Education is getting increasingly competitive in todays world and new scientific researches are suggesting more and more innovative techniques on how it can be made more efficient and effective. Today our old classroom education is rapidly replaced by interactive digital approach. Software like Blackboard is innovating not only our class room learning but also brings new dimensions to first hand learning.

For improvement in any education system, we have to focus on four basic things.

1. How the course is managed

2. Methods of teaching and evaluation

3. Student teacher communication

4. Peer to Peer interaction.

How the course is managed

First and foremost for effective education is, how the courses and subjects managed by schools and academic institutions. Better management in terms of providing reading material, clear instruction regarding how the whole course will progress, makes the student chart out schedules according to his or her comfort zone. One of the best approaches is to have more diversity in the class; this approach will not only bring more point of views in same class but also help in student working with peers from different backgrounds.

Methods of teaching and evaluation

As more and more schools are going for inclusion of technology in teaching process, the learning is becoming increasingly interactive. But with all these gadgetry it still left to the teacher how he or she wants to approach their lessons. More and more teachers are taking the road of participative approach to teaching these days. It makes the student feels the part of the system and make him believe that he is the part of decision making process and these decisions are important to him. In fact discussing with students how they will be evaluated and what are the aspects teacher look forward to in evaluation, to my mind makes student feel more responsible for their learning.

Student Teacher Interaction

Apart from the grading and evaluation process, student teacher interaction should be encouraged. The new technologies are enabling student to interact with their teachers on holidays and have extra clarification on weekends. These sorts of interactions are helpful to both students and teachers. It helps teachers in designing and developing a learning system for the respective class in fact it can be crystallized to respective student. As more and more students are coming from different cultural, social and economic backgrounds it became imperative for the teacher to mould his or her approach according to the student.

Peer to Peer Interaction

One area where the latest technologies like Blackboard are helping is increasing level of peer to peer interaction. In fact encouraging part is that even teachers can participate in these peer to peer interaction platforms. For example the Blackboard software enable student to manage their email accounts and discuss various topics on the college based online chat or discussion board. These boards provide everybody an opportunity to present his or her point of view and how they feel about the assignment and how they are tackling it. It also opens new window for teachers to understand the students reaction toward their approach. One thing I personally like about the technology usage is it inculcates even the distance learning student in mainstream. To my mind the biggest learning platform for the future will be these discussion boards where teachers will encourage students to participate and they can even be graded for their participative level.