How educational institutions can respond during the unprecedented times of COVID-19

E-Learning: A step to cope with the unforeseen scenario

The unforeseen disruption in the education of students has left teachers, parents, and educators to think more proactively about adopting alternative ways of teaching. As Heraclitus said, “The only constant in life is change.” The current situation of havoc has led to big changes in every sphere of life, including the ways of imparting education. To ensure the continuity of learning for millions of learners in the country, schools and universities have shifted to online teaching methods. While diversifying to different e-learning methods, what needs to be taken care of is that the measures should be all-inclusive and should be able to counter the digital divide prevailing in society.

Digital learning solutions should be adopted with effective and practical strategies to reach out to less developed areas of the society as well. For ensuring open-digital learning, various other factors need to be taken care of by the educational institutions in advance.

Robust connectivity tops the list of these factors. To prepare themselves for emergencies like these, educational institutions should look for a successful collaboration with telecom service providers. The optimum utilization of network capacity and a reduction in transmission bit rate will help provide a real-time learning experience for students, making online sessions more interactive and engaging.

To further sustain the e-learning environment, tie-ups with EdTech startups help institutions prepare themselves for such unforeseen circumstances. The EdTech firms provide cloud-based solutions that enable shifting from traditional brick and mortar classrooms to online classes. They provide a simple user interface with personalised quality solutions and innovative tools, depending on the specific needs of the institutions.

For successful implementation of these EdTech startups, there should also be seamless integration of technology. The integration of classroom learning with various e-learning methods will ensure the development of a unified system of education. Various EdTech firms provide hardware and software solutions for minimizing the error rate, thereby enhancing the overall user-experience.

Apart from technology and software, what needs to be taken care of is the creativity of the educators and teachers. The content for e-learning platforms not only needs to be captivating but should be able to meet the diverse needs of the students. EdTech firms help institutions by providing them an AI-driven assessment platform. These AI-driven platforms customize the practice questions keeping in mind students’ learning needs. The integration of AI in the e-learning platform helps in discovering each student’s unique learning graph and customizes their learning and assessment based on their capabilities.

Though e-learning needs to be adopted by schools and universities in advance to keep themselves prepared for unforeseen situations, it comes with its own set of challenges.

E-learning challenges and weaknesses

Though remote learning seems to be an appropriate solution in times of national emergencies, it comes with its own set of challenges. The first question that arises in our minds when talking about online learning is whether everyone can afford it? The biggest challenge in a country like India is the fact that most of the students do not have access to adequate facilities. There still are quite a number of students who lack reliable internet access, making online education a struggle for them. Lack of innovative thinking, lack of creativity, untrained teachers, and lack of proper infrastructure are some other reasons why switching to e-learning does not appear to be as simple as it looks. Such challenges need to be addressed in advance by educational institutions to prepare themselves well for any unprecedented situations in the future.

The author is Co-Founder and CEO, Next Education India Pvt Ltd.