Online Education Spikes Amidst The CoronaVirus Lockdown

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The COVID-19 outbreak has forced many governments to put their communities in lockdown in order to halt the rapid spread of infection among their people. Businesses have been closed, classes of all levels have been suspended or moved online and travel restrictions have been implemented all over the world. In effect, this puts several economies at a standstill, which brings its own dangers.

With lockdowns in effect, the need for online education has suddenly gone viral, with sites such as Coursera, EdX, Udemy, and many others enjoying a spike in enrollments.While the e-learning industry has been around for many years, the CoronaVirus lockdowns have made e-learning a dire necessity. This is perfectly illustrated in a recent Google Trends report that shows an increase in searches for “online classes” and in “online education”.

This situation could lead to much-needed changes in education.

Consider the fact that most global education is lamentable because of their use of centuries-old approaches to education as well as existing institutional biases. While no one wishes a pandemic on the world, we can acknowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought some good things to the educational sector. It has forced us to come up with innovative solutions in a short period.

The use of interactive apps has spiked as well as the use of live video conferencing in order to create a semblance of a classroom setting. A new focus will be placed on student feedback with online schools depending more than ever on review management services like RepCheckup. But that isn’t all.

Our lives change as technology evolves.

As you might have already heard, we are in an age when we’re about to make a big technological leap in the form of artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and 5G networks. And yet, despite all the technological advances in the past decade, the educational system has stayed mostly unchanged. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has birthed innovation out of necessity and these technologies are bound to become the foundation for many of these updates to the education system. Many universities are making changes to many aspects of their system, including the way requirements are met and how lectures are taught. 

Is this the end of traditional education?

No. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that most traditional education approaches are going to be discarded in the long run. When you consider the value that traditional education has had on multiple generations, we wouldn’t want to discard it completely.

However, we cannot overlook the fact that what we currently have is not ideal. There are many areas that can be improved upon. A good example that I can cite is in how teachers will be better able to identify and assist students who have learning difficulties, or in how, through data and artificial intelligence, schools can create tailored curriculums that ensure that a student understands a subject matter better than if a general approach was used to teach the student. 

Even as things seem bleak right now, there’s something we can always rely on. That is that people will do their best to create solutions to problems, whether that’s conducting classes online, or finding a cure for COVID-19.