‘Open’ gooru labs to make classroom learning fun

Despite the rapid development in science and technology, classroom learning in the country is still too focused on textbooks and theories.

BENGALURU: Despite the rapid development in science and technology, classroom learning in the country is still too focused on textbooks and theories.A research lab started at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) a few days ago aims to change all this. It will use technology to combine independent learning with regular classroom practices. It has top universities from across the world on board and its facilities are open to all educational institutes, free of cost. Called the Gooru Labs, the initiative is a network of partnerships with several universities and research labs including Drexel University, Stanford University, John Hopkins School of Education and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

While technology cannot replace pedagogy, it is still a critical for implementing effective educational practices at scale. The focus will be on the student’s current knowledge and progress and not just on getting grades for various subjects, says a statement from IIIT-B.The researchers at the lab will focus on learning science, social cognition, web science and data science for learning. 

The Gooru platform is free for use by any educational institutions. Teachers can utilise various corpus of open learning resources that have been curated and cataloged into learning maps by the lab’s content team. Courses can be mapped to various learning board standards and customised. Usage of the Gooru platform aims to aid teachers to make learning more effective by getting a picture of individual student’s learning graph.

Prof Srinath Srinivasa, Dean, Research and Development, IIIT-B and Co-Director, Gooru Labs, says, “The growing adoption of the world wide web presents a great opportunity for personal empowerment. The influence of the web can be so profound, that it has become an imperative for educators to design new models of learning for a post-web world.”Two PhD students and four MTech students will be working for the Gooru Labs from IIIT Bangalore.