As the pandemic’s effects become less disruptive with time, more educational institutions are returning to the traditional face-to-face (F2F), location-based setup. However, this does not remove the advantages offered by remote education or e-learning, which proved itself a viable alternative for many institutions. Its success as a business model also attracted the attention of many investors.
The remote education industry is estimated to be valued at US , making it a new lucrative market while evolving education norms at the same time. Because of this, schools and universities are consulting agile software development agencies to build their remote education template, with teachers and their role becoming the focal point of the “new norm.”
It’s obvious how remote education has become an effective tool for learning even after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. By offering convenience and advantages to teachers and students, it ensured its place in the future of education. However, it’s still in its birth pangs and would need a lot of fine-tuning to be truly successful. Here are some factors regarding remote education and how to manage it effectively as more teachers come “to the cloud.”
Technical Aspects for Administrators, Teachers, and Students
Remote education or online learning is a development made possible by advancements in information and communications technology (ICT). With devices now interconnected by increasingly speedy internet access across the globe, access to educational material and even live online classes have been made possible.
From a technical point of view, web and mobile apps the new era of digital transformation. There are four types of online learning modes: MNF2F or minimal face-to-face courses, hybrid/blended schooling, fully online courses, and TEC or tech-enhanced courses. Of these four, the last two have the most involvement in technology.
In addition, educational institutions have invested heavily in cloud services to maintain their databases. By establishing their virtual school in the cloud, administrators, teachers, and students can access their learning platform and materials through a wide variety of devices. This virtualisation of data reduces the extremely siloed form of traditional schools and gave users secure yet easy access to what they need with rapid deployment. It also helps in mitigating risks through having a decentralised infrastructure.
The Practical Aspect: How Sustainable is Remote Education?
One of the biggest questions about remote education and online learning is: how sustainable is it? With the return of F2F or live classes, will demand be substantial enough to support it? The answer is, by far, a resounding yes. In a study by NC-SARA in the U.S., more than 60% of its 700 respondents that offered courses in an online format during the pandemic planned to continue or establish more distance-based learning platforms. Another study revealed how 42% of U.S.-based institutions reported better incomes from online learning.
To make remote education sustainable, countries first have to have a legal framework that empowers the education sector through ICT. For example, teachers and school administrators can make distance learning easier by working with IT teams and implementing software-based management such as cloud-based management apps. These apps can help teachers and administrators ease staffing shortages by automating some management tasks in a secure, quick, and device-agnostic manner.
Usability research will also be a big help in creating tailor-fit innovations for various learning needs. With more and more apps for learning being developed in recent years, quality issues will surely surface. This means that developers will have to be precise and up-to-date with current education standards (these factors could also vary between different countries or regions) and novel technologies, such as AI-powered functionalities.
The Future and Related Concerns
Most problems regarding online learning come from a combination of technical and practical issues. Thankfully, the competitiveness of developers and future-forward thinkers is paving the way to create better solutions to improve online learning and remote schooling capabilities for teachers.
With the continued expansion of cloud-based technologies, online learning is continually improving. In the early days, only cloud storage was possible. But now, institutions could build pseudo-schools entirely online. Mobile devices can become class desks that come with all the books and other information students need.
Yet this is just the beginning of the continued growth of online and remote education. Progress is steadily increasing in the use of social media, state-sponsored and private apps, learning centres improving their platforms via hiring a CMS development service agency, and more.
Conclusion
Expanding and improving ways how teachers can better take the classroom to learners is one of the most laudable achievements of technology to date. While traditional school setups will forever hold their value, remote education is quickly becoming a new norm as teachers and schools gain cloud-based capabilities. Administrators should take this chance to improve their services for the future by collaborating with experienced developers or firms working on tech-based educational solutions.
One such company specialising in software development and user experience consulting is USER Experience Researchers Singapore (USER), a Singapore-based firm. We’ve been empowering Singaporean and international educational institutions with digital solutions that could aid them in teaching all kinds of learners. If you’re interested to know more about our custom development services, please visit our homepage or reach out to us via https://www.user.com.sg/contact/.
