Madurai made history in the Southern Tamil Nadu technology landscape with the launch of its first regional center under the Tamil Nadu Information Technology and Digital Services (iTNT) hub on September 26, 2025. Launched at Anna University's regional campus, the new center signals the state's growing emphasis on building deep-tech and emerging-tech startups and stimulating a new generation of innovation and entrepreneurship in the region.

The launch ceremony was graced by State Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services, Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, accompanied by business leaders and scholars. The Madurai center is the second in Tamil Nadu, expanding the connectivity and benefits of the iTNT ecosystem to a greater number of researchers, startups, academic institutions, and industries in the south.

Designed to be more than an open office environment, the hub provides advanced physical facilities, shared space, and access to technology transfer programs. Startups and researchers can become a part of all iTNT programs, gaining access to mentorship, innovation funding, and industry partnership needed for rapid growth and successful market entry.

Importantly, the department will also create its inaugural satellite office for the iTNT hub at Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai. This will further promote the backing of the ecosystem for local technology talent, promote collaboration between academia, and bridge the gap between research and industry application.

Stakeholders and authorities expressed optimism that the Madurai regional centre would be a stimulus to entrepreneurship, boost employment generation, and position southern Tamil Nadu at the cutting edge of technology innovation. The fact that the facility exists proves Tamil Nadu's aggressive effort towards strengthening its standing as a deep-tech investment and development destination of choice.

By the co-location of industry, startups, and academia, iTNT hub aims at developing future technology leaders as well as entrepreneurs, resulting in an innovative diversity-rich culture in the southern suburbs

Higher education's future is flat-out hybrid, balancing on-campus and remote learning to produce a more flexible, accessible model that's redefining how universities are run.

With flexibility now a standard, not an added bonus, students these days—the many who've grown up with hybrid school during pandemic times—are rewriting the playbook for learning spaces. Following the pandemic years, studies have indicated that there has been a diversified change in students' preferences. Gensler's 2023 Education Index also provides insight into a notable trend: as much as there is increasing demand for more on-campus, with 45% of students wanting a totally on-campus experience, most students, faculty, and staff currently want a hybrid or virtual model, which is not necessarily off-campus but from other learning environments.

In order to fulfill these contemporary needs, schools need to re-think campus design. Spacestor's downloadable guide, Designing for Education, addresses these important trends in contemporary education architecture and how universities can address these challenges head-on.

Flexibility and Personalization

It's necessary to learn about what each community has and doesn't have so as to prevent the creation of a "one-size-fits-all" environment and design spaces that support flexible and diverse patterns of engagement. Spaces for learning should be flexible, equipping students with the resources for rearranging spaces to match their unique or collective demands.

Our partnership with Birmingham City University is the ideal reflection of how flexibility can be incorporated in spaces of higher learning. We outfitted a number of Railway Carriage booths, turning the campus into an individual focus area and collaborative work space. With the capability to infuse technology, offer power supply, and personalize, these booths represent the ultimate flexible learning space that may be used for any purpose.

Personalization also plays a vital role when students are made to feel like they own the environment, say, because they are more participative and engaged. Our HotLockers are another case in point, providing secure storage that can be easily fitted into any campus environment and allocated to a student depending on their timetable. In learning environments or shared spaces, branded or personalized lockers serve to create a sense of belonging—a key component of student wellbeing.

Tech-Enabled Spaces

Technology is at the core of making hybrid learning a success, with universities making a gradual move towards adopting smart classrooms that are fitted with interactive screens, video conferencing tools, and integrated software that supports physical and remote participation. Spacestor has designed the Portals Studio to make room for this hybrid collaboration, promoting seamless integration of technology to enable group collaboration, virtual meetings, and so on.

An excellent example of this is the collaboration we undertook with the University of East London, wherein we dictated hybrid work and virtual meeting rooms. We installed our Residence Connect booths in order to create perfect hybrid meeting rooms with custom lighting, ergonomic seating, and integrated technology, enabling students to be fully immersed in physical and virtual learning spaces.

This technology-driven approach is entirely in tandem with the report of Work Design Magazine that is focused on how technology must be integrated in learning environments. By providing classrooms and learning zones with the right tools, institutions can facilitate a better learning place—whether offline or online.

Wellbeing at the Forefront

Functionality is also necessary, but we require learning environments that foster physical and mental well-being. As much as we would like to have supportive learning environments, the well-being of the whole must come first. A 2022 Wiley report concluded that "supporting students through their financial, mental, and emotional struggles can also help institutions with multiple challenges, including enrollment, retention, and engagement levels."

This new model of university design is an expression of a wider cultural transformation toward the kind of integrated wellness that sees that student success is not just about learning architecture, but also about designing spaces to nourish the body and mind.

One of the greatest challenges of hybrid learning is how to make students feel connected and part of a community despite the fact that some of their learning happens online. In Gensler's Education Engagement Index, there are a few strong data points across the association between belonging, relationships, motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes, and it is all about being observant with regard to the type of spaces in which students can build connections in terms of having a sense of belonging and being motivated.

Community is not merely learning in the same space, it's the way the space encourages interaction. Universities that organize their space to promote teamwork and social interaction, yet offer sufficient space to allow for customization, are enriching the academic experience overall.

This is an ethos practiced at the University of East London. Supported by the Railway Carriage booths that are a main motif throughout the building and the modular Bleachers seating system, providing an ideal area for collaboration meetings, socializing or just a spot for some quiet sanctuary to allow focused work. The whiteboard rear of the Railway Carriages within this complex translates to even greater freedom to create another room for interactive debate and collaboration. This considerate layout enables students to easily alternate between working in groups and independent study, promoting a community ethos and supporting a wide spectrum of learning requirements and personalities.

Since hybridity will become the defining feature of education's future, with more face-to-face interaction required, universities need to reinterpret their strategy for planning campuses

History doesn't occur by chance. It takes custodians: institutions rooted sufficiently in place to be able to sense the subtleties of experience, yet limber enough to bend to new information and technology. Standalone museums such as the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House perform that function.

Museums are not warehouses full of artifacts," President & CEO of the Museum & House Deborah L. Hughes said. "They are working laboratories for democracy. They let us test our hypotheses, engage with our past, and envision what comes next." In a world where misinformation spreads quicker than fact and argumentative disputes fill the headlines on a daily basis, that role is not only beneficial but vital.

The Susan B. Anthony Museum stands because of one very special reason: to search out and discuss the life of a woman who was relentless in the pursuit of equality. Anthony was not afraid to seek human rights. To Hughes, that is more important than ever today. "Susan B. Anthony's example becomes more important during hard times," she says. "She lived through division and upheaval. She understood that change comes by stick-to-itiveness, even when the world isn't certain."

It's not always easy to unearth that legacy to place things in glass cases. It requires doing, especially from historians who are willing to return and retell ancient stories in new terms. The Museum's archives, much of it asleep for decades, contain in handwritten letters, publications, and personal ephemera secrets waiting to be uncovered. "Digitization is opening doors we never could have dreamed about five years ago," Hughes says. "But access is not enough. We need scholars who are willing to reapproach these sources anew, and to make way for several voices to make sense of what they find."

The Anthony Museum maintains its stories in a special state of agility. Free from the bureaucracy that so frequently entangles museums, they are able to quickly respond to new discoveries and engage visitors in real-time conversation. This autumn, the Museum will open a new building specifically to do just that, one constructed not just to look at history, but to talk to it.

"When a scholar discovers something new in our collections, that find doesn't remain on paper," Hughes says. "It becomes part of the dialogue. It enters public awareness. A high school student passing through on a field trip may be the first person to connect with that material. That instant of connection, between then and now, is where transformation starts."

Museums teach citizens, not slogans, but context. The Susan B. Anthony Museum is now a polling station, close to where she herself voted against unjust law. "People come in and say, 'I voted here,' " Hughes reports. "That simple statement is more effective than any textbook. It reminds us that democracy is a habit, not a promise."

Technology has democratized access to history in a certain sense, but it also facilitated manipulation. That is why learning institutions founded on truth and questioning are unacceptable. "There is a difference between reading about Susan B. Anthony and standing on the floorboards where she planned her next campaigns," Hughes says. "Presence matters. Evidence matters. Truth matters."

Anthony Museum is not a passive museum; they are an force for accountability

Where chalkboards are gradually being replaced by the learning of code and textbooks by AI teachers, the Indian education system is ready to take a step of history.

No longer limited to memorization or formula syllabi, students today are only just starting to discover a dynamic world of drones, digital marketing, and problem-solving abilities through apps previously well outside the realm of school education.

Since the government has encouraged skills-based learning in Classes 11 and 12, the classroom of the future is getting here sooner than we could have dreamed of.

Global educational thinkers such as Harvard's Howard Gardner and Anthea Roberts foresee that by 2050, schools will be centers for personalized, technology-based learning attuned to each learner's abilities and resulting in work not yet imagined.

India's reforms hold out this promise. But behind the promise is a question to be answered: Are our teachers ready to lead this revolution?

As of the time of PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024, skill-based courses were only available in 47 percent of schools nationwide to Grade 9 and above. Fewer have enrolled them. Reasons are obvious: teachers not trained, insufficient equipment, sub-par infrastructure, low awareness levels on how to go about hands-on experiential learning.

"AASOKA plan is in the right direction, but without teachers and infrastructure to support it, it will be another good intention turned wrong," believes Monica Malhotra Kandhari, Managing Director, AASOKA by MBD Group.

FROM DRONES TO DIGITAL SKILLS: WHAT'S AT STAK

The purpose of making learning in real life a part of schools is also accorded respectability by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which has appreciated the type of holistic, student-centric learning. In this new architecture, students are prompted to select among a plethora of courses – coding, AI, flying drones, woodworking, cooking, digital marketing, and so on – designed to prepare them to face a changing world of work.

"Combined with academic education, these skills can enable students to study better and be more relevant," is what Kandhari has to present.

These courses are designed to make students attain what they can do to succeed in exams and find employment, especially in an age of automation and artificial intelligence that will transform the way humans work.

A few have already started exploring. In a Gurugram school, students are now coding small robots and testing drone flight paths in a weekend session. In a Pune school, students are learning to make mobile applications with the guidance of industry mentors.

Maharashtra government launched the country's first AI-enabled anganwadi at Waddhamna village in the Nagpur district, 18 km away from the city. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis inaugurated the anganwadi centre on July 27. Meta VR headsets, AI-enabled smartboards, tablets, and other web-based materials are utilized in the centre to read poems, songs, and basic ideas. The centre also aims to bridge the digital gap for rural kids.

But they are uncommon, not usual.

"We would like to see more schools adopt this model, particularly Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities," states Alka Verma, Resident Director with Zamit, a firm having SkillTech ventures with international presence which has interest from the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).

Even where there is excitement, the majority of teachers report they don't feel adequately prepared to instruct subjects in AI, robotics, or drone education. While over 90 percent of secondary school teachers have undergone professional development training, experts warn that such training won't necessarily be used to implement future-proof curricula.

"We need to shift from the conventional model of rote learning towards problem-solving, design thinking, collaborative approach," says Verma. "That means re-educating teachers, not just once but on a repeated basis." 

There is indeed one real lacuna there in teachers' confidence as well as access to resources available. Particularly in rural and underprivileged segments, the digital divide again restricts opportunities.

On top of that, infrastructure is still the sticking point – even in cities. 

INFRASTRUCTURE AND INVESTMENT: STEPS FORWARD

In a bid to fill this gap, Delhi Government has recently sanctioned a Rs 900-crore project to provide 18,996 smart boards in government schools from July 2025. The boards will be implemented in phases within five years, with the 9-12th standard to be completed first and the rest by 2029-30. A teacher training module has also been sanctioned in the scheme.

Education Minister Ashish Sood pointed out that a total of 799 classrooms were installed with smart boards from 2014-2024 and even then, thanks to CSR donations. Another 2,466 boards for 75 CM Shri Schools have already been tendering.

This investment is better, but it is a difficult task to scale this in India, especially in villages and rural schools.

"ASER 2023 itself shows an enormous deficit in core literacy and numeracy among rural youth. What the problem of imparting AI and coding in this context?" questions Kandhari.

For effective application of skill-based learning in India, there is a suggestion by experts to opt for a multi-pronged strategy. It is the excessive investment in repetitive training of teachers in digital tools and new technologies. It needs industry involvement to have exposure to real-world exposure and mentorship.

"We are at a turning point," she insists. "If we do it well, this will change Indian education. If we do it poorly, we will be leaving behind a generation," she continues.

India's education is shining but so in equal measure an ordeal. There is no other subject within the curriculum to teach but attitude, pedagogy, and learning have to change.