The Future of Educational Technology in India
What is the buzzword?
EdTech, EduTech or Education-Technology is the application of technology to improve education and learning. Though it has become a buzzword lately, EdTech can be thought to parallel the natural human need for better acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and its supreme importance for the evolution of civilization. Use of contemporary technology in education can be seen as a common theme across civilizations, be it use of baked clay tablets and seals thousands of years ago or invention of printing press in the fifteenth century which spurred renaissance and laid the foundation of modern civilization. In the modern sense, education began to be supplemented by advanced technologies since the early years of the 20th century when films and audios began to be incorporated in day-to-day recreation and education. A rapid shift happened with the invention of the internet and by the end of the last decade, the foundation of modern EdTech was laid when crowdsourced technologies like Wikipedia and YouTube became the most popular medium of learning. Ever since, there has been a paradigm shift in our perception towards the use of technology. Today, the scale of impact of modern technology on our present way of learning is such that it won’t be an exaggeration to say that we are going through a learning-revolution. When we refer to EdTech, we refer to it in the modern sense where learning is enabled with the aid of computers and internet.
Modern EdTech
According to recently published studies, up to 90% educators in the USA believe in digitization of education and up to 80% of them believe that digital content will replace textbooks by 2026. Such positive sentiment in favor of e-learning is supported by a significant improvement of up to 15% in graduation rate and up to 25% improvement in individual subject proficiency.
The positive sentiment towards the adoption of EdTech is reciprocated well by investment by government and private sectors in its development. Education is no longer seen associated with books and classrooms. While EdTech’s share of $100 billion dollars in the global $7 trillion education industry only seems like a small pie, its importance can be assessed by the fact that expenditure in EdTech has grown fivefold in the last five years.
Given the growing importance of technology in the field of education, many big companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Adobe have invested heavily in EdTech R&D. While google is led by the vision of creating smart future classrooms and are leaders in developing VR technologies, Microsoft is providing high-end document management suites. Amazon has done a wonderful job in creating virtual assistants like Alexa, and Adobe is building breakthrough technologies in animation.
Global EdTech community is innovating like never before. They are working on ideas that will be at our fingertips tomorrow. All over the world, scientists, educators and professionals are collaborating, discussing futuristic ideas and sharing their knowledge on global platforms. In the last few years, there has been a sharp increase in international conferences and online portals dedicated to EdTech. Here are some of the important international EdTech conferences: Future of Education Technology Conference (www.fetc.org), International Educational Technology Conference (http://www.iet-c.net), European Association of International Education (https://www.eaie.org/), EduTech Asia, EduTech Africa, and HighEdWeb Annual Conference.
Key elements of Future EdTech Technologies
According to an article published in 2013, we will transition to cloud based learning by 2020 and by 2028, online learning will be seamlessly integrated into our society. It is evident that the prediction was not far-fetched and given the current trend, we would most likely make the transition sooner than 2028. It is lucid that we are not too far from the future where educational degrees will lose their significance. With the popularity of online certifications and bootcamps, it has become easier than ever for anyone to choose and change career anytime they want. At the same time, specialists in Information Technology and Human Resource Management would lose social significance as well. Fields requiring harsh practical training e.g. Surgery, Healthcare, and Machining would become more lucrative as no amount of online learning can reduce the importance of practical training in strategic areas. While the broader social impact of such change is difficult to assess, it has begun to be very perceptible how the evolving technology will have an impact on how we learn and spend personal time.
There are numerous ways in which modern technology is impacting our learning methodologies but most breakthrough developments are in the following six key areas which are thus shaping the future of EdTech
1. Learning Management System (LMS): LMS can broadly be defined as the framework which integrates modern methods of learning. Beginning with Massive Online Open Course or MOOC e.g. edX, Future Learn and Coursera, LMS has come a long way to incorporate Adaptive Learning, self-paced curriculum, and customized learning.
2. Gamification of curriculum: Given the growing complexity of learning environment and ever-increasing pressure of competition on kids’ mind, there have been a push to make learning more fun and interactive through gamification of curriculum.
3. Coding and robotics: Computer programming and robotics courses, which had till lately remained an elective subject for high-schoolers, have become very popular with smaller kids with advancements in block-coding and kids-friendly programmable toys.
4. AR/VR/3D printing: This is one of the fasted growing sectors in EdTech mostly because AR/VR and 3D printing had largely remained inaccessible to common people because of high cost associated with them. Modern technology is making virtual and 3D visualization accessible to the masses and is going to play a key role in EdTech’s development.
5. Crowdsourcing: Improved and fast connectivity and better technology has made it possible for information and knowledge to be crowdsourced. An individual doesn’t need to depend on limited source for information and knowledge. Various online resources e.g. YouTube and Wikipedia have practically extended human’s mental sphere to infinity.
6. Smart Classroom: Before COVID-19, smart classrooms meant having a projector and a computer. During COVID, we have witnessed classrooms being transformed to a virtual learning platform. In future, classrooms will be places where all the technology will come together. There will be lesser and lesser dependencies on teachers as Chatbots and virtual assistants will guide the learning process and video-based, self-paced and personalized learning will be prioritized.
The seamless integration of these developing EdTech technologies into our learning environment holds to key to the success of our future education methodologies. One way or the other, we are standing facing into a future full of infinite potentials.
Potential EdTech consumers in India
The potential of rapid spread of EdTech in India is highlighted by the fact that India has six times more students enrolled in schools than the USA. USA had 35.6 million students enrolled in Pre-K to Grade 8 and 15.1 million students enrolled in grade 9–12 in 2017. In comparison, according to MHRD, the corresponding figures for India were 215 millions and 91.5 millions. While school enrollment till grade 8 in India is more than 90% due to compulsory education schemes, the enrollment rate decreases to 80% in grade 9–10 and further to 56% in grades 11–12. There had been a constant rise in school enrollment rates and literacy rates and these numbers are expected to rise gradually for the next 30 years.
Indian government’s expenditure on education has increased significantly over time and currently accounts for more than 4% of India’s GDP. This is bound to increase to up to 6% in a short span under the guidelines of the New Education Policy adopted in 2020. There have been constructive efforts towards e-learning in India for the last few years. Many state governments have taken concrete steps in providing poor students with free tablets, but with such a volume of students, it’s nearly impossible for the government to maintain quality in education and ensure that every student has access to the type and quality in education he or she needs. In such a scenario, the role of online learning and private education will be pivotal in providing guidance and quality, wholistic teaching to students.
India’s online education system is governed by electronic (e)-learning and mobile (m)-learning. Online classes are reaching remote areas through Gio and other fast mobile networks. Number of smartphone users in India has doubled between 2016 and 2020 and is expected to reach 973 mllions. Mobile data cost has decreased by more than 95% since 2013 and internet usage has increased by more than 40%. India is only second to China in terms of internet subscribers. While computer access is still mostly limited mostly to cities and richer households, according to Forbes mobile learning holds the key in India’s future education sector.
EdTech is thus in a very preliminary stage of expansion in India and holds immense potential. There are challenges because of backwardness and population, but there are hidden opportunities through which the outlook towards education can be rapidly transformed by EdTech. The key lies in effectiveness of vision and implementation of EdTech methodologies to remote villages of India.
EdTech Startups in India
India had more than 50,000 startups in the year 2018 and according to an article published in The Hindu, EdTech and Education sector is third (8%) in terms of number of startups in India. Thus, there were approximately 4000 startups in the field of education alone.
When it comes to funding of new startups, education sectors had lagged behind mostly as application of technology in other sectors were deemed more profitable. However, during the COVID-19 period and as the result of enforced lockdown, the equation seems to have changed. In order to provide top quality and smooth learning experience through internet, interest in application of technology in the education sector seems to have been rejuvenated. E-learning is the need to the hour and people are willing to pay premium price for not losing on education due to lack of access to technology.
The initial interest in edTech during 2015–2016 seemed to have died down pretty rapidly as funding to edTech startups had decreased by more than 80% in the successive years. However, this can be attributed to the natural cycle of market interest in any sector. Two-three years of incubation period for a new business sector is a pretty standard norm and it seems like the EdTech sector has come out stronger. Number of startups which were funded by venture capitalists in the field of EdTech have been rising near-exponentially since 2016 and are expected to reach new heights by the end of 2020. It might be safer to say that edTech industry have crossed its gestational period and has come to a point of maturity, which accentuated by lockdown-learning, can be the inflection point in edTech’s life cycle.
