Quick Commerce! Is it impacting Children’s long-term Behaviour? Quick Food vs Fast Food vs Regular Food! Is Education getting impacted by Impulse purchase vs. Thoughtful Purchase? Read this Interesting Perspective!

Dear Students and Friends

During the summer of 1985, I still remember we were waiting desperately to buy a set of Lepakshi notebooks (11 books tied together). We had to go at 7 AM and wait in a long queue, only to get books by afternoon!! Cream-colored papers, non-smooth texture, sturdy cardboard cover, absorbed ink flowing from the ink pen!! But the joy was amazing!! If we want another book, again we have to depend on old-time bookbinding made using unused papers of previous year's Lepakshi books!!

Thanks to the technological revolution and growing consumerism, the cost of many goods was kept low which allowed more mass production and distribution of consumer goods. It created a large set of jobs and created an economic impact. It has also changed consumer behavior to some extent. It increased users’ expectations. Today, virtually E-commerce ensures any product available at your doorstep regardless of its manufactured location!

In recent times, there is a growing interest in Quick Commerce. Product / Item is delivered in a few minutes, a few hours, same-day delivery, and so on! This is definitely a novel concept. If we are in a medical emergency and if medicines are reached within 15 minutes, definitely it is a great service! However, we need to see the context of the service. If the context of the service is not considered in Quick commerce, it severely impacts the child’s psychology. Already children have been severely impacted by the concept of fast foods. If children demand food in 10-15 minutes, parents are not able to arrange and order it, naturally, children always demand quick food!

20 years back Fast Food evolved to fill the evening snacks! However, today Quick Food is slowly replacing the Main course meal. This transition might impact kids’ behavior. Look at it from the poor delivery boy’s perspective. Their driving style gets impacted only to make customers successful! Having said that, I am not against Quick Commerce. Definitely, it is increasing so many urban jobs! However, let us see from the perspective of children between 5 to 15 years perspective!

Already the educational foundation is getting diluted with the concept of Quick Education (e.g. Question Banks, Model Papers, Question Patterns, etc.). If children expect quick answers or teacher expects quick response or parent expects quick marks or the institution expects quick ranks, total education is collapsed. We should not allow this. Learning is a natural process. It is like farming. Can you expect a crop to grow below 90 days! The kids between 5 and 15 years old are in transit.  It is a make-or-break period. A huge responsibility for all of us to manage this transition subtly and help them reach the shore!

Thoughtful purchase contains the context of buying (e.g. medical emergency, a new set of guests arriving after you cook, vegetable shortage after the cooking process started, etc.). An impulse purchase is devoid of context.  

Let’s buy a thoughtful Purchase but not an Impulse Purchase! Do You?

Ravi Saripalle

 

Nurture or Nature? How to make more verbal participation of Girl students in a classroom (UG Engineering)? Role of Women Faculty, Special Women Sections & Women Colleges! Read this Interesting perspective!

Dear Friends and Students

·         Are you a Girl student studying in an Engineering College?

·        How many times have you responded to your professor’s question in a classroom in the last 1 month?

·         Are you always the first girl to respond to your professor’s question (right or wrong)?

·       Did you observe any of your Girl classmates participating in more verbal conversation after you started the participation?

·           Are you responding more to a female professor over male professor?

Interesting questions right? Yes, these questions help in devising a strategy for closing the participation gender gap in engineering courses! Last month IEEE Transactions on Education published (phys.org) an interesting research on this topic. Without any bias and prejudice, I am trying to present.

Regardless of western or conservative society, student identities are playing an important role on how they speak up in a classroom.  Princeton University Research says, women speak less than men in UG Engineering classes. However it is not true in case the instructor is a woman. The research found that women are much more likely to speak after another woman has spoken in class.

In 2018, University of Cambridge also published a similar article. It found women are two and a half times less likely to ask a question in departmental seminars than men. “This engagement has a domino effect, when a woman asked the first question, there was a 7.6% increase in the proportion of following questions asked by other women.”

If this is true in western classroom settings, I am sure the same or more percentage in Indian classroom settings too. Somebody has to take up this research to corroborate this fact.

Having said that, in spite of this phenomenon in the classroom setting, In contrast, the Indian IT industry is attracting more women than men. In 2011, the women workforce was 21%. Now it has increased to 34%. This year more women received higher packages than men in Campus Selections.

At this stage, I asked the following question to Google. What percentage of engineering students in India are female? It says as follows.

Canada 21.8% (2017), UK 17.57% (2017), USA 19.7% (2016), whereas India stands at 30% (2018). I am sure it might have increased further by 2022. I am not making any conclusion based on these facts but I observe Indian UG Women Engineering students are making a distinctive attempt.

Summary: More Indian girls are showing interest in the STEM courses. More Indian girls are getting selected for IT/ITES Jobs. However, a large proportion of women tend to exit from the industry after the first five years of employment (the print, Feb 2020). I feel there is also less verbal participation of Girl students in a classroom.

How do we solve this issue?  

Dear Teacher, Identify a girl who bells the cat in a classroom setting. She helps other fellow girl students to speak more.

Dear Govt. and Managements, Recruit & identify women faculty who can make the classroom more participative and drive meaningful conversations. Increase and strengthen Women Engineering Colleges.

Nancy Gray, President of Hollins University, Virginia published an interesting article- “Women’s colleges help young women find their voices, learn how to “lean in,” and develop the confidence to push back against the challenges”

While we appreciate and accept the modern culture, we cannot discount and discourage our traditional approach. A fine balance between modern thoughts and our traditional values make Indian girls outshine in STEM education and in engineering work. We are on the way, however there is more to do!

Nurture or Nature? I think both are needed and to be preserved!!

Ravi Saripalle

 

Is the World heading towards de-Globalization? What should be India's priority now? Why should India invest in GUIld and eGyanGana Social Projects Now? Please read this interesting perspective

Dear Students and Friends

Globalization & World Scenario

World War I ended the first era of Globalization! The time lag between World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945) is about 20 years! However World War II proved costly with the usage of nuclear warfare! Countries across the globe realized this cost, the UN established, but small confrontations continued between Nations. Be it Congo war (African nations), Syria, Iraq, Afghan, the contemporary Ukraine and a few others. The cold war continues from 1945 to till date between many Nations.

Curiously I was going through the data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS and checking the Trade share of global GDP in %, which pronounces the economic integration between Nations! Surprisingly, in 1970, it was 25%, 1980 (37%), 1990 (37%), 2000 (50%), 2008 (60.9%), 2020 (51%). It is consistently falling from 2008 to till date. Now after the Ukraine war, there is strong wind for further fall.

What should be India's Focus?

It means, whether we agree or disagree, more and more countries are worried about sovereignty and protecting their human and natural resources. This is the fact. In this hour of situation, what should be the focus of India? Of course, we need to strengthen our security, protect our National resources and increase our intra-consumption and GDP. Beyond this, we need to make a strategic move in building and branding our Human Resources.

Why were our traditional Learning systems strong?

Time immemorial Bharata Khanda has been helping the cause of Global Human Talent development. Now we are more confident and reposing trust on our Learning systems. We may not be able to make Global QS Rankings and Ivy league institutions but our foundation system is strong.

The blend of Science & Mathes, clubbed with a Middle class culture, backed by great family traditions and spiritual upbringing is proving to produce a matured talent. Our students are good at managing limited resources and produce optimal products. Probably we may not be able to produce great inventions and Noble laureates, but we are definitely good in making innovations and managing global talent. Today we are able to witness the same with Global CEOs of Indian origin and their mature way of handling global companies.

What is the Hurdle Now?

However, there is a catch here. The Indian schooling system till date was based on Guru-Shiksha Parampara (erstwhile in Gurukulas), later in modern schools through Traditional classroom or Home Tuitions or evening Tutorials. But today, Home tuitions are replaced with Digital Learning Tools. Guru is replaced with Technology. Learning Record is in the hands of Technology. 

Today an average student is attending multiple physical schools and multiple online learning courses, sometimes he/she changes the platform for each concept. As a result, there is no consolidation of digital learning records. There is no digital learning traceability. There is no digital learning footprint. We are losing our original trademark of great learning models. However, we cannot replace and go back to old models. That is also not possible.

This change looks simple today, appearing trivial, but in 10 years’ time, this learning process becomes chaotic with the fragmented learning records, scattered across multiple digital learning islands (kindergarten to primary school to secondary to University to online courses to online knowledge repositories). How does it impact. It leads to weak Recommender systems for students. Results into weak or fragile mentoring.  Leads to fragile skill investment strategy for Govts. Finally employment suffers and GDP impacts.

Earlier home tuition master /school teacher or someone like a family education mentor used to drive the individual in multiple dimensions and was managing User’s learning records / learning styles and making customizations, recommendations etc.

Proposal to Govt., Intellectuals, and Visionary of India

We need technology to solve this simple issue before it explodes and goes out of control. We are appealing to the Govt. of India, Corporates, Heads of Institutions, EduTech companies and Digital Universities and Schools.

Dr. Abhinav Dayal (linkedin.com/in/abhinavdayal), Self (Dr. Ravi Saripalle (linkedin.com/in/ravisaripalle)) and a few other like minded people formed Volunteering Group and developed a technology roadmap and architecture to solve this cold but burning Learning Issue.

What is GUIld and eGyanGanga?

We proposed a concept called GULid (Global Unique Learner ID, similar to Aadhar for Digital Learning Record) to track every individual digital learning transaction from KG to PG and beyond till he/she learns online. We also proposed eGyanGanga, a Unified, Multi-Lingual, Open Knowledge & Learning Platform, seamlessly integrates the world of all online Learning platforms with GULid inbuilt (aggregator of user profile), and also provides a basic LMS for free and fair use for one who cannot afford digital learning.

We submitted proposals to the Hon'ble Prime Minister, Dept. of Science and Technology, and various Corporates to consider and support this social cause. This is going to be revolutionary in the digital learning space. We want to make it as open source, not for profit and free to use so that 1.3 billion learner's digital learning can be tracked, consolidated, right investments made based on recommendations, project them internationally and become a Global Talent Hub and Global Human Resources Pool.

Let's Rise Together! Please save our next generation digital Learning records. Please help us and volunteer! Let us together build these social learning platforms for Universal Learning cause!

 

Ravi Saripalle

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