National Digital Educational Architecture (NDEAR)

NDEAR (National Digital Educational Architecture) was established as part of the Digital First Mindset, under the Union Budget 2021–22, where the Center and the States/Union Territories use Digital Architecture to assist educational planning as well as teaching and learning activities.

To ensure that instructors, students, and schools have a smooth digital learning experience, NDEAR will be helpful for the Center and States in planning, managing, and supervising school education. The NDEAR’s institutional design, governance framework, technology, and data will be advantageous to both students and teachers as a whole.

The NDEAR project does not involve the creation of technological solutions for the educational ecosystem by the government. Through NDEAR, the government act as an enabler, offering a framework that allows anyone to create technology. The use of NDEAR frameworks, standards, and specifications would also qualify solutions as NDEAR compliant. Any technological solution that is NDEAR-compliant will be able to connect with other NDEAR-compliant technological solutions. State governments would be unrestricted in their efforts to develop solutions that meet their requirements.

Vision of National Digital Educational Architecture (NDEAR)

NDEAR needs a core that is always changing and learning in order to be effective over time. This is reflected in NDEAR’s design and institutional framework as well as in the organization’s mission.

1. Digital Infrastructure: Digital infrastructure is a collection of open-source parts and building blocks that may be used to create a wide range of beneficiaries’ and users’ solutions.
2. Unifying: A framework of standards, resources, and protocols that all systems and organizations may connect to and use to their advantages. Frameworks and standards can be for technology- and domain-related issues.
3. Diverse Ecosystem: Comprises a variety of actors and stakeholders in the education ecosystem, including the Central and State/UT governments; School systems (public, private, formal, informal, alternative); Civil society organizations, community, and private entities; Education experts, pedologists, and technologists; Learners, parents, teachers, and school administration.
4. Unbundled: Components and building elements that may be used to create a variety of solutions and exist independently.
5. Interoperable: This refers to systems’ ability to connect with one another as needed using open standards and APIs. This involves interoperability across systems and domains including school education, higher education, health, child development, social justice, juvenile welfare, tribal welfare, minority affairs, and others (based on acceptable norms, administrative, and legal frameworks).
6. Evolving: As the world and its demands change, so do learning objectives and requirements. In order to solve systemic difficulties highlighted in the present and the future, NDEAR must be an evolving system.

Framework for NDEAR

The framework for NDEAR contains the following six components in line with its vision and objectives.

1. Put users and beneficiaries first.
2. To stimulate and spur the diversified ecosystem’s innovation and evolution.
3. By use of an architecture that unifies and develops.
4. Powered by open data while maintaining privacy.
5. Backed by a long-lasting institutional foundation.
6. And an implementation strategy with a deadline.

Principles of National Digital Educational Architecture

• Unifying not Uniform: For the efforts of all players to be amplified, India’s diversity has to be preserved and united in a cogent manner.
• Ecosystem Driven: No one app, platform, or piece of technology can fix India’s schooling problems.
  For innovation, variety, contextualization, and choice, the ecosystem spanning governments, society, and market participants has to be revitalized. Harnessing the energy of the ecosystem players requires ongoing engagement with the ecosystem through clear rules and a set of useful tools.
• Unbundled and Combinable: Build unbundled fundamental building pieces to enable the ecosystem to find a variety of solutions rather than concentrating just on “solutions” Fully pre-built systems cannot change and accommodate a range of solution requirements. All elements of NDEAR must be created as separate microservices that are accessible through interoperable APIs and may be joined to create newer solutions.
• Federated but Interoperable: Although a central system might hasten adoption, it should be an option, and it is vital to provide interoperability across numerous federated systems by using common specifications.
• Open Access: Everybody has the ability to learn, assist others in learning, and support and manage. Open-source guidelines and open licenses are essential.
• Address Diversity, Inclusion, and Special needs: Design the system with users with special requirements in mind, providing them with tools and materials that are appropriate for their needs in terms of language, context, device, connectivity, capacity, etc. The system must support end Point devices at the root level and grant consistent access to everyone, including those in remote locations with poor or no connectivity.
• Evolvable: The infrastructure must be designed such that it can continuously adapt and change without requiring major changes.
• Provide Choice by Design: Privacy, Security, and trust by design: Design to allow actors (States, boards, schools, instructors, students, etc.) to choose which applications to use and how to use them in their particular environment.
• Leverage Investment: A design that fosters trust in all interactions while safeguarding user and entity data privacy.
• NDEAR is Federated, Unbundled: In order to fully utilize the systems that are already in place at the different administrative levels (Centre, State, and school), they must be upgraded in accordance with the NDEAR architecture principles, integrated with other NDEAR building blocks, and, if necessary, consolidated into unified platforms. This is necessary to give important stakeholders easier, more cohesive, and unified experiences while also bringing them in line with NDEAR.

Implementation of NDEAR

National Digital Education Architecture, is a project with the goal of developing a “single national digital infrastructure to energies and accelerate the education ecosystem.” This is essentially a technology framework that tries to make it possible for current systems to be updated and made interoperable while also making the common components and services for the development of new tools and solutions accessible. The goal of NDEAR is to stimulate and accelerate the digital education ecosystem through these shared structures and services. It has the characteristics of self-organization, scalability, and sustainability and is a “distributed, adaptable, and open socio-technical system.”

Conclusion

The purpose of NDEAR is not to act as an institutional framework for the growth of educational technology. When a healthy education ecosystem is able to provide practical solutions for India’s diversity, NDEAR would have fulfilled its objective.

The intention is not for NDEAR to construct blocks or to utilize blocks as the only type of answers. Governments, civil society, and private organizations may use these building blocks insofar as they are compliant and compatible with NDEAR to create useful platforms, solutions, and programs for students, teachers, parents, administrators, and the community. Some of these building blocks may already exist, while others may need to be developed or repurposed for the education ecosystem.