Remote Learning Initiatives in Gujarat

Gujarat Primary & Secondary Education Department has taken various digital initiatives for a long time. The idea behind the initiatives is to connect teachers and students by providing quality educational content from the comfort of their homes. School Education department of Gujarat Government has started e-platform, mobile application for CWSN, Live Classes through TV & radio, offline video lectures, simulations, digital classrooms, Samarth 2.0, Facebook workplace and workchat, VanchanAbhiyan etc.

Major Initiatives To Move- From Schooling To Learning

Command and Control Centre (CCC)

Inaugurated in June 2019, CCC focused on ensuring

• 100% enrolment
• Improving regular attendance of students and teachers
• Real time online monitoring of CRCs, BRCs and other officials
• Detailed analysis of weekly tests and the semester exams
• Generating actionable insights for multiple stakeholders

More than 3 Lakh calls to schools, CRCs, BRCs, TPEOs and other key stakeholders were made from CCC to provide support in the academic year 2019-20.

School Monitoring App

• Replacement of paper-based school monitoring
• A scheduler for CRCs and BRCs to plan the School Visits
• App enables real time reporting
• Ease of accessing school data at a block, cluster and individual levels for all the stakeholders

Periodic Assessment Tests

• Weekly Unit Tests for each subject for Primary, Secondary and Higher Secondary Government School Students
• Question Papers are developed in view of Centralized Timetable and learning outcomes
• Question Papers are sent online to all Schools across the State
• Centralized Data Entry of all students for each subject is done every week.
• Over 10 Crore Tests conducted in 2019-20
• Regular Remedial measures are being planned and implemented based on the results of this test

Smart Classroom Initiative Phase II - 12,000 Classrooms

Gyankunj 2.0

• Gyankunj is a school digitalization program to enhance classroom interactivity and teaching-learning process
• In the 1st Phase of implementation 3,173 Classrooms spread across 1600 Schools were covered
• The Statistical Bureau evaluated and assessed the program and recommended that the program is effective from student, teachers and parents’ perspective.
• State has expanded the program to more 12,000 classrooms in Phase II
• To ensure maximum utilization of facility, phase II implementation is done in ALL classes of Grades – 6,7 and 8 in 3,176 Schools having more than 150 Students

Samarth 2.0 - Online Professional Development of Teachersin collaboration with IIM Ahmedabad

• SAMARTH-2 was formally launched on August 16,2019 and phase-2 comprised participation of more than 1,52,966 teachers teaching in standards 1 to 8 of Government primary schools of Gujarat.
• This capacity building of teachers was done online and had topics on Pragna perspective, Gujarati, Hindi, English, Environment Science, Social Science, Science, Maths, Evaluation and Remedial Education, Children Creativity, Use of ICT in Education in schools and inclusive education for children with special needs.
• Programme included 182 topics and 278 case studies
• The design and development of the technology based platform was supported by IIMA

App to Track the Progress of CwSN

• GPS based App to monitor school, classroom, resource room and Home visit
• Helps to track the progress of different schemes of CwSN and Individualised Education Plan (IEP)
• 33 IE-CwSN Dist. Coordinators, 2095 SEs & ~1 lakh CwSN are connected through this app

Building an online community of Teachers

Facebook Workplace & Workchat

• All 2.5 lakh teachers, CRCs, BRCs, TPEOs, DPEOs and State level Officials of the Education Department have been provided with Facebook Work Chat Mobile based Videoconferencing facility to directly connect and interact with Hon. CM, Hon EM, Secretary and other HoDs time to time
• And through Facebook Workplace Teachers share the innovation and best practices on a daily basis with 2,000+ Posts every day.
• After studying state’s Technology Based interventions in Education, Facebook has extended this facility Pro bono to state.
• Facebook showcased this initiative as a Case Study in Davos 2020

Centralised Summative Examination & Online Data entry of Results for Grades 3 to 8

• GCERT conducted a Centralised Semester Examination in November 2019 in all schools in the State
• 100% of the answer sheets were checked by the teachers from other schools
• Centralized data entry was done for all 43 Lakh (4.3 Million) Students for all subjects
• Almost 50 crore unique data was entered, compiled and analysed for each examination
• An Online Platform was developed by SSA to collect and analyse test results
• Analysis for every District, Taluka and Cluster is now available for further analysis and planning of any new interventions

Reading Campaign for Oral Reading Fluency- Vanchan Abhiyan

• To improve the reading and comprehension levels among students of grades 3 to 8, a 100-day long Reading Campaign (‘Vanchan Abhiyan’) has been initiated
• Grade-wise compilation of activities for reading - ‘Bhashadeep’, has been created and provided to each student
• Specially designed audio and video literature have also been created and provided to schools
• A pre-test is conducted for all the students in grades 3 to 8 to test their current reading ability.
• A post-test will be conducted to check the effectiveness of the campaign
• Research will be conducted to benchmark the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) and Oral Reading Fluency with Comprehension for Gujarati language

Centralised Online Attendance System

• Daily Online Attendance System was launched in November 2018 to track the attendance of all the students and teachers across the state
• This system has been implemented in all the Primary, Secondary & Higher Secondary – Government, Grant-in-aid and Self Financed Schools in the State
• Almost 100% compliance in student attendance submission through CCC against about 65% average attendance submission in the beginning.
• Due to continuous follow ups and support through CCC, 70% students studying in grades I-VIII marked more than 80% attendance in December 2019 while this number was just 43% in December 2018.
• 85% of teachers have registered more than 80% attendance in December 2019 against 76% in December 2018

 School Administrative Software

• School Head Teachers are engaged in various non-teaching activities like – Payroll management; Managing Service Book of Teachers; Updating School Infrastructure details
• Considering their non-teaching workload, Head Teachers are allowed to take 18 period per week while other teachers have to take 45 period per week
• Department has developed and launched an integrated web application and platform for schools with the aforesaid functionalities to reduce the workload of Head Teachers significantly
• Head Teachers will now put in an average of 15 Hours extra academic work every week thereby, estimated 25,000 Head Teachers adding more than 1.25 Crore (12.5 Million) additional Man Hours per Year of academic work

Career Counselling Portal

• Portal provides Career information to students of class 9-12 in Gujarati, Hindi & English languages
• Through Portal awareness is created for job-oriented course
• 2600+ Schools along with their teachers & more than 1.4 Lakh students from Class 9th to 12th are able to access Information of 500+ careers, 19000+ colleges, 1150+ entrance exams, & 1050+ scholarships

QR Coded Energised Textbooks

• Energised Textbook (ETB) is a feature aimed at providing access to digital content for various topics in physical textbooks
• State had piloted the idea in 2019-20 with Maths & Science textbook carrying QR Codes for Grades 6,7,8
• From the academic year 2020-21, Grades 3-8, all the textbooks and for Grade 10 - Maths & Science textbooks will be made available with QR Codes
• By scanning the QR code available for every chapter, students and teachers can access the audio-visual content through Diksha app

Science of Learning Institute

• An MOU has been signed by the State for the commencement of Science of Learning Institute
• SOL will carry out educational research on student misconceptions and skill-based learning gaps
• Science of Learning Portal is being set up for Teachers to access the research data and the remedial items
• Trainings & Workshops will be conducted for teachers to deliver insights emerging from the research

Online Courses for Teacher Professional Development

• GCERT has launched online courses for head teachers, teachers, BRCs, CRCs and trainees on Diksha.
• Total of 11 courses were launched in May 2020
• Over 1.12 Lakh Enrolments are seen for these courses, till date

Study from Home

• The eight week-long teaching campaign through social media was started on March 28 for Government School Students from Class III-IX for English, Mathematics, Gujarati subjects
• Over 35 lakh students 60% got covered as a part of the campaign
• The weekly assignments were handed over to BRCs and CRCs who distributed this literature to all teachers every Saturday through WhatsApp and email
• The teachers ensured that these assignments are delivered to parents through 3200 WhatsApp groups
• For the Parents who don’t have the phone, the teachers ensured that assignments get delivered through the neighbours or even the village Sarpanch

TV Tutorials & Teachers Reach out to Individual Students

• To compensate for the lost teaching hours during the school’s shutdown due to COVID-19, State arranged for live and recorded lessons through television channels
• A systematic schedule was planned in collaboration with 13 news channels and Vande Gujarat DTH channel, with an aim to offer adequate revision and practice to the students before the annual exams
• Also, for revision ahead of the annual exams, nearly 1.8 lakh teachers reached out to all individual students and hand over worksheets, all 51 weekly tests (periodical assessment tests) and their answer sheets conducted in the second semester to Class III to VIII students

Socio-Psychological Support for Children

• ‘Parivar no maalo-salamat ane humfaalo (family’s nest-safe and warm)’ programme was launched by GCERT on April 1 as a part of Socio-Psychological support to Children during the Pandemic
• As a part of the programme students were provided with daily education material including stories, songs, physical and mental activities, shared through WhatsApp

Virtual Classrooms

• Virtual Classrooms are being set up for the students of Grade 5 to 8
• Over 2 lakh licenses have been procured for the same
• Each teacher will teach a group of 30 students under their respective cluster in a virtual classroom session
• The teachers will reach out to parents and students and get them registered on the platform for attending the sessions
• A pilot has been conducted in two Districts of Anand and Patan.

Video Content for CwSN

• Created 300 videos by 100 selected SEs
• IE-CwSN District Coordinators and Special Educators shared the videos with parents on Whatsapp groups
• A total of 15,009+ CwSN students have received the video content on Whatsapp

Source : Indian Report Digital Education