New world of tech calls for 'learning by doing'

Ever wonder how a car can drive itself, without a human at the controls; how your phone can “understand” your spoken question and respond to you; what makes it possible for spam mails to be filtered out of your inbox?

Thanks to our ability to use the power of data and techniques to analyse them, we are today capable of not only the above tasks, but also to provide better healthcare to citizens, help people organise their lives more reliably, and accomplish many tasks that were only in the realm of science fiction only a few years ago. Today, applications based on these capabilities pervade every walk of life and new applications are being invented everyday.

Techniques used in data science, the science of discovering insights in data, have been known for many centuries. The new twist is the ability to generate, store and process huge amounts of data cheaply and efficiently. In addition, much of the mathematics and statistics involved was the exclusive domain of specialists, but recent developments in these areas have made these techniques more widely available and non-specialists can use the tools of data science with ease. Today, it is possible for someone with a creative streak to conceive an useful application and build it in a very short time.

There has been a veritable paradigm shift in the way we live our lives, thanks to data and our ability to process it. Be it our healthcare systems, the way we transact with our banks or the way we collect data that forms the backbone of this revolution. Opportunity is knocking for nations and indeed the world to be transformed. This has inevitably brought to the fore the question of how we should train new generations to take advantage of these changes.

Let us look at healthcare as an example. Today, the power of data allows us to tune the interventions to address the specific needs of an individual, based on their genome and the risk of a specific disease. No more do we have to depend on treating diseases based on protocols developed purely statistically. Public health policies can be tuned for better outcomes using data and the power of analytics. While the processes of handling personal health data and hospital management systems are relatively well established, there is a shortage of focused education in Health Informatics.

All of us invariably deal with money and with little knowledge of how to manage it. We trust third parties to manage our money for us. Increasingly, the trend in the finance world is to unleash the power of data. However, in banks and on trading floors or in any other financial institution, we see domain experts with little expertise in technology being assisted by technology experts with little background in finance. FinTech as a discipline has been picking up pace of late. A handful of universities, especially in the West, have realised the need of specialised training to computer scientists that can help them make better decisions using the power of computers, data and algorithms specially developed for managing money.

Fiction to reality

What was until a few years ago the realm of science fiction has become reality today. Driverless cars are a reality. Smart refrigerators that understand the pattern of usage and make sure that refills are ordered, delivered and stocked, are already available. Efficient transportation using sensor data, collected over vast stretches of roads, have made traffic gridlocks less frequent.

Our ability to sense requisite parameters in even the remotest areas has made it possible to improve agricultural productivity and preservation of endangered flora and fauna globally. All this and much more have become possible thanks to ‘Cyber Physical Systems’. Our increased ability to “sense” and “act” are largely due to inexpensive digital devices that can talk to each other, be controlled and, in turn, control the environment around them. Cities are becoming “smarter.”

While many exciting things are happening in the world, how do we equip ourselves to take advantage of it? It is time we re-visited the effectiveness of old systems of pedagogy. The big question remains: how should we change the way education is delivered to remain relevant and address the shifting needs of the modern world. It is indeed sad if we only produce a large number of “Scholars” who have acquired knowledge by reading great books. No amount of knowledge acquired by reading a book on swimming will help in saving oneself when drowning. Only knowing how to swim can help.

Our places of learning should embrace the new reality. Information is available on any topic at the click of a button. In this changed reality, what is the role of a teacher? A teacher does play an invaluable role as a mentor and guide. The classroom should no longer be where the teacher is “teaching”, but the interaction between the teacher and the student should be more experiential. The student learns by “doing”, the teacher provides the guidance necessary for the student to “do”.

No more does it suffice to have students memorise volumes, or just know answers to “Likely Questions” to excel. As universities evolve and adapt to this new reality, stu-
dents should increasingly indulge in a microcosm of what they will likely face in the future. They should be required to learn by doing what they would in real life. “Learning to learn” is perhaps the most valuable skill universities can instil in students.

(The writer is professor of Computer Science at TransDisciplinary University and Chairperson of the Computer Society of India, Bangalore Chapter)