CIOInsider India Magazine

In 2020 the global education technology domain grew by $ 89.49 billion and is still projected to grow at a CAGR of 19.9 percent from 2021 to 2028. Since the COVID-19 crisis ended up becoming a catalyst for digital education to thrive. Similar to the case of the agriculture domain, the education domain also carried forward its prestigious duty of educating pupils worldwide. Technologies such as Internet of things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have been the key ingredients responsible in shaping the betterment of digital classroom environments.

Along the way, joint partnerships and collaborations between edtech firms, educational institutions and content developers have helped lay down infotainment by enabling numerous creative opportunities for students and teachers.

As a result, collaborations and partnerships are becoming an increasingly important aspect of this evolving ecosystem. Ambow Education, for example, established a relationship with Cisco International in November 2020; Cisco International specializes in career education, training, and certification. This project sought to provide industry experts and college students with high-quality online internet and IT courses and certification.

According to a survey by RedSeer and Omidyar Network India, the online education industry for students in grades 1 through 12 is expected to grow 6.3 times in the next year, reaching $1.7 billion. The market for post-K-12 education is expected to rise 3.7 times to $1.8 billion by 2025.

What it Changes for the Teachers and Pupils
With audio-visuals, charts and models, smart classrooms, and e-learning rooms, it has changed a passive classroom into an active and participatory classroom, radically motivating and increasing the attention level of the pupils.

Through planned lessons for remedial, enrichment, or drill reasons, educational technology has aided and supported teachers in their instructional programs. Learners receive self-education training, and teachers are relieved of the pressure of routine repetition for the purposes of exercise and review.

Educational technology has given well-integrated structured materials for teachers through a systematic organization of content and instructional materials, allowing them to spend more time on creative work and quality improvement.

Software providers can also collaborate with schools to develop lesson templates that correspond to the most common assessment criteria used by teachers. These types of projects are updated online, which is helpful as teachers can get updates on how each student is doing when they assign them to them.

EdTech software like Classroom.Cloud give teachers the tools they need to collaborate in the classroom, monitor student interactions, and offer help. It also implies that each student in the class has the opportunity to share their ideas.

Students may find the remote learning process challenging, since it is tempting to get distracted during the class because the teacher's control is much weakened. As unfavorable as it sounds, some programs can not only monitor but also manipulate what happens on their students' computers throughout the class for such purposes. Furthermore, such programs can block specific websites or the mouse cursor during a class, which is undoubtedly beneficial to teachers.

Funds Bolstering the Growth of Edtech Startups
During the pandemic, investments in edtech increased, and European firms have expanded abroad, as demand for high-quality online learning skyrocketed. In the sphere of school-age education, MyTutor, a major platform for online interactive one-to-one tuition for secondary school-aged kids, raised roughly 4.4 million euros.

Byju's, an Indian edutech behemoth, teamed up with Google to assist Indian schools with online learning. The collaboration will bring together Google Workspace for Education and Byju's Vidyartha to build a collaborative and personalized digital platform that will be free for participating educational institutions.

In a fresh funding round, BYJU is said to have raised $200 million from private equity firms BlackRock and T. Rowe Price. The Indian edtech startup is now valued at $12 billion, up $1 billion from its previous round in September, when it raised $500 billion for a $10.8 billion valuation from a group of investors including private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, Tiger Global, General Atlantic, and Owl Ventures.

Vedantu, a Bengaluru-based online edtech business, raised $12.56 million (about Rs 96.06 crore) last year from Chinese venture capital firm Legend Capital. The Series C1 round was also attended by Omidyar's Ohana Holding. In the same year, it received $6.8 million in funding from KB Global Platform Firm in South Korea.

Strong Support by the Government
India’s NEP 2020's main goal is to establish learning standards in both public and private schools. This includes substantial educational innovations, such as low-stakes board exams that measure genuine knowledge rather than rote learning. Schools will also have 360-degree holistic progress cards, as well as the ability to track learning outcomes through PARAKH, a national assessment center. The initiative also aims to revamp edtech in public institutions and schools to improve access for underserved people, with regional languages available for online learning content.

The World Bank Group (WBG) is the world's largest education financier, working on education programs in more than 80 countries to ensure that everyone has access to high-quality education and lifelong learning opportunities.

As part of its larger work on edtech, the WBG works in partnership with governments and organizations around the world to support innovative projects, timely research, and knowledge sharing activities about the effective and appropriate use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education systems edtech to strengthen learning and contribute to poverty reduction.

Through the Office of Educational Technology, the US Department of Education uses technology to rethink education and approach student learning in innovative ways. The program refreshes and broadens the aim of guaranteeing relevance and utility in light of current policy, funding, and social contexts for digital learning. The NETP for 2021 is expected to embrace new educational technology breakthroughs and offer a vision for how schools and districts across the country may continue to employ technology to increase fairness and opportunity for all students. In order for the vision to become a reality, it will also address infrastructure issues.

Edtech is Here to Stay
While the global coronavirus outbreak continues, edtech businesses can expect considerable growth as more people turn to digital education and solutions. The present pandemic has hastened the transformation of education, and technology firms in this sector have expanded at an exponential rate, indicating that edtech is here to stay and that students' learning will never be the same.