Education in the 21st Century is considered one of the basic needs in society, although millions of people are remaining out of the boundary of minimum literacy. In such circumstance, the digital age has come with a plethora of promises, in transforming the way people are living in the present, from earlier decades. Despite having inequalities in digital-initiated “equality,” developing education systems throughout the world are getting into touch with digital technology. Bangladesh, as a developing country with increased economic solvency, is enduring a metamorphosis in academic culture, more precisely in teaching and learning. The previous practice of pedagogues and learners are challenged by new age communication and the education system based on digital technology. This chapter investigates the essential characteristics of the transformation of teaching and learning in Bangladesh. It also examines the correlation with digital technology and academic factors in the contemporary education system and gives recommendations to overcome the crises still dwelling within the education framework.
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The academy in Bangladesh is experiencing disruption brought on by technology. The word “digital” has become one of the most popular buzzwords in the 21st Century with intense development in the technological sector. It deals with digital apparatuses such as smartphones, computers and other advanced systems such as the internet and AI. With few failures, digital technology brought tremendous value to the global community. From dawn to dusk, modern communities rely on technology to get us through the day (Neimann & Wang, 2017). Two binary digits, 0 and 1, are the most powerful numbers in today’s world. The spectacular achievement of digital technology has germinated precisely during 1990s after the inception of the World Wide Web (WWW). “Digital revolution” as it has often been addressed is an ingenious force against the existing old analogue which is perhaps the most decisive incident the world has ever experienced to date (Ahuja, 2015).
A flood of extraordinary facilities brought by digital technologies are sweeping out conventional tools and methods, and radically transforming the way people live. In Bangladesh, messages in a handwritten letter often took more than a month to deliver whereas it now takes a few seconds to do so due to the assistance of the internet. In previous decades, an average person was connected to a few people at a time, but now one can easily choose to be connected to hundreds, thousands, even more than a million people at the same time through the “neural network” of the internet. Thus, the digital communication system is smoothing the difficulties, ameliorating the previous global distance between nation-states, communities and even individuals (World Bank, 2018). Harari (2018) opines that the two most surprising gifts of the digital age are bioengineering, and big data.
Although in every way people’s lives are initially improved by digital services, however, the digitalization of the education system has remained unnoticed irrespective of the development of nation-states (Bukharaev & Altaher, 2017). Bangladesh as a developing country is still in its infancy in terms of digitalization in the public sectors, such as the economy, health, communication, education, etc. (Mahmuda, 2016).
Of these sectors, education in Bangladesh is progressing toward an intense metamorphosis, from a traditional “teaching and learning” approach to a more advanced and digitalized approach that enhances the traditional learning methods. A plethora of modern instruments and new age inventions are making their way forward (Akbar et al., 2009).
As a result, former practices of pedagogy have been facing manifold challenges as is the traditional learning and inflexible educational institutions. The act of sweeping away the old conventional knowledge-systems has turned into a benefit, by making a path for the modern methods of teaching and learning. Digital technologies are gaining traction especially in the education sectors thus making this path possible.
Bangladesh education “specialists” and sociologists are slow to bring a collective awareness to the public that the educational infrastructure needs to be updated (Mahmuda, 2016; Starkey 2012). Therefore, this study attempts to open a new horizon in the field of education research in Bangladesh. This chapter focuses on the advent of digital technology in Bangladesh, its intrusion in the education sector, and analyzes whether it is reconstructing an up-to-date modernized high-standard education system.
Education technology started to expand in higher education rather than in the primary or intermediate schools (Bukharaev & Altaher, 2017). Higher education tends to determine the future candidates of the important public and private sectors, and the nation’s leaders in developing countries such as Bangladesh. Such countries tend to have less effective and lower quality education than modern nations. Therefore, this study focuses on technology advances in higher education. In this regard, first, a brief political history of Bangladesh will be summarized to provide a background to understand the historical developments in the education sector.