The Digital revolution has touched every aspect of our Lives. The way we work, play, love, eat, read, communicate, travel have all been impacted by the technology revolution.
How could Education remain untouched?
Rapidly evolving technology is now transforming the way knowledge is imparted and absorbed. Internet and Artificial Intelligence are playing a crucial role in the digital educational ecosystem with all-time high engagement rates.
The government’s Digital India campaign looks to increase the impact of technology across various sectors. Numerous innovations in the education technology space are beginning to show potential for improving education and helping address skills gaps.
According to a report presented at the Global Economic Symposium in 2014, a number of internal and external drivers are triggering this education transformation. The main internal drivers of this transformation are high tuition costs at institutions and growing student diversity; the growing popularity of social media and constant technological progress drives transformation externally.
Technology has created a more inclusive and personalised global education system. It has democratised delivery of content across socio-economic segments. It has therefore now been well established that technology will play a pivotal role in modernising education.
What is Digital Education?
Digital Education is the process of providing learning in a totally online system. It has three important components: Content, Technology platform and Delivery Infrastructure.
Content: With access to global research and pedagogy techniques, content has evolved tremendously over the past few years. Companies developing content are also able to easily access a variety of work being done across the world. New content developers are coming up who understand the digital system and are better equipped to design for it. The key to success here, of course, is the ability to facilitate self-learning.
Technology: With the evolution of cloud based platforms and better internet bandwidth, there is huge potential for technology to be deeply integrated into the education industry. The latest developments in platforms and technology are quickly being made available to professionals and students across India. For example, the fast developing digital marketing space is becoming ideal for promoting E-learning.
Delivery Infrastructure: In India, mobile penetration is nearing a billion people with over 500million connected to the internet: and with internet connected numbers expected to rise, the potential to digitally educate seems very rich.
The methods and advantages of Digital Education
There is a very strong correlation between education and skills on one hand and the adoption and use of digital technologies, on the other. The innovative capacity of technology is very much conditioned by the level of digital skills of the population. The role of education and skills in promoting innovation is therefore, critical.
Graduating students increasingly find themselves underprepared to take on roles in organisations due to lack of the right technical skills. Likewise, existing employees need to re-skill or upgrade themselves frequently, to take on new roles that emerge.
Conventional methods of book based learning and college lectures have resulted in a lack of practical and applied knowledge. Digital Education can help provide students and employees the supplementary, practical learning and upgrades required on a continuous basis.
Role of teachers: With learning becoming more in the control of the students, the role of teachers/mentors has to shift to become ‘guides and facilitators’.
Balance the Yin and Yang: Educators across the globe need to maintain a healthy balance while using gadgets and technology in the classrooms. Certainly, we don’t need a generation of smart devices and dumb people. Integrated technologies may equip students to continue their education throughout their lives, and can address three goals: fortifying student skills, increasing education’s ROI and enabling students to be innovative and entrepreneurial.
At Aether Infotech, we have been working in the space of Digital Education.
We have had an extremely satisfying experience in building digital content such as those in the links below, to help learners achieve the level of skill required for certification. employees move into the digital mode.
Such small and basic modules have been helping learners pick up basic technological skills, improve efficiency at work and giving them the confidence in facing new situations. Learners are liking the low cost and easy access as also the flexibility it gives them to study anytime, anywhere and at their own pace. These courses are so designed as to enable the learner qualify for certification by the accredited systems.
We have built interactive programs to allow students to consult with subject matter experts via Skype. This and our constant measuring of learning outcomes ensures a well-rounded learning experience.
Businesses have realised that as they hire large workforces, they need to keep upgrading their skills and abilities. Aware organisations have good budgets on keeping their employees updated. Our modules get embedded into their programs and deliver measurable improvements.
At individual level, the wide range of our learners has even surprised us. There is a whole generation of professionals wanting to upgrade their skills. At the same time, we have had parents of school going children wanting to initiate their children early into coding. The youngest child we have is just 8 years old! But of course, there is also a lot of personal attention required for such youngsters.
As we go ahead
Digital transformation in the education sector will get aligned with career opportunities and professional degrees. After the completion of each course, live, practical projects would be useful for online learners to test themselves. Organisations could even make it mandatory.
At school level, digital education is gradually making inroads into the class rooms. Parents will also see it as an extra-curricular training process to keep the children abreast of changes in the technology sphere, even before schools wake up to them.
Digitisation is also prompting higher education as never before. Online education is a type of distance learning. There is no need to attend the college or university in person. As online education is made approachable and relevant, it shortens the distance between a learner and his/her dreams.
Digital Education has certainly arrived. For students and professionals, there is a whole new world of knowledge coming up to make learning a continuous and exciting process.
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Continuous digital training is essential to increase the quality of teaching and ensure effective education, as part of a necessary organizational, structural and methodological renewal of the entire school system.