Is there a Digital Divide among Indian Youth?
Following suit with the Common Aptitude Test for management programs in the country, CBSE decides to make the All India Engineering Entrance Examination an online examination. Indeed a bold move considering the number of candidates appearing every year. I gave the Online CAT test this year, and was glad it all went smooth and glitch free.
I came across this article in The Hindu yesterday.
The tag line goes like this, “Given the digital divide, is it feasible or fair for an undergraduate entrance exam to go this way?”
There still exists digital divide among Indian youth, especially among those aiming to pursue an Engineering degree?
It isn’t like Indian students pursuing engineering degree today are exposed to computers only after they join college. Even if they don’t have the skill set to program and use linux, they should definitely be acquainted with using the keyboard, mouse and the monitor!
At least that alone is what you need to attend online exams. You should be able to use the mouse, point it at the buttons and click! Even though we claim it to be a no paper pen test, yet all the rough work is done on paper only!
From the article in Hindu:
However, a lot of thought and debate needs to go into any move to make it an entirely paperless exam, the lecturer added. She explains that in two of the three pre-university colleges that she has taught in, students are not computer-literate. Even if they are, it is only to the extent of browsing or checking the e-mail. “To be able to do an exam online, that too at a consistent speed and level of accuracy, requires a fair amount of familiarity with computers. A large section of society is really not there yet, and we must wait for the digital divide to collapse before any such thing is attempted.”
What?! They can browse the internet, socialize on facebook/orkut, and check and compose emails, but that is just not enough! They need to be more familiar with computers?! How much more familiar should they be?
You tell me? Is there a digital divide among Indian youth?
