Recent Trends in Education

With several educational options available to students today, newer trends are emerging in this field which has completely changed the traditional held perceptions about education in India. Several career options that were earlier not considered to be traditional have emerged as the most sought after education and career options. Various career options in like radio jockeying, radio management, news anchoring, program anchoring, news reading and reporting for the electronic media, content writing, fashion designing, event management, hospital management, medical transcription etc, have opened up several newer avenues for education.

Traditional study courses like medicine, engineering and other subjects still have lots of demand. However, with the changing trends in the global and national economic scenario newer courses are fast emerging as alternative. The recent trends in education have certainly shown a deviation from the earlier trends.

Online Education is fast becoming a major preferred mode of education among students. Enrolling to regular courses is increasingly getting highly competitive in India; so online education and distance education has come as a wonderful alternative and several students opt for this. As the term itself suggests, online education means web based learning, but there is no universally accepted definition. So, the methods used for implementing online education may differ from institute to institute. Some online courses may require students and teachers to meet from time to time for physical lectures or to conduct laboratory experiments while some may not require this. This can vary depending on the course which one opts to take up.

There are various benefits of opting for an online study course. Students will not have to make any alteration in their present daily routine. In fact an additional degree might actually help the student in improving career prospects with the additional degree. By sitting in the comfort of their home or any other place in the world, one can obtain degrees from many renowned universities across the world. Students will not have to travel to anywhere to get the degree and can thus save huge amounts on boarding and lodging. Though online education is yet to pick up in India as compared to other countries of the world, the prospect in this field is huge.

E-learning scope in India is immense. There are several universities and other educational institutes that offer online education facilities to their students. Besides this, mock IIT-JEE entrance exams are also conducted by various organizations.

Distance Education courses are very popular in rural India. One of the main reasons for this is the provision that one can get degrees from various renowned universities from anywhere in India. Distance education is given through correspondence courses, where the student and the teacher are separated in time and space and sometimes both. Distance learning is doing a wonderful job by enabling the less advantaged sections of the society have an opportunity to get educated.

There are different types of distance learning options available to students. Some of them are postal correspondence courses, interactive CD-ROM courses, pocket PC/mobile learning course, telecourse/ broadcast course through radio or television and synchronous or asynchronous internet courses. Just like online education, in distance education too, students will not have to relocate to new places or make any changes in their existing work. All they need to do is find out about some good distance education providing institute, get enrolled and get a degree.

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is the premier institute for providing distance education in India. This university is one of the most recognized names in this field and at any given time there are 1.4 million students enrolled in various courses. Some of the other institutes that offer distance education to students include:

• Acharya Nagarjuna University Center for Distance Education (CDE)
  Guntur, Andhra Pradesh
• Alagappa University Directorate of Distance Education
  Sivanagar, Tamil Nadu
• Annamalai University Directorate of Distance Education
  Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu
• Anna University Chennai Centre for Distance Education
  Chennai, Tamil Nadu
• Anna University Coimbatore Directorate of Online & Distance Education
  Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
• Andhra University School of Distance Education (AU SDE)
  Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh
• Bangalore University Directorate of Correspondence Courses and Distance Education
  Bangalore, Karnataka
• Bharathidasan University Center for Distance Education
  Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu
• Bharathiar University School of Distance Education
  Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
• Barkatullah Vishwavidyalaya Institute of Open & Distance Education
  Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh
• Burdwan University Directorate of DistanceEducation
  Bardhaman, West Bengal