum of three hours per day; 4 seasons

• Pre-primary classes: Maximum of 30 minutes: Integrated session of activities

Reasoning the norms, the issued guidelines informed:

• Longer times with modern technologies creates severe physical and mental health problems

• Age-appropriate digital sessions schedule require duration capping

• 10-15 minute break between sessions for relaxed transition for senior students

• Home support flexibility for assignments

However, the issues of screen-time; infrastructure; connectivity and digital divide contin

ue to bother teachers, parents and students due to lack of resources, training and follow-up towards quality on-line education for most schools, especially the rural schools.

It requires to be clarified that an e-learning session time is the actual amount of time spent on a learning episode. Research studies inform that even 15 minutes on-line learning is a 'long time' per session since beyond that it can produce cognitive fatigue and result into bad health.

A well prepared session of 6-12 minutes has been found appropriate. In fact, the content of one to two pages of textbook forms the learning episode which should be concisely taught in about 10 minutes.