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Webinar: “SkillTech – Leveraging Technology for Skilling”
September 26, 2020 @ 14:00 – 15:00
The ASSOCHAM, India’s Apex Chambers of Commerce and Industry is organizing a Webinar on the theme “Leveraging Technology for Skilling” inviting eminent speakers from the Government and experts from the Industry for a meaningful and timely discussion
Chief Guest
Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey
Honorable Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, MSDE
Key Issues:
- Global Trends in SkillTech.
- Role of Technology in Future Skilling.
- SkillTech: Opportunities and Way forward
- Availability of Technology and Tools for Skill Development in India
- Initiatives by the Government and Industry in Skill Training, post lockdown.
Overview about the Theme:
Given that technology plays a huge role in development, it has now spread its grandeur in Skill Development. Video conferencing and satellites have made it possible for students in India to swap information with their superiors in NASA- that is the power of Technology. With digital platforms like Windows, Mac, etc. and search engines like Google, Oracle, etc., skill development in India is now just a click away.
Forwarding skill to areas where it was formerly not possible has now become quite comfortable because of leveraging technology. It is now possible to set up power centres in rural India, with the help of digital equipment and teach via video calls.
e-learning and Online assessment technologies can help Skill Training Institutes to automate key aspects of teaching, knowledge sharing and conduct online assessment. Many skill training institutes have started taking advantage of technology to enhance, automate and scale up their operations.
Many organizations often, when shifting to virtual learning, tend to reuse existing materials and formats rather than designing these from scratch. It needs to be considered that the challenges and opportunities of the virtual world are likely to be much different than those stemming from physical interactions. Technology has been an enabler and a key one at that, but the differentiators are the skills that have emerged through this crisis situation: Resilience, Compassion and Agility.
Be it selling skills, networking/ influencing skills, all as were happening in a face to face medium will change to virtual which means a different way to approach customers, gain their trust and sell the products. There are several examples where face to face distribution models were the only way and yet COVID has indeed accelerated the move to digital and online mediums. Learning will need to evolve to cater to a larger digital world which has more players to compete with and more markets to explore.
Emerging technologies are gaining space in our existing skilling infrastructure at an impressive pace. Even in India, several such technologies are already in their pilot stages; Virtual Reality is being used to train candidates on the usage of heavy machinery.
Other examples include the use of VR to train aspiring pilots in the aviation industry. Earlier pilots were trained on lighter aircraft and then shifted to heavier airplanes. As the aviation industry is highly critical, they were the first ones to efficiently adopt AR-VR in their skilling process. Given the costs incurred in establishing such training set-ups, other industries are not so open about this idea presently.
That’s where we should expect the Government to intervene and create establishments where learning of the smallest of soft and hard skills takes place on the basis of futuristic learning technology. With the Government’s emphasis on Skill India Mission, we can expect these plans to gain more traction. If an establishment of such a tech-based learning ecosystem is realized, with its full potential, we’ll have no dearth of high quality, an aptly-trained workforce that will be able to drive India’s economy towards the right direction. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that emerging technology and its implementation in India’s skilling ecosystem will be phenomenally beneficial for the country’s workforce as well as its industry. It has the ability to make India the international powerhouse of a competent human resource.