LPU Chancellor addresses Oxford University, bats for gamification of edn

JALANDHAR, NOV 15: Lovely Professional University (LPU) Chancellor Dr. Ashok Kumar Mittal has advocated gamification of education in contemporary times while addressing a gathering of students, faculty and staff of University of Oxford on the topic ‘Will universities be disrupted by 2030’.
Shedding light on the topic, Mittal said that education should be made immersive for the students.
“Education has not changed in 10,000 years. It’s still about a teacher speaking in front of students, students taking notes and then getting tested on it. While the medium may have changed from in-person to online, the basics remain the same. The need of the hour is to change education not just in terms of medium but also in terms of how it is delivered. Education needs to be immersive — many skills are better learned at work than at school. Education needs to be gamified — kids spend thousands of hours playing games online.”
Asking the gathering if education can be made as fun as the popular game Angry Birds, he said, “Furthermore, education needs to be entertaining — we learn more about British history from Netflix’s The Crown than from history books. We are at the MySpace of education. There will be a Facebook of education. Will that come from Oxford or India?”
It may be mentioned that Mittal, who is also a member of Rajya Sabha and member of the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs, had visited Ireland to sign an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a university.
During this visit, Mittal also visited one of the top-ranked universities, Queen’s University in Northern Ireland, to hold discussions on collaborative opportunities.
He also called on Chief Knowledge Officer, Times Higher Education, Phil Baty, at the Times Headquarters, London.
During the meeting, discussions were held on LPU’s collaboration with Times Higher Education to forge internationalisation, stronger international collaborations, etc.