How Will Be The Future For Online Learning Platforms After Covid19
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in schools shut all across the globe. Due to this, education has changed rapidly with the distinctive rise of eLearning where teaching is shifted offline to online on digital platforms. The nationwide school closures are affecting over 60% of the global student population.
Here is the global impact of school closures caused by COVID-19.
The shift from the regular learning process can be cited with an increased number of online classes and the emergence of eLearning platforms. With this sudden shift from the classroom in many parts of the world, many people wonder whether the adoption of eLearning will continue to post the coronavirus pandemic, and how such a change would impact the future of eLearning after COVID-19.
Covid19: The Game-changer In The eLearning Industry
Even before coronavirus, the eLearning industry was already seeing high growth in education ecology with the global education market projected to reach $350 billion by 2025. Be it virtual tutoring, online learning platforms, video conferencing tools, there has been a significant surge in the adoption of eLearning since COVID-19.
For most educational institutions Coronavirus pandemic was a wakeup call that they were not catching up with technological advancements. With the adoption of online eLearning, it was proved that students could learn much faster and smarter with individual learning.
While online learning thrived in many areas, in secondary and tertiary education, it never took hold. However, currently, most teachers and university lecturers around the world who have been accustomed to traditional education are switching to online eLearning platforms.
This is something that educators often lacked even when their institutions had the funds to push for an eLearning approach.
The COVID-19 situation also proved that it’s possible to offer the majority of eLearning virtually even if the sudden and complete shift to online learning has put pressure on both teachers and parents.
Future predictions to consider after COVID19
While the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the bright development and Future of online learning platforms, the real question is whether the education will shift back to traditional classes based learning deteriorating the impact of eLearning.
To answer that, we need to look deeply into the issues faced by teachers, parents, and students due to the sudden shift of learning from real classrooms to virtual ones.
When it comes to the efficiency in delivering lessons to students, eLearning has its significance due to the integration of advanced technology and tools like digital presentations, animations, videos, live interactive classes with teachers.
However, forming friendships, interacting with people, analyzing body language, developing social skills, etc. suffers due to this shift to eLearning.
Advancements in technology can bring this gap to some extent but many people doubt about whether the socialization aspect can be supported by a virtual learning world.
Additionally, for eLearning to be more effective and streamlined, the students require a good laptop and strong internet connection to stream videos continuously throughout the day.
Even in a highly developed economy, there are major portions of the population that don’t have access to these may be through lack of access or through choice.
The rise of tech-enabled online education has the potential to be a game change providing a more digitized education experience to the students across the globe. However, the challenges cannot be neglected.
For most schools and colleges that will survive the current pandemic, most will see a decline in revenue and an increase in costs. If we look far into the post-pandemic educational landscape, we can see some reasons for optimization.
Here are some of the predictions on how the future of eLearning after covid19 would be.
There will be more investment in the ed-tech sector
The impact of COVID-19 on eLearning would accelerate contributions from investors into the education sector due to the foreseeable future of eLearning.
No matter how learning will develop in the future, one thing is clear: the COVID-19 pandemic has created the right space for educational startups and eLearning platforms to rise to new levels of heights. This has created opportunities not just for educators but for investors as well who are looking for innovative ideas to invest in.
The rise in online education startups
eLearning has shown significant growth over the past decade and with the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become more centric in the industry than ever before.
Not just that, the transformation of the education industry, has also contributed to the rise of more education startups. Most institutions and independent educators are investing their efforts and time on building eLearning platforms to engage their student base.
Not just building online learning platforms, there is a big focus on integrating advanced modern technologies to deliver a great learning experience to students. What online eLearning would ultimately look like and which players will survive is yet to be determined.
There will be a huge impact on blended learning
The current online education that educators and learners are now engaged in is not the same as what we think of as traditional learning. Today modern online education programs are high-quality teaching that integrated advanced technologies.
Post COVID-19, blended learning will tremendously increase the biggest transition of virtual learning will come once both educators and students return back to the old teaching style. Once we return back from COVID-19, we will have an understanding that digital tools are not substitutes but complement the immediacy of real-time learning.
In the future, we will see more flipped classrooms than we did in the past and there would be a better focus on engaging learners in eLearning platforms.
Online education will be a priority in schools and colleges
Before COVID-19, very few educational institutions were integrating online education into their curriculum. This will change after the pandemic.
In the future, most educational institutions will adopt eLearning realizing its potential power for efficient delivery or for new revenue strategies. eLearning will be recognized as the core of every education institution’s plan for academic continuity and resilience.
This realization will change how educational systems plan for and manage online learning. The online course development that was decentralized earlier will be centralized in the future. Management of eLearning will be blended into existing academic structures and processes of schools and colleges.
Skill-based learning will be in demand
Increasing levels of unemployment force people to master new skills and capabilities that help them to earn a good job especially with the scenario of many losing their jobs during the lockdown period.
Post Coronavirus, the demand for skill-based learning will rapidly increase but it might look different from the demand of the past.
There would be more emphasis on short eLearning courses, experiential learning, and skill-based courses which will replace the demand for university-level courses and eLearning programs.
Rather than a grade, employers will demand skill-based learning and competence to survive in the competitive market. New learning programs that focus on artificial intelligence and virtual reality, healthcare, and supply chain management will emerge as more important courses than learning programs in finance or marketing.
More importantly, all programs will give more emphasis on the soft skills of teamwork, collaboration, adaptability, innovative thinking, and teamwork.
Demand for educational apps
The demand for online education is bound to rise even after lock ends and the world gets back to normal. One of the major impacts would be the increasing demand for education apps.
During this time of the pandemic, education mobile app development has helped many to support the adoption of eLearning. Hence, even after the effects of lockdown fades, the need for educational mobile apps will continue. Educational apps allow educators to conduct real-time online classes which is one of the effective ways of eLearning during the current pandemic.
With engaging features like live tutoring, group chat, online assignments, interactive courses, and advanced analytics, online learning also prove to be beneficial for both educators and learners.
This definitely implies now is a good time to develop your own educational app if you are planning to invest in the education industry. Be an opportunist and grab the opportunity of creating a lucrative educational app now.
Conclusion
When the lockdowns due to the COVID-19 outbreak are lifted, will we roll back to traditional styled education? Definitely, yes. Schools and universities would rush back to traditional classroom-based learning once the current situation returns back to normal.
However, it won’t cause the downfall of eLearning platforms or online eLearning in general. This is simply because eLearning has already proven to be an excellent way for individual educators to connect with their students despite the geographical restrictions.
It will still be leveraged by teachers who want to take their knowledge-sharing capabilities beyond the physical classroom. Schools and colleges might move more into developing and running online programs.
What would happen next would still be an evolving story and we need to wait for it to be revealed. How do you think coronavirus will modify the future of online learning platforms and teaching? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.
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