Vidur Garg is a management professional with over 17 years of experience across areas of Business, Human Resources and Technology. Vidur comes with a very keen analytical mind coupled with a penchant for people, talent development, organizational design and performance management. His professional experiencespans across consulting and business, which adds to his versatility and strong business skills. An MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur and Bachelors in IT from Delhi University,Vidurhas been an integral part of the corporate world.
The Covid19 outbreak has defined a ‘new normal’ in Education, like in many other areas. There is a paramount shift in acceptance of Online Education from parents, teachers and students alike.
Mobile phone and internet penetration have strongly aided growth in the EdTech market with 500m active internet users expected by 2022 (up from 350m in 2019). Today’s education system is undergoing technological advances ranging from live classes, learning management software, dynamic content, and more. Technology enables learning to be imparted without boundaries and enables instant feedback/solutions amongst other flexibilities.
Parents and students can focus on the quality of the education and best in class fitment versus worrying about access and delivery. Moreover, there is awareness and exposure to holistic education including creative pursuits, music and other application-based learning.
By 2022, online education offerings across grades 1 to 12 are projected to increase 6.4 times.
The impact of technology in education is witnessed across the value chain, ranging from delivery formats to actual content. There is an opportunity for engaged learning, instant gratification, artificial intelligence and much more to seamlessly deliver enhanced learning outcomes.
Let’s have a look at five key EdTech trends of 2021
Customized Learning
One size does not fit all. Children of the same grade may not have the same proficiency level across subjects and vocations. With the advent of online learning, companies can leverage data analytics and introduce algorithms to enable flexible personalised learning for students. For instance, questions are designed to adjust difficulty based on the student’s response to match with their knowledge and ability. For example, at BrainGymJr, we not only can assign a customized difficulty level as per current proficiency but also have an inbuilt mechanism to increase the difficulty to nudge a student upwards.
Gamification
Incorporating game mechanics in education increases engagement by making learning interesting, fun and even competitive. Integrating game elements in education influences a learner’s behavioural pattern, attitude and preference for activities. It further enhances a student’s creativity and memory. Children feel positively reinforced to participate, learn and improvise if they win badges, top leaderboards etc.
Immersive Experience
The education sector has started adopting digital reality technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality that offer an immersive learning environment. Augmented reality is implemented to infuse digital information with the information of the physical world resulting in offering users’ engagement in virtual reality while exploring the physical environment concurrently. Virtual reality includes real-time engaging simulations through digital graphics. Today, in a few domains such as geography, lessons have transformed into engaging and interactive educational content with the help of VR and AR that can grab and sustain the attention span of a student.
Leveraging cloud-based e-learning
Cloud technology allows for managing vast content with a fair amount of elasticity to cater to large numbers with consistency and customization. Cloud-based solutions have enabled e-learning platforms to offer a vast range of educational services, for example, online classes and assessments, organizing and processing exams, and assignments, in addition to real-time tracking and instant grading. At BrainGymJr, we can cater to a large audience at a given time while customizing difficulty levels and enabling instant solutions amongst other things.
Online Classes / Digital Masterclass
With the penetration of the internet, we have seen a rise in formal and informal live classroom formats. These can be as simple as a teacher using a video application for instruction to qualified experts guiding students on diverse or unconventional vocations. While video formats and meeting applications existed way before the pandemic, today there is more acceptance of live learning and even an appreciation of the boundaries one can transcend digitally.
Today, we see blurred lines between physical and virtual learning. The acceleration of virtual formats can be attributed to the pandemic. However, the advent of new technology enabling the entire value chain cannot be neglected. Today’s trends are only touching the tip of the iceberg – we are yet to see superior content and strong collaboration amongst providers for seamless & improved learning solutions amongst other efficiencies.
In summary, from gamification to AI-powered learning solutions, these trends are going to take the education sector by storm as they will offer enhanced, advanced and creative solutions sans boundaries to the upcoming generations.