Technology in Education

Introduction:

Education is the backbone of any Nation, be it a developed one or developing one or Under-developed one. Without Education it is almost impossible to develop the country. Keeping that in mind, most of the countries’ Government keeps more than 10% of budget amount for Education. India is no different. Still, this field is mostly dependent on Classroom Education. Government spends almost 6 Lakh Crore INR on Education. If we see overall volume of expenditure (Business volume) only for India, it is manifolds of what Government is spending

Many Institutes work under PPP model in India. Private sector is also doing very well. Private sector is mostly working in a big way for academic Education. They mostly cover School Education andHigher Education; there are many big players in these fields. But presently by using the latest technologies many big private players are coming in the field of education with other features than physical classroom Education.

#2. Some important facts:

Everyone is going online; so is all services. Education field is not left behind too. Education field is also leveraging the benefits of Internet. Below are some of the facts about Internet.

Six out of every ten, or 57.3% Of the entire world’s Population has internet access (Internetworldstats, 2019)

There are over 3.9 Billion Unique mobile internet Users worldwide (Statista, 2019)

There will have 601 million Internet users by 2021 in India (2ndRANK) (Statista, 2018)

There will have 469 million Mobile Internet users by 2021 in India (2nd RANK) (Statista, 2018)

We cansurely predict that use of Internet is increased drastically due to this Covid-19 Pandemic. As per some data from one of the operators of India, the Internet usage is increased by 50% during this period. Telecom operators are getting very good amount of Data Network congestion during this time. We can personally predict that the total Edu-tech business volume will break all the surveyed predicted figures.

We tried to discuss with some people around us to know the fact and we found that increase is of course due to incremental usage of Social Media and Entertainment platforms; but interesting fact is that a good amount of this data usage increment is happened due to Educational purposes.

Another interesting fact is that people have become very much confident about using Mobile/Desktop/Laptop for different purposes. Not only the students, even the parents have become very much used to it. This is a very positive news during this one of the worst periods of our life.

#3. Technology in Education:

In legacy Education system, we generally use Black-Board/white-board for teaching purpose. Slowly, teachers started using videos, presentations etc. with the help of Projector or TV. Presently, that’s not enough. Teachers are using writing tablets to explain the students well. Teachers are even using Smart display for this purpose. With the help of smart display, you can use all the benefits of white board along with many additional hi-tech features.

As we said earlier, Education field is also leveraging the benefits of Internet. Institutes are using various video conferencing solutions like Jio Meet, Google Meet, Zoom etc. to take their classes. In these platforms, besides the video conferencing system, teachers can share their presentation and take class very effectively. Many Institutes are even recording these sessions and sharing it with students so that they can see it again and again if required and clear all the doubts easily.

The biggest benefit is taken by the Edu-tech platforms. There are many Edu-tech companieswho are providing online education solution to the students. There are around 5 categories of online Education as below:

1.Primary and Secondary.

2.Higher Education.

3.Test Preparation.

4.Reskilling & Online Certificate

5.Language&Casual Learning

Edu-tech players are working in different categories. There are many players like Coursera, edX, Khan Academy, BYJU’S, Unacademy, Upgrad, Simplilearn, Vedantu, Udemy etc. Many of them are really providing cost effective and good quality coaching to the students using online recorded classes, texts, tests, live classes etc. Many companies are providing certified skill development courses too. With time, these platforms will become smarter and more benefits will be provided to the students. Using the graphic design along with 3D technology, possibility of better Education facility is limitless. Artificial Intelligence in Edu-tech solution will definitely make it more powerful and useful.

#3. Advantages of Online Education:

• Teachers can teach from anywhere and students can participate from anywhere.

• Regarding online live classes, a flexible time table can be created considering the time availability of both the teachers and students.

• In case of Video, Text based courses, students can attend the class anytime and they can finish it as per their convenience.

• People can do many courses along with regular academic courses.

• Teachers from different institutes from different parts of the country can collaborate for a particular online live Educational session or for a course.

• It’s very easy to see the course completion status, take examination(s) and provide certificate automatically with one time setup. This is also good for the students as they can complete the course smoothly and get the completion certificate without any hassle.

• There are some amazing teachers who are having stage fear while delivering in front of mass. These types of introvert teachers can also get highly benefitted by Online Education platform.

• Students can see the quality of the course through the trial classes/free-course-units and decide about buying the same.

• Online courses are cost effective.

• Students can read/watch certain portion of the course as many times as they want to clear their doubts.

• Student-taking capacity is unlimited in case of online platforms whereas physical infrastructure will never be enough in case millions of students start using the classroom education for different courses.

#4. Disadvantages of Online Education and measures to be taken:

Besides too many advantages of Online Education, there are some disadvantages too from the point of view of the Edu-tech companies and Students. Few of those are described below:

• Taking real tests for academic courses is still a tough thing to do if invigilator is not present. Students can easily use different tricks to use unethical method in such Examinations presently. But we feel that time is not far that Institutes (Govt. and Private) can take real Examinations online using different more effective check methods. Using combination of Technologies like biometric, GPS, multiple Cameras, Face Recognition, Motion Detection, Artificial Intelligence etc., this can definitely be possible.

• Some courses are being hacked to get the courses from few of the platforms without the payment which is in turn a very bad thing for the business growth of the platform. Copyright protection is a must for any digital product. In these cases, the platforms should be very much strict about the security measures of their platforms. Otherwise in long run it would be a big loss for the industry in general.

• Text content copying is also a big issue. In most of the cases content copying should not be allowed as that can lead to the leakage of the same to the public domain. Platform provider should be careful about this and implement necessary measures to stop that.

• Sometime, by purchasing a course for one person, multiple people use it which is again a big loss. Companies should stop such accesses by implementing certain security features.

• For teen students, biggest concern is that they can be exposed to bad side of the Internet. In that case, parents should be educated about different parental controls which can be implemented so that kids will not be exposed to bad things. Moreover, even the Edu-tech Companies who are working in educating the teens should educate the parents well with easy to understand manuals.

• Platform providers should be careful about the course video downloading. There are many websites which help to download videos if the URL is known. Edu-tech companies should implement the solution in such a manner that these videos can’t be downloaded.

• Edu-tech platforms should implement some important features by which the involvement of students can be increased highly. They must remember that physical online classes have many advantages like involving students highly, seeing the students’ facial expressions which also helps teachers, emotional support by teachers due to physical presence etc. and accordingly try to implement the new features keeping these points in mind.

#5. Conclusion::

Both the classroom and online education are important. Most importantly in this era, change in Educational process is an urgency. Keeping that in mind, even our Government is implementing changes in Education policy. Accordingly, online education is also very important aspect for today as well as forever. Online education has so many benefits like cost effectiveness, better doubt clearing ability, time flexibility, bigger capacity etc. As discussed above, online Education has some disadvantages too which should be kept in mind by the platform providers so that we can keep getting improved versions. In a nutshell, both types of Education should go hand on hand and stakeholders should correct the disadvantages of each type continuously so that our backbone will become stronger day by day.