Corona Crises led to new Educational Opportunities

In mid-February, when the coronavirus was penetrating into the roots of our country, all the organizations and companies permitted their employees to work from home. Meanwhile, educational institutions became ambiguous about their regularity and started pondering over to manage their students and other academic Stuff.  As every difficulty is an opportunity to learn something new, online teaching emerged as a solution in this cumbersome time. 

According to the All India Survey on Higher education 2018-19 by the Ministry of Human Resource development, there are 993 Universities, 39931 Colleges and 10725 Stand Alone Institutions in India.  Therefore, in a country with a maximum of young population, keeping them engrossed with productive work was very challenging. Soon the institutions figured out the ways to train and equip their teachers with software for online teaching. Thus online teaching in this hard time has opened new avenues for educational institutions offering distance learning courses, coaching centres, homeschooling, etc.  Whether it is one to one learning, group learning, and virtual classes and so on, educators and students are making the best use of this hour to horn their intellectual and creative skills. Hence, we can say that when the economy is on the verge of declining, the education sector is the only one that is emerging in a new light. Let’s have a look at how this time of crisis has opened new doors for the education sector:

a)      Educational Institutions: Earlier when the educational institutions were just restricted to smart classes, internal software’s of institutions, teaching through Microsoft office, etc. With the urge to reach out all the students at home, all the educational institutions are making every effort to reach out to the niche. For which they are purchasing new software’s like Gotomeeting, Gotowebinar, Google Classroom, Zoom, Google Hangout, Microsoft Team, Idroo etc. and training their teachers online for its proper functioning.

b)   Teachers and Professors: In this time of crisis, where teachers are being trained by the institutions for online teaching through a new digital platform like Skype, Kohoot, Microsoft Team, Gotomeeting & Webinar, etc, they are making every stone unturned for their personal growth. Be that making online courses for digital platforms like Youtube, Byjus, Virtual classrooms, etc. learning additional skills, writing research chapters and papers for various journals and books, so on and forth. 

c)    Independent & Digital Educators: Digital platform has been a real market for independent educationists and online educators like Masterclass.in, Udemy, Video bootstrap, Doodle official, etc. These days we are witnessing lot of content regarding online webinars, discounted classes, free classes, free certification workshops, etc. being conducted by independent educationalists and education centres. For example, there have been webinars on fake news during Coronavirus, Digital marketing workshops, communication workshops, software tutorials, etc.

d)   Students: The Internet provides so many opportunities for growth that one who wants to learn and earn, can do it very easily. Thus students are making the best use of time by learning new techniques for submitting assignments creatively through ZOOM, Google classroom, Video presentations, etc., learning software’s through online tutorials for photo editing, video and audio editing, writing, creating mobile content, etc.  

e)    Software developers: In an era of the digital world, software developing companies like Google, Microsoft, Backboard, TCS Systems,  Pearson, Samsung, etc., are having a challenging yet golden time where all the educational institutions, coaching centres, schools, independent content developers, etc. are in the queue of buying latest softwares for online teaching and content production.

Written By:-  Prof. Geetanjali Kalia ( Chitkara University )