How Digital Education Responding to New Reality.
By: Anant Kumar
For years, we were being taught why do we need a digital transformation in the education sector. Since the shifting towards virtual learning is troublesome, nobody was ready for it until the Covid-19 knocked the earth. The COVID-19 has crashed not just the global economy, but student’s lives as well.
As per the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, this post-pandemic has closed schools in 188 countries, affecting over 1.5 billion students and 63 million primary and secondary teachers globally.
Digital transformation in the 21st century has changed our work tasks as well as the way we access/deliver information and share skills. The threat of the covid-19 pandemic has raised the need to adopt online services.
However, it’s very heartbreaking that around 826 million (half million) students excluded from the classroom by the pandemic, don’t have computers at their home, which is likely to cause an educational gap. 43% have are not able to access internet services, reported by UNESCO.
The concern has raised questions about equity and quality? For those you may or might not familiar with equity in education, it is the cornerstone of an educational system to ensure all students get supports and resources as they needed to perform at an acceptable level. Currently, we have all those advanced technologies for creating a dynamic educational system, where institutions can focus on developing the best education content.
The education institutes respond to new reality!
In that situation, it is ineluctable to involve digital tools for producing content for learners or students. Since technology is seen as an indispensable resource for education sectors, many education institutes implement second thought (digitization ) on their traditional education to stay strong.
Let’s take look at how the education sector is responding to new reality these days.
1). Use of Video Broadcasting.
During this post-COVID-19, several online learning platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare, Udacity, and many other platforms are getting shaped by different user vertical. As far as the concern about school and universities they are also democratizing the learning by making courses accessible via technologies like Zoom, Google Hangout, and WebEX. Most prestigious universities like Harvard and Stanford have given access to the online course under the categories of computer science, mathematics, arts, and personal development.
A demand from people to learn online has surged over the past few years, the reason for this demand and fast growth rate of the market with numerous online options for everyone may be rapid change the world.
Video broadcasting includes online learning like – Live video stream, live Q&A chat via electronic devices.
2). Use of Asynchronous Learning Programs.
During this pandemic, many educational service providers have started using Asynchronous learning program, it is known as a core feature of the successful online learning program. Asynchronous combine the Greek-based prefix meaning is “not keeping time together”,
It refers to students and non-traditional learners’ ability to access all pieces of information, demonstrating what they have learned, having virtual commutation with a classmate, and time and place flexibility. It seems interesting, isn’t it?
Asynchronous Learning Programs have some disadvantages like lack of motivation, no live collaboration, and real-time activities, students may wait for a while to get responses, and many more.
These disadvantages must be sorted out as much as possible by educational institutes.
3). Use of Real-time Social Media Channels.
In order to make remote learning possible, many university’s faculty members have been encouraged to use real-time messaging, a free social medial channel like Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube, and so on to have commutation with students. This idea is aiding to create online learning opportunities to guarantee educations reaches all learner’s doors.
