The current emergency because of the pandemic appears to have shown numerous exercises to mankind. With everything seems to be getting influenced by the lockdown and the spread of coronavirus infection, educational institutes have been bolted up inconclusively. In any case, innovation has been giving the fragment of expectation in these phenomenal occasions. The video conferencing innovation appears to have associated understudies with their classes on the web.
Indeed, COVID-19 has sped up the innovative change that was planned to happen in our lives at some point or another. The institutional frameworks have increased a decent balance with past easily, where customary teachers are taking advantage of the advanced resources to keep education for students ongoing.
According to SimilarWeb’s survey on 35 top online learning platforms, the edtech segment has experienced a steady increase of 26 per cent in their user visits between April 2019 to March 2020, as compared to April 2018 – March 2019. Further, the first 28 days of lockdown in India edtech segment saw 128.8 Mn visits (on average, 4.6Mn daily visits) as compared to 102.2 Mn average visits between April 2019 – Feb 2020.
As schools and colleges shifted to online classes and resources to continue educating students amid the pandemic, the engagement metrics of the segments have also improved.
Government initiatives uplifting education standards
The HRD ministry has claimed to have done enough in the name of what’s required in boosting the instructive norm by bringing out different activities. According to Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, the Union HRD ministry has introduced several policies to improve the teaching sector in the country. The educational policy which has been recently announced remains on the columns like quality, get to, value, responsibility, and moderateness. It goes according to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which means to change the nation into an energetic information society.
The government has also brought about changes in the B.Ed degree structure for the subjective improvement in these training programs for instructors for as long as one year. These projects spread some significant angles, for example, comprehensive training, ICT, sexual orientation, yoga, wellbeing and sterilization, and Global Citizenship Education (GCED). The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Act, 2018 is intended to improve the learning levels of children by intertwining more noteworthy responsibility and improvement as far as quality instruction. The association government in 2018 has incorporated the three plans Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Centrally Sponsored Scheme on Teacher Education (CSSTE) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) as a coordinated plan as Samagra Shiksha for imbuing balance in instruction.
In the name of International exposure, the administration has chosen to take interest in programs like Program for International Students Assessment (PISA), which will be sorted out in 2021 by OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). The HRD Ministry has built up a stage called DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing), which offers quality e-learning material both for instructors and understudies as transferred at the states/UTs on this entryway.
The activity by the administration like Rashtriya Aavishkar Abhiyan (RAA) in 2015 arrangements with rousing and connecting with children of 6-18 years in subjects like innovation, science, and arithmetic by means of perception, experimentation, surmising drawing. The activity likewise discusses model structure through both within and outside study hall exercises.
Ultimately, the assets like e-PATHSHALA and WAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) have their impact in teaching quality training.
Rising Tide Lifts All Edtech Players
According to the report, before Covid-19 lockdown, seven out of 10 top edtech players were focussed on school-level online learning. Vedantu, LearnCBSE, BYJU’S, Toppr, Tiwari Academy, Meritnation and Gradeup collectively captured 51.25% of the traffic share. In comparison, the two most popular test prep startups Unacademy and Embibe attracted 13.05% of the traffic. Udemy (9.29%) was the only massive open online courses (MOOC) platform to feature in the top 10 list.
Post lockdown during the first 28 days, the traffic share has significantly shifted towards MOOC platforms like Udemy (17.81%) and Coursera (10.10%), who have tripled their paid marketing spends in the lockdown period. This could also be justified by people’s growing interest in taking up online courses to either make use of the extra time or to get upskilled in the changing market conditions.
Coursera has reported a 325% YoY hike in new registration, 284% YoY in overall enrollment and 1747% hike in public health content in the last 30 days till April 3. However, K-12 learning platforms have the biggest lead when it comes to growth in adoption.
Another interesting trend observed during the lockdown period is the decline in traffic on offline-to-online platforms like Vedantu (5.9%) and Tiwari Academy(1.55%). However, Aakash stood out as an exception by showing growth in online traffic as compared to earlier figures, despite the fact that it is still heavily dependent on revenue from offline coaching.
Is it here to stay or just need of the hour?
Looking at the current grim situation in the midst of COVID-19, the utilization of innovation has become the main beam of trust in our kids in order to remain associated with instruction. Nonetheless, it will change in the coming occasions as the danger of the infection evaporates from the world. et, the technology is here to stay for a better and smarter learning experience for our students and the coming generation. The utilization of customary versus innovation based learning is an easily proven wrong issue. The extent of the two may shift, however the truth of the matter is innovation will stay in the instructive division for upgraded and quality learning in the coming future.
In the current difficult stretches of COVID-19, innovation has developed out as a surprisingly beneficial turn of events for both the understudies and instructors. The use of technology is mandatory to make our learning experience par to the growing competition and need of the market.