The future of hybrid teaching

Seema V Jerajani is an inspiration for young and experienced hairstylists and makeup artists. She elaborates on how the beauty and hair education in India morphed in the face of the pandemic and voices her preference for traditional and offline education. 

We evolve as people in many ways – as a community, industry and as individuals. This pandemic has changed the way of life globally. Suddenly, the world came to a standstill… until new ways started evolving with the need to get on with life under the new circumstances. Education evolved and instantaneously everything was online. Our hair and beauty industry has been no different. There was sharing of knowledge, training, demonstrations, interviews – and a lot of it was free or at a marginal cost. Geographical distances were no longer a boundary for connecting people from any corner of the world. Sassoon had an online class, free of charge, who could have imagined that! It has been a dream of many hairdressers to get educated at Sassoon but many of them could not afford it. The pandemic, in a way, made possible this once in a lifetime opportunity to do an online class, free, with Sassoon!

Online or offline: Trainings in India go both ways 

In the present Indian scenario, where some states have permitted academies to start and others have not, the traditional education system of the beauty and hair industry has changed. We see that several freelance trainers who were offering online trainings during the last six to eight months have now started teaching offline, as academies re-open. This change has given them a great opportunity and a head start to establish themselves.

For courses that are primarily theoretical, pre-recorded videos, and online live sessions will save on training hours in the academy. These will also give the students learning flexibility. Unfortunately, trainers may find that more time and funds will be required to make pre-recorded videos, unless the academies have the budget to make the online tutorials. Again, this may be applicable only for theory classes or some basic trainings. It could be practical and cost-effective to have live online sessions as well. However, since our industry is about vocational skills where practical training is important, I am not so sure that people will prefer having the practical aspects of the courses taught online. It is difficult to guide the student online as accurately as one can in an offline class. I believe that offline education is still the preferred way of teaching and learning.

The future of online education 

In terms of the future of online education, even after the online programmes are made, the demand for these programmes may or may not be there, as there are many individuals and academies that are offering offline courses once again (since the pandemic in India seems to be easing up). In fact, many trainers are travelling across the country to teach, since students are not travelling to other cities to study.

Assessments are also difficult online when compared to offline. Education at academies will still be the preferred mode of training, especially for people who are new to the industry. For people who are upgrading their skills, they may find it easier to upgrade their knowledge online. However, this may not always hold true. I have seen hairstylist, with a few years of experience, learning online hairstyling from the world’s leading hairstylist, and with access to recordings to watch the styles as many times as they liked – but they could not reproduce the updos at all at the end of the course.

There is also a possibility of students not completing the online course and leaving midway. Many courses that have been conducted were started without planning as people did not have experience in online education. There were no assessments and yet certificates were given to every person who registered and paid fees. Certificates without adequate skills acquired!

The positive side of online trainings is that it has a great reach. However, the lack of teacher training with communication skills for online programmes, administration systems, support tutorial material, quality design of the course, evaluation systems and acceptance by people, will still take its time, but hybrid system of trainings will eventually happen.”

Seema V Jerajani is Founder & Educator of SVJ Academy of Hair and Makeup. She has authored an educational book on Indian hairstyling in 2018, ‘Art of Indian Coiffures,’ https:// youtu.be/iUDtD9z3K0g. She has also been on the jury at the OMC Hairworld Championship 2018 in Paris, represented India in the OMC Europe cup championship in hairstyling in 2015, received the industry’s most prestigious ‘Hall of Fame Hair Artist of the Year’ Award at the Schwarzkopf Professional Estetica Hair Couture Awards 2010. https://instagram.com/ seemavjerajani