On 14th July 2020, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, Union Minister of Human Resource Development (MoHRD) released the PRAGYATA Guidelines on Digital Education, over a virtual platform from Delhi in the presence of Sanjay Dhotre, Minister of State HRD. The guidelines were prepared by the Department of School Education & Literacy of the Ministry of HRD.
Need for the guidelines:
i.The closure of Schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the education of around 240 million school going children in India.
ii.These guidelines will stress on the use of alternate academic calendar of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for the students who have access to digital devices and also for the students who have limited and no access to digital devices.
Features of PRAGYATA Guidelines:
i.The PRAGYATA Guidelines ensures the safety and welfare of the students and educates the students, teachers, parents and others on the online safety practices.
ii.The guidelines provide the 8 steps of online or digital learning which supports the planning and implementation of digital education with examples.
iii.The 8 steps includes Plan- Review- Arrange- Guide- Yak(talk)- Assign- Track- Appreciate.
iv.This provides suggestions to the administrators, teachers, students and parents in the different areas like,
- Assessment during online or digital education.
- Planning on duration, screen time, balanced online and offline activities.
- Quality of the materials and level wise delivery.
- Physical and mental wellbeing during the course of digital education.
- Measures to maintain Cyber safety and ethical practices.
- Collaboration with other initiatives.
v.The guidelines for teachers and administrators provide the outline of the support that should be provided to the students with special needs.
vi.This also provides the Do’s and Don’ts in ergonomics and cyber security.
vii.The digital education includes initiatives like DIKSHA, SWAYAM Prabha, SWAYAM MOOCS, Radio Vahini, Shiksha Vaani.
Recommendations on Screen time:
- For preprimary classes – 30minutes per day to interact and provide guidance to the parents.
- For Classes 1 to 12 – Recommended to adopt alternate academic calendar of NCERT
- For Classes 1 to 8 – two sessions of 30-45 minutes on the days decided by the state/UT for online classes for primary sections.
- For Classes 9 to 12 – four sessions of 30-45 minutes on the decided days.
Link for the PRAGYATA guidelines of MoHRD:
https://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/pragyata-guidelines_0.pdf
About Ministry of Human Resource Development(MoHRD):
Union Minister– Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’
Minister of State– Sanjay Dhotre
