Pawas Tyagi is Co-Founder of edustoke. He has 22 years of experience primarily in the education & training technology sales & product management space. Pawas has worked in companies like WIPRO, NIIT and educomp before coming up with the idea of edustoke.
The spread of technology and the internet, in particular, has been on a surge over the span of the last decade. The advent of the COVID pandemic, too, has acted to necessitate technical adoption in recent times. Consequently, all the industries, whether big or small, have adopted some form of technology to assist their operations. In this scenario, the education sector hasn’t remained uninfluenced by tech either, as EdTech has emerged as the latest innovation in the academic sector.
Even though the people of India have always considered education to be of extreme importance one cannot deny that the accessibility and affordability of necessary educational resources are not uniform across the country. The unfortunate reality of education in India is that the academic resources necessary for employment are unevenly distributed throughout the various sections of society. The under-developed areas and tier 2 and tier 3 cities usually get the short end of the stick in these situations and thus a wide gap exists between the knowledge and training of the students studying in urban and backward areas these diverse localities.
In this scenario, the robust technical spread has truly proved to be transformational for the education sector. Some ways in which EdTech has changed the sector for the better are listed below-
- Increased uniformity in the availability of resources- EdTech has played an integral role in allowing evenness in distribution and access of educational resources for all. Since the internet is a cheaper and easily available resource, a majority of the masses have access to it and its offerings. Thus, education through EdTech platforms has really helped bridge the gap between people belonging to the different resource brackets of society. Further, as the accessibility and affordability of resources like smartphones and data connections become more flexible with time, the relevance of EdTech platforms will rise steadily.
- Availability of tailored content- Most EdTech platforms evolve their content regularly to be at par with the industry norms. Thus, the educational content and academic resources available on these platforms are of top-notch quality. Additionally, a lot of platforms also impart lessons in a variety of local, national, and international languages, which makes learning easy and feasible for students of all linguistic backgrounds. Lastly, the teachers and experts responsible for teaching also make use of very familiar and practical examples to teach students in a way that they understand easily.
- Greater knowledge retention through consistent evaluation- A majority of EdTech platforms provide the option of pop quizzes, small regular tests, and comprehensive evaluations. Through these options, students get to revise and test their lessons several times over which in turn facilitates retention of information and memorization of facts. Additionally, these platforms come with detailed explanations of solutions and in that way make it easy for students to understand where they are erring and correct those errors.
- Enhanced awareness- The internet has come forward to help not just the students but also their parents in this journey. Getting your children enrolled in a quality educational institute seems like a challenging task especially when there are so many options. Thankfully, there exist EdTech platforms that simplify the task of picking the perfect school for your kid by providing all relevant information about the top options under one umbrella. These platforms also help weed out options based on set filters that you can select to narrow down your list of ideal institutes.
Summing Up
The internet and its offerings have proved to be extremely helpful in all fields of life, including academia. Education in today’s times has found a new way to reach the students, through virtual platforms. EdTech platforms have helped enormously in leveling the playing field for students belonging to different economic backgrounds. It has also facilitated round the clock availability of updated educational resources. The internet has also played a key role in making the process of school selection easier for parents. A broad overview of the role played by EdTech platforms in shaping the present landscape of the education sector is provided in the scope of this article.