Online Education: Opportunities and Challenges

Digitization is no more an option in the current time. Observing closely; digitization has changed the way of lifestyle impacting majorly on communication attributes. One of the latest survey done by Statista; there were 4.57 billion people found active online in April 2020 which contributes to 60% of the global population. China, India, and the United States rank ahead of all other countries in terms of online usage for various purposes. Recent pandemic COVID'19 is pushing all of us to use online platforms to cater to the need of society worldwide and India is no exemption for the situation. 700 million people in India are active users and well versed for online usage for various applications which is approximately 52% of the total population of the country. One of the recent survey of NASSCOM has predicted the high growth of internet usage in India which will turn out to be a good sign for the e-learning approach directly or indirectly. 

With rapid technological growth and ease in digital platform availability, the use of online tools is becoming a need of an hour. Digitization in recent times has shown the significant potential to handle end-to-end processes of all the stakeholders of the education sector. The education sector has observed the tremendous turn around in their pedagogy availing the best possible resources to develop material available handy for students and stakeholders. E-learning was only limited to leading universities a few years before, but analyzing the trend in the last 4-5 years; online education has penetrated the ground level in the Indian education system. Open platforms like Coursera, edX, Udemy, upGrad, etc. have done remarkably to educate society without boundaries and restrictions. They are oceans of knowledge offering "n" number of courses with several specializations so. E-education management organizations such as Toppr, Jaro, Byju's, Extramarks, unacademy, Vedantu, etc. are mostly app-based e-learning platforms that have opened up a unique way of learning for students. These platforms are helping to unbox creative ways beyond brick-and-mortar classes. Virtual meeting platforms like TCS iON, Webex, Google meet; Zoom, etc. are the unique ways to be connected professionally and personally. As per the latest report of KPMG, the e-learning market size in India was USD 247 million comprising 1.6 million users in 2016 and predicted an 8X overall growth by 2021. 

By the end of 2020 we will be the second-largest e-learning market in the world next to the USA. The Indian education system has a rich tradition of Gurukool which then followed by a quick adoption of the western approach to match with universal standards. Topmost institutes like IIT's and IIM's to recently opened private and deemed universities are developing the culture of e-learning positively given future projections. The market trend is positively inclined to executive education programs of renowned private universities/ institutes apart from IIT’s and IIM’s available online at Talentedge, Nulearn, and Hughes communication platforms.

E-learning has marked its significance beyond regular academic and non-academic programs of primary, secondary, and higher education along-with test preparation, reskilling, certification programs, language, and casual learning, etc. Data science, cloud computing, IT security, digital marketing, android development, and design thinking are among the hottest online programs and most of them are offered by some of the leading training institutes such as Board Infinity, NIIT, Simplilearn and GreyAtom Edutech Pvt. Ltd. These courses being recognized from recruiters as the most valuable addition programs; e-learning is gaining fast track popularity over the traditional/ classroom-based learning approach among working professionals and job seekers. Machine learning and Artificial intelligence are relatively emerging technologies in India and have tremendous potential in coming time. As per the survey done by Analytics India Magazine; more than 65% of AI/ML workforce in India have less than 2.5 years of average experience which predicts the huge requirement of AI/ML certified professions soon.  

The online platform does not only offers self-paced, flexible learning but also consumes less time and low investment comparatively. Digital friendly government policies have promoted potential platforms like e-Basta, e-Education, Nand Ghars, SWAYAM, and India skills online are among the key initiatives extending the value-based online educational platform to all the stakeholders viz; school/ college, students, teachers and society.

Observing the rapid trend of e-learning in recent times; one should not neglect the challenges associated with it. Revealing the challenging side; allows us to expand the horizon of online education to every corner of the country. At present, insufficient digital infrastructure is the biggest challenge to overcome. Except for metropolitan cities and urban areas; most of the rural areas are suffering from poor connectivity in India. According to the World economic forum, only 15 out of 100 households of India have high-speed internet connectivity to serve the multipurpose need of digitization on a day-to-day basis. Feedback and discussion tend to be effective in the classroom approach compared to e-learning as we are still highly dependent on the instructor to deliver the syllabus/ content. Academic credibility of most of the online certifications is another issue that needs to be addressed to streamline e-learning as a most sought after open-ended platform for crowd learning. This will improve the credibility, quality, and overall standardization of the concerned programs. Apart from technological and standardization issues; India has its challenge of being a multi-linguistic country. Almost all the e-learning content is easily available in the English language which makes it difficult for non-English speaking end users with the availability of vernacular content. Minimum interaction and motivation as like in the classroom-based education results in the lower completion rate of e-learning courses which are much below 50% in India as compared to about 80% in most of the Western and European countries as studied by Harvard business school.

Challenges define the roadmap of Opportunities and one needs to analyze the scope strategically. For a country like India, we need to start a Hybrid model (Online + Offline) at the first stage to make stakeholders comfortable and convenient followed by the development of reliable and standard approaches of e-learning. The addition of non-technical subjects like culinary management, cyber law, social science, etc. could also help to promote the e-learning approach in the country. Educational institutes and corporates shall develop the collaborative model to upgrade the content of online education regularly to match the rapidly changing market requirements. Foreign investors have already shown interest in the Indian e-learning market to invest and develop the long-run sustainable mechanism in all the aspects.

Online education has a promising future but it should not be used as a tool against the traditional education system; rather it should stand as a unique approach to support the overall development of the education sector by leaps and bounds.