Challenges of migration from the face-to-face to the remote learning model during the Pandemic

Co-authors: Léo Lousada e Renato Azevedo Sant Anna

The pandemic acted as an exogenous factor that forced society to face the lack of adequate infrastructure for large-scale remote learning.

With this, millions of people found themselves in a real race to recover the ground to adapt to the new reality, having to rush through a late digitization process, which led them to learn new digital tools to be able to interact digitally and work collaboratively .

It is not a simple process, in the case of the Education sector in a developing country like Brazil, it required an effort in order to each student and teacher had to find an adequate space in their homes, adequate cameras, microphone, Internet link with compatible upstream speed with streaming video in high resolution.

Anyway, all this infrastructure had to be built in a rush for most students and teachers, in which many were only used to use the Internet to access to social media from their mobile phones.

The Irreversibility of Digitization of Education

The fact that most apartments in large cities in Brazil are currently small in size did not contribute to this fact either, as the ideal for online teaching is an uninterrupted environment with adequate lighting, as we usually find in professional office environments , the latter that became practically empty during the pandemic period.

The Digitalization of Educational Learning is a process that is currently understood as irreversible, but which is still in the maturation stage of which pedagogical practices can benefit from the adoption of technology at scale.

Much of the interaction that takes place in person can be somehow emulated in a virtual environment, although we all know the importance of informal interaction among people, more and more attempts are made to reproduce the serendipity effect that promotes occasional encounters, whether a pause for a cup of coffee or a chat in the hallway that encourages the exchange of ideas in a collaborative and informal way. 

Education-focused virtual collaboration platforms help to create a virtual environment conducive to the interaction of students and teachers, which requires the creation of a modern infrastructure to support it.

We are referring in this case to environments hosted in Cloud Computing environments, which allows automated “scaling”, with processing scalability according to demand, leading to great cost reduction through its optimized use.

The attempt to “emulate” the presence in the virtual, was made with the approach of “live classes”, with special studios and with guest professors who are specialists in their respective areas, giving classes via streaming.

This would not be possible or it would be very difficult to do the same in person, due to the difficulty of traveling due to the distances required. While in the virtual environment, just the opposite occurs, with the use of technology allowing online transmissions to a large audience simultaneously.

And the use of “bots”, “robot” software designed to perform automated virtual classroom attribution and student scheduling, that is, create virtual teams where students are inserted into their classes according to the subject grid, with invitations being sent by e-mail and SMS, to remind students to be present in class. Having the advantage that the class is kept recorded for later consultation, and those who missed the class live can have the chance to review the content given.

The online experience also needs technology that allows sound and image synchronization without "lags" or "delays", which would be delays in the synchronization of the sound and the streaming image, that's why technologies that provide some level of SLA's during online transmissions are important.

Being even more important for those who want to access from mobile terminals, since the available connections are not always high speed.

In Brazil, despite the large metropolitan centers having good 4G coverage, it is still common to find regions where coverage is lacking due to the insufficient presence of transmission towers in some locations or because there is only 3G connection available.

Impact of 5G and the use of Advanced Analytics in Education

With the perspective of adopting 5G technology in Brazil, among the benefits brought to virtual education will be shorter delay times, due to the shorter response time, and the fact that 5G technology allows for a high density of connections, being able to be used in large peripheral communities of large urban centers, in order to democratize the access for the population, specially those in situations of social vulnerability.In this case, you can either use Wifi from a shared fixed broadband connection, or from an action of private companies to provide places for community access.

The use of online platforms also allows for greater "personalization" of the virtual experience to the students, as using data analysis of various sorces like online browsing habits, demographic profile and student interests, it is possible through "clusters" to create segmentations that can help in the offering solutions that meet the students' tastes and preferences with greater assertiveness and precision.

Among the benefits of using advanced statistical software in the migration from the face-to-face model to remote learning, is the possibility of identifying an opportunity within a certain "cluster" such as a new pedagogical practice or the use of a certain tool that allowed higher performance of these students, in order to be able to scale the adoption of these best practices by identifying similar “clusters” of students.

The automated virtual classroom attribution and scheduling process

Finally, the digitalization of education can only be finally achieved when a large investment in infrastructure, which is currently insufficient to satisfy the minimum quality conditions for an excellent teaching experience for students.

Automated virtual classroom attribution and student scheduling process, as a model for automating academic processes, allows you to gain agility in the process of onboarding and class scheduling.

Because, it allows within the virtual environment to promote engagement and increased attention of students to the content taught and allows to emulate the face-to-face learning of students in a collaborative way, also allowing social interaction among students in the online environment.

With the understanding that the student body who chooses on-site education has a different profile from the virtual education student, in times of pandemic or hybrid education, there is the challenge of simulating and adapting the know-how of the didactic format of on-site education for the remote learning, being extremely important to bring and emulate the presential pedagogical tools for this new reality, with all the interaction and engagement that are characteristic of it.

Here at FC Nuvem, we have an Educational area with a complete portfolio of products and services designed to meet the needs of Educational Institutions that currently face the challenge of making their Digital Transformation in the educational process, such as in the aforementioned process of automated virtual classroom attribution and student scheduling.

Article written in co-authorship between Léo Lousada e Renato Azevedo Sant Anna

Digital Business & Insights Consultant, Thinker and Curator about the VUCA World, with a natural curiosity about the World and its complexity, multidisciplinary knowledge and the ability to produce actionable recommendations and insights about the competitive landscape.

Also a Mentor, Content producer (content writer), Instructor and Speaker on topics related to The Digital Era, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Future of Work, Artificial Intelligence Applications for Business and Consumer Behavior on digital channels.