By Gaurav Goel
The advent of the Covid-19 pandemic significantly catapulted the adoption of digital education across the globe. Expanding at its own pace before 2020, the ed-tech segment also witnessed considerable growth for multiple industry stakeholders in the last couple of years, primarily out of necessity.
While educational institutions have switched back to offline classes in the Post-Covid-19 era, the role of ed-tech will still be crucial as schools and colleges are eyeing a hybrid model for education delivery at all levels.
With digital transformation making inroads across geographies and a focus on experiential learning by institutions, the ed-tech industry is poised to evolve dramatically in the coming years. It is expected to be influenced by the following trends-:
Focus on personalized learning
In the last couple of years, the ed-tech industry’s primary focus was to bridge the gap created by the Covid-19 pandemic by creating platforms and delivery of courses. This, however, is set to change with ed-tech platforms becoming more mainstream. The industry can already notice the changes, such as Hybrid Learning. By blending online and offline models, hybrid learning can offer students a more customized learning experience that meets their individual needs. It helps students to succeed by providing a learning environment tailored to their needs.
Digital assessment of students
Assessing students is a crucial area for evaluating success. Conventionally, student evaluation has been focussed on theoretical exams, which do not thoroughly provide the overall academic scores of the students. However, in years to come, the ed-tech industry will play a significant role in evaluating the student’s assessment in a more analyzed manner and emphasizing the practical elements of studies.
With an extensive emphasis on self-driven exercise, the ed-tech industry has developed nano and micro-learning approaches. Micro and Nano learning focus extensively on fulfilling the learning requirements of the students. They are short and swift, which makes them suitable for repetition to strengthen learning within a short period. Micro and nano modules can be conveniently tailored to create a customized, long-lasting learning experience for the students. Owing to extensive digital resources and content available from numerous sources & platforms, nano and micro-learning will become increasingly important for education and skills development.
Integration of Virtual and Augmented Reality
One of the e-Learning segment’s primary objectives has been to enhance the learning experience. However, with rapid technological advancements, the coming years will witness the integration of cutting-edge technologies like Virtual Reality(VR) and Augmented Reality(AR).
Augmented and virtual reality are promising technologies that augment or replace a real-life environment with a virtual one. While augmented reality enhances our surroundings by integrating digital elements into the live view, primarily by using a smartphone’s camera, virtual reality involves a holistic environmental simulation that replaces the user’s surroundings with an entirely simulated world.
This will make learning a fun-filled experience for students as they can understand and experiment with concepts in a real-life environment. It will also promote a practical approach to learning.
Blockchain in Edtech
The implementation of Blockchain by the ed-tech segment will also grow considerably in the coming years. Blockchain offers a secure, transparent, and decentralized learning ecosystem. The technology holds enormous potential in several areas, including verification of student credentials, examination management, verification of certificates, etc. The rapid implementation of Blockchain is expected to take the industry’s growth to a new level. While the last couple of years were devoted to creating platforms and building courses, the forthcoming years will witness several new changes in the industry that will further cement the place of digital learning in India’s education landscape.
The author is founder and CEO at Topranker. Views are personal.