COVID-19 has massively impacted almost every economic sector. As per the Human right Watch report, almost 1.5 Billion students are out of school already. Due to this pandemic situation students are at home and Schools, universities, institutes have dropped or deferred examinations.
All educational sectors are now facing unprecedented challenges and need to find solutions while adopting the latest technologies to keep students motivated and have them on track.
However, in a few aspects, virtual learning not only weakens the fundamentals of students but has a significant loss of human capital along with economic opportunities in the long term.
Let’s understand the massive impact of COVID – 19 on Educational Sector and how to overcome from it:
Variation Among Children Brought into Explicit Focus –
School going children are the most effective pupils, among others. The situation has not only interrupted their learning journey, but it has also reduced cashflow & has a professional setback for schools and colleges. It has aggravated deep-set class and social differences, between the private and public educational systems. Most of the public educational sectors are facing lack of remote and digital learning facilities at home. That has brought their education to a complete halt.
On the other side, most of the private schools are engaging their students with standard digital platforms and providing virtual learning. However, below the age of 8 years, students need their parents to support them to continue their essential education.
Lack of Infrastructure and Readiness –
In the situation where physical contact is not possible, teachers are scrambling to find ways to continue their teaching. However, we also know that class and social divides play a huge role in effective learning and a child’s skill evaluation. A very few teachers are tech savvy and have proper equipment’s to provide online classes to their students; but unfortunately, there are a lot of teachers who are so good in physical class but in terms of online classes they struggle a lot and that’s why nowadays they are vacant.
E-learning Burden on Parents –
Now parents need to help children to organize the setup, and be around at their e-learning stations while dealing with stress and their tantrums. Moreover, if both parents are working with the primary and pre-primary kids, it is a big challenge for them to juggle between their own work, children’s and household work.
Cash Crunches and Survival Distress –
Because of the lockdown, school owners are facing a major cash crunch, especially daycare and others which run on the monthly fee structure. However, on the other side, their rent, salaries and additional costs are being safe. Moreover, schools who run as a non-profit, they lack the cash reserves. It is also being predicted that smaller schools may get shut down permanently or can be downsized.
Strategies For Educational Sectors to Overcome From This Situation –
Though COVID-19 has become troublesome for all, as no one was ready for the COVID situation, it has also raised the need to adopt innovative digital ways in all fields, including the educational sector.
It has pushed educational sectors to implement a multifaceted digital learning approach for short and long term purposes while adjusting the risks.
Advanced technologies have an ability to plan, manage, and support digital transformation needs for the education industries and driving them to adopt virtual digitized learning methods instead of traditional.
The educational sectors positive response to digitalization –
It has now become inescapable to add digital tools to provide educational contents to the students. The COVID-19 have raised the red flags in the education industry and pushed everyone for digital development.
Online classes have become the most suitable solutions to continue secure learning. Almost every educational sector is now adopting below strategies and practices, which includes:
Several Video Broadcasting Tools: School and universities are now opting for the intranet system. Video broadcasting tools, such as Zoom, Google Hangout, and WebEx, provide an offer to learn from home while enabling educators to organize a live streaming session for students. It also allows teachers and students with recording, live classes options, chat, Q&A using website or mobile apps.
Synchronized Learning Programs: The COVID-19 pandemic situation has forced educators to opt for Synchronized student-focused Learning Program. It permits students to complete their courses according to their convenience without being present at any particular time or place. Government has also suspended all face-to-face communications to prevent the contagion effect of COVID-19. For thesis help, remote participation and virtual presence have become valid along with a link and electronic signatures. Students can share their queries, feedback, assessments and easily can ask for any research paper help, though maybe they do not receive any prompt response.
Social Media Channels: Institutes should develop real-time messaging options to ensure that education reaches every student’s doorstep. Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp are helping educational sectors to share information while embracing ‘learning anytime anywhere’ tradition. Most of the apps like ClassDojo, Dreambox learning, Google Classroom, are leveraging the free access opportunities for their content platforms. These mobile apps ensure a massive engagement between students and teachers in live tutorials and classroom sessions. They help to reinforce the education system and keep learning on the scale.
Organized Online Tests and Assessments: Assessments and tests play a crucial role in student’s performance. Schools and colleges are now organizing online tests and assessments, which also help to minimize human error and any biases. Online quizzes, assessments have become an essential factor in fortifying the digital learning field and supporting for the fair examination.
Use Audio-Visual Analytics: Educational sectors are now ready for certain changes, and technologies are helping them to maintain their system organized. Audio-Visual Analytics helps to analyze student’s availability through suspicious browsing activity. It helps to determine any fraudulent activities to ensure a cheat-proof process.
Automated Online Proctoring Solutions: Use it to create online tests in different formats, including multiple-choice questions, aptitude-based tests, essay writing and so on. These automated online proctoring solutions come with an inherent multi-section window where an educator can flip over several settings to convey specific evaluations. This empowered solution helps evaluators to perform an extensive checking for the learner’s performance and scores.
However, Education systems need to be guided, coordinated and amplified the efforts school leaders are already making. This present difficulty can also be taken as a blessing in disguise and proceed digital education as a significant part of the learning process for all learners in the future.
