This COVID 19 pandemic impacted the education of 1.26 billion children worldwide as estimated by UNESCO, with over 300 million children just from India. The sudden realization of the need to be able to function remotely and to keep businesses, services, and systems running at all times has caused the online education sector to embrace the digital space swiftly.
As a response, the online and ed-tech industry has grown tremendously. Also, educational institutions have rapidly adopted digital technologies and increased the use of the Internet to impart learning digitally.
Here are a few trends we came across this year and will continue to see in the coming few months of 2021:
- Face to face to online shift
Digital transformation, whether in part or whole, is going to be vital for traditional education businesses. This essentially means that educational institutions will implement hybrid models which will have students in classes as well as those connected virtually.
2. Boom of the K-12 Ed-Tech
Supported by the National Education Policy and driven by recent developments due to the pandemic, the ed-tech sector will grow rapidly. As per a 2019 industry report, the K12 education sector is expected to show a six times growth to reach $1.7 Bn by 2022.
More schools and institutions will now have hybrid formats, leveraging technologies to promote digital learning amongst students across families. This is going to be a marked shift from the traditional medium.
3. Growing online education
The post-K12 sector includes higher education, technical skills, test preparation for government and other professions. The importance of higher education degrees for better job roles has grown in the past decade. There is a lot of focus on both technical and non-technical skilling and upskilling.
4. Video is the new – new
Online learning is going to be one of the biggest spaces for producing and consuming video content. The content will range from streaming and recording live classrooms to the production of dedicated videos on educational concepts.
5. Rise of advanced digital technologies
Evolving technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR) will completely reinvent the online learning experience. AI has the potential to understand and assess the learning abilities of students and help us build stronger educational programs.
