Online Education to Boost Due to Coronavirus Pandemic
It wasn’t long when COVID-19 became pandemic from an epidemic situation spreading across the globe impacting all spectrums of the human being life. Education sector is one of them affecting millions of aspiring young generation. India has the second largest population of school going students over 260 million students.
In India, almost all the schools and educational institutions are closed due to COVID-19 lockdown preventive measure. This has resulted in a complete stop on the studies to examinations. The nationwide 21 day lockdown ensured that 1.5 million schools/colleges come up with creative ways to provide online lessons. Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), a national level board of education in India for public and private schools, conduct their 10th and 12th final examination around February and March. But due to this pandemic situation same has been postponed until further notice.
With the available technology it is easily possible to convert a traditional classroom to an online classroom. Our education system needs to build that vision and break the stereotype thinking. Today almost every family in India owns a smartphone capable enough to access internet and do video conferencing. We simply need to create that blueprint connecting students, teachers and faculty members via same. Classes, attendance can be easily managed using video conferencing. Instead of traditional text books e-books can be offered. Many reputed educational institution has already implemented this methodology and are providing education flawlessly even during this situation.
A report by Google India and KPMG estimated that as much as 73% of the Indian internet users are going to interact in a regional language by 2021. There is a massive opportunity in the space of vernacular content. Amid this, having an English-only approach for the platform will limit the consumer base to a significant extent. Therefore, there is a lot of scope for business in the vernacular market, and further scope for them to play a role in bridging the country’s digital divide.
A number of school ERPs like Entab, Francisian, Edumarshal, Fedena Iec have integrated with the free online tools like zoom, Google hangouts and Microsoft teams. For assessment purpose as well, a number of schools are integrating with free open source like Moodle or they are asking their ERP vendors to look for building learning management system (LMS). The Chinese government has contracted tech companies like Baidu, Tencent and telecom providers like China Mobile, China Telecom to create a National Online Cloud Classroom. The platforms run on 7000 servers and 90 terabytes of bandwidth, for simultaneous use by 50 million learners.
Grades 9 to Grade 12, students need immediate attention in terms of their syllabus completion. And if this lockdown continues even the lower grade classes will move more swiftly to online classes. The major challenge in conducting online classes is adoption both from teachers and students/parents point of view. On the other hand, I have seen some of the English learning classes for kids starting from 4 to 13 years have already started online classes.
This alerting situation is something wherein we need to re-think of our approach towards an uninterrupted education service. It’s time wherein we move out of traditional approach and accept the technology available to digitize our education facilities.
With our classrooms, workplaces, and job markets changing owing to the rapidly emerging technologies, edtech has become all the more relevant today, and will continue to positively impact more and more people across the country in 2020, and beyond.
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