Gururaj Deshpande and Devi Shetty on modern learning concepts . What to stress on !!..

Cool and humble Dr. Gururaj Deshpande

Dr Gururaj Deshpande, of Deshpande Foundation, the 1974 IIT Chennai graduate, the tech-bilionnaire founder of A123 systems, Tejas Network, Sycamore Networks, Cascade Communication, Juniper Networks etc, the serial entrepreneur, was speaking at the IIT Bombay entrepreneurship week program, EUREKA, during the third week of January 2019. Guru hailing from Hubli in Karnataka, by the way, is one of the most celebrated tech entrepreneurs of the world, he is the only Indian to be honoured by Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT by establishing the Gururaj Deshpande Centre for Innovation at MIT. He was earlier the co-chair with President Obama on the Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in US.

Gururaj in the course of his enlightening talk made this startling demand on the educational system of the country - education should be problems and solutions based.

He proposed, why not we find a problem and then study everything needed to solve the problem. in this process, we shall see that the student understands the problem, develops solutions to the problem and finds immediate use of his knowledge in problem solving. Gururaj was indeed, reflecting how the future of education is going to be shaped in the coming decades and centuries.

The fact is higher studies is not going to be studying the generic knowledge related to the subject, but acquiring the skills and abilities to find gainful applications of that knowledge for societal good.

Dr. Devi Shetty

In the Second Future of Learning International Conference held at IIM Bangalore during 5,6 January 2019, Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty , Chairman of the Board of Governors, IIMB and also Chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya (now Narayana Health) was mentioning in his inaugural speech, how in the immediate future, skills are going to be valued much more than the knowledge a person has.

Knowledge is accumulation of facts about a subject, event, etc while the practical application of this knowledge is skill. 

Finding real-world problems and developing skills to tackle such problems is what both these visionaries of the contemporary Indian tech and medical world forsee. The figure given here explains it well.

The learning outcome from any session can be skills, competence and knowledge acquired. Competence is the proven use of skills, knowledge and ability.

Courtesy Karmo Toikannen, 2016, Lifelearn Platform.

Skills can be practical or  cognitive, knowledge can be theoretical or factual and ability can be personal, methodological and social.

Given that these contemporary societal think leaders who are going to leave great impression on the sands of time have given us the first indicators of what the future world of learning and knowledge is going to be, is it not the right time for us to take note of their expert opinion and do something urgent to refine our educational system to reflect the immediate need of the times we are  passing through.

george..