How Has India Been Approaching Digital Education?

Digital is both the cause of and response to a number of major shifts that are happening in the education landscape in India and across the globe. On one hand digital is changing the face of the job market, raising student expectations, intensifying competition for Institutes and making it more difficult for industry to effectively forecast. At the same time, it is enabling personalisation at scale and creating significant opportunities to more effectively engage students and improve outcomes.

While India has several densely-populated cities, most of the population still lives in remote, rural areas, where there are digital connectivity and infrastructure challenges. Yet, the desire in rural areas to deploy digital teaching tools is greater because education needs are so great.

Digital Education – An Explosion

The growth and proliferation of communication technology, bolstered by deeper penetration of internet connectivity and smart devices has made digital learning a household name. In order to have a global edge, the present and future workforce need to adopt an international outlook and acquire new skills to drive innovation. Therefore, imparting the right skill set is the need of the hour to create a future-ready workforce that would take on new responsibilities with confidence. Moreover, with the current government reiterating its commitment to boosting job creation with a large focus on MSMEs, increased investment in the e-learning sector will be the right way forward.

Digital Education & Online Learning – The prodigies

Online learning is fast gaining the status of being a ‘global phenomenon’. As digital education garners wider global outreach, the potential to leverage it to expand access to education — particularly in a developing country like ours — continues to grow. Investment in e-learning currently is key to strengthening the learning ecosystem in India.

Video Based Learning in Digital Education

Video-based learning within digital education has emerged as the most scalable learning method since it truly democratises education by making it accessible to everyone. And it’s not only the reach; video-based learning has proven to be more effective with our changing cognitive abilities. In fact, a study on millennials concluded that over 75% millennials turned to YouTube and other channels for “How to” and explainer videos on various concepts. Leading online learning platforms are eyeing this opportunity and investing more in the video-based learning segment.

The digital education learning landscape in 2019 is also set to be revolutionised by AI-driven chatbots, who can perform tasks from guiding to motivating learners, while they move forward on their upskilling journey. For online learning platforms, chatbots can become teachers’ assistants and answer routine queries put up by learners.