Abstract
ICT is a powerful tool which can be used by both India and Canada to harness the growth and development in the respective regions. Researchers and practitioners can come together from Indo-Canadian communities and take the association to a more meaningful level. The current research discusses the ICT tools that can be adopted from Canada by India to improve the education quality and knowledge transmission. On the other hand, Canada government can make efforts to enhance knowledge transfer and translation through ICT by adopting tools like best practices repository, communities of practice, corporate intranet/extranet, corporate yellow pages, expertise locator, online chat/instant messaging, knowledge portals, groupware-workflow and tracking system, and document/content management that are already used in India. ICT has the potential to develop the country politically, socially, and economically.
TopIntroduction
India is the seventh largest country in terms of geographic area and is second largest in the world in terms of population. With population of 1,236,344,631 or 1.24 billion India is densely populated. According to its demographics, it is a young nation with 58.3% of the population under 30 years of age. The urban population, as estimated in Census 2011, accounts for 31.3% of the total population that implies majority of the population resides in rural areas. However, the urban population is increasing at the rate of 2.47%. The literacy level is 72.9% and education expenditure by the country is 3.1% of the GDP. The country ranks seventh in terms of nominal GDP (International Monetary Fund, 2016). Initially, India was an agrarian economy as agriculture and allied sector contributed almost 51.9% to the GDP but the focus changed to services. The technological boom or the push in Information & Communication Technology (ICT) in almost all the sectors after liberalization has contributed in GDP as well. ICT is being used in almost all the industries- SMEs, manufacturing, agriculture, heath, education, BFSI, infrastructure development, income tax, real estate analytics, disaster management and many more. ICT application has led to the development in many industries, thereby, contributing to the overall economic development of the nation (GOI, 2015).
Canada is the world’s second largest country in terms of area with population 34,834,841 which is one-fourth of that of India. Majority of the population (54.5%) lies within the age group of 24-64 years. Approximately, 80.7% of the total population resides in urban areas which are far more as compared to that in India. The literacy level is as high as 99% and education expenditure is 5.4% of GDP which is again higher than India’s (Statistics Canada, 2015). However, it ranks tenth in terms of nominal GDP behind India (International Monetary Fund, 2016). In Canada, ICT is applied in various sectors such as education, heath, agriculture, research, SMEs, disaster management, tourism etc.
The Indo-Canadian community has been making efforts to bridge the gap in the demographics of the two countries through development in ICT and its application in various industries. It recognized the potential areas where ICT can be used for the development of the overall sector.
The Indo-Canadian bilateral agreement on ICTE was signed in 2013 and was spread over five areas- B2B cooperation, R&D collaboration, E-Governance, cyber security and Investment & Innovation. An MoU on ICT and electronics has already been signed in 2012. Another meeting was held between the delegations from both the countries to discuss the India-Canada ICTE Working and majorly focused on ICT areas like- E-Governance, cloud computing, big data, 4G/LTE technologies, M2M/IoT and cyber/ mobile security. Issues like mobility, cyber security, investment, innovation and incubation in ICT were also discussed (Department of Electronics and Information Technology, 2016).
India-Canada relations are old and rooted in Westminster institutions, trade, and ties between people, common law and investments between the countries. The relations are growing but are well below the potential. These potential areas where the countries show interest are energy, infrastructure development, ICT, and biotechnology sectors. Canadian and Indian economies complement each other in many ways can very well work with each other on the development front.
Indian sectors are moving up the value-chain with the help of application of ICT. IT activity of Canada also contributes to strengthen their value added services. Since, there exist similar sensitivities in some sectors of both the countries, ICT application by the negotiators is recommended to achieve the need for balanced agreement. It is an important lever for productivity growth in both the countries (The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, 2012).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) (Adaptive Courseware): It is a self -paced learning course which is adaptive and extends to CBT/CAL approach in Canada. It seeks to customize lessons on the basis of dynamically modeling individual student performance.
Automatic Testing or Feedback: It is a way of assessing the knowledge of learners in Canada. It is a tool to test systematic objective testing. It is useful for large class groups and the subject matter is favorable to testing. It includes test questions, automated marketing, feedback generation and summary information on performance of students.
Hypermedia Resources: They are course resources in Canada that are meant for self-learning at the pace which is convenient to the user, or for private study guided by the teacher. It is the corpus of loosely structured documentation which includes multimedia such as audio, video, graphics embedded with hypertext links.
Online Inventory of Emergency Resources: A database of disaster management related information and resources in India. It is important for mobilizing equipment and skilled human resources at the time of crisis.
TEWS: A system sending tsunami related warnings to prevent damage and save lives in India. It helps in detecting tsunamis in the Oceans alert the countries that are prone such accidents.
Wireless Ad-hoc Mesh Networks With Global Positioning System (GPS) Mapping: A system in Canada which allows knowing the precise location of buildings, streets, emergency service, landmarks and disaster relief sites that can help in saving lives within time. This system is quite useful for disaster management teams and public safety personnel to protect life and property loss.
Best Practices Repository: It is a collection of best practices and lessons learnt from different kind of projects in India. It may be stored in the form of documents, graphs, pictures, models, presentations, and diagrams, etc.
Didactic Courseware: It involves computer-based training (CBT) and computer-assisted learning (CAL) resources used in didactic format with sequential lessons for self-paced learning that may replace or supplement convenient learning in Canada.