Assistant Professor Dr. Pranav Mulaokar
Abstract- New education policy 2020 has made use of technology in education compulsory. The educational technologies provide a great support for the learners as well as educators. Learners can access the technology anywhere and anytime. This kind of flexibility in education cannot be there without technology. Access to distant and quality education is possible today due to this advanced technology. In this paper, the importance of technology in instruction and student engagement is analyzed. In the instruction section, the use of technology for information transfer, communication, assignment and test submission, is researched for. Whereas in the student engagement section, classroom activities, group activities, team building, real-time interaction and interdisciplinary activities will be looked at. For this research, the applications like Google classroom, Google forms, and what’s up are utilized. For classroom instructions and assignment submissions, the Google classroom application was used. In Google forms, tests were distributed and what’s up groups were created for classroom information circulation and group formation. The sample selected is B. Tech. students from first year. There are four sub-samples containing around 60 students each. These students are from computer science and information technology streams. Being engineers, they were quite familiar with technology, but few faced challenges. Such students were encouraged to take help from their friends and learn how to use technology for future endeavors. The observations show that they rely less on technology for education. They prefer in-person learning rather than online digital platforms for learning. This does not mean that technology is lacking behind. Around 50% of students of the collected samples, know the significance of utilizing technology. In addition, this study also highlights that teachers cannot be replaced by technology. It is there to assist students and teachers for their teaching and learning activities and classroom management. The statistical data from semester I and semester II reveals that over the period of time, students become more used to technology and adjust themselves. In the world of information and technology, we as teachers have to familiarize ourselves with how to use the technology and try our best to overcome the lacunas through consciousness and wisdom.
