by Education technology has been one of the biggest developments of the recent times. It has actually transformed the way education is delivered across a whole spectrum of audience. The future also promises to be equally enthralling. Here are some of the trends that will feature prominently on the Indian education scene. The term Education technology, when it was coined, referred to the application of various audio visual aids for teaching. As the technology changed so did the meanings and definition associated with ET. During its evolution, ET borrowed terms like systems approach from management studies and corrective feedback from cybernetic along the way. The technologies being implemented in service of education kept on changing but the basic tenet of education technology, i.e application of all available resources in order to find solutions to various educational problems, remained same and continues to remain so. Since the introduction of computers in education, the pace of the changes has increased considerably as we all know that computer technology outdates quickly. In India, the education industry is yet to tap the full potential of the technological explosion.
Here are some of the current trends in education technology in India:
M-Learning
Smartphones and tablets are swarming all over the place. As per a study by Nielsen India, there are more than 50 million smartphone users only in urban India, which is an increment of 89 percent over the figures of 2012. The highest growth was in the age group of 16 to 18 years. The findings of this study present us with the huge potential that M-learning holds in the Indian context. Since most of the users are youth, it also shows that targeting mobile market for education will have the best result as it will be able to deliver education to the most important population segment, the future of India. Therefore, developing educational applications for mobiles and tabletswill be an important part of implementing ET in India.
E-Learning
As per the report titled “India E-learning Market Outlook to FY’2018-Increasing Technology Adoption to Drive Future Growth,” the Indian E-learning market has increased from USD 88.4 million in 2008 to USD 173.4 million in 2013 at a CAGR of 14.4%. The coming years are also going to show similar positive growth for the industry. The same report predicts that Indian e-learning content market is going to grow at a CAGR of 18.4% from FY2014 to FY2018. This is one area where the government is taking strong initiatives and a positive intent which is propelling the student enrollments in online courses to a greater level. The various technologies that form the part of this e-learning revolution include learning management systems, e-learning software, hardware such as laptops, and different connectivity solutions.
Social and Game based learning
Gamification of education is another trend that has been knocking on the door for quite some time now. Educational gaming applications will be developed in future and distributed either though internet or as a part of various software. Using social and goal oriented games help develop very niche skills of the students like teamwork, goal setting and concentration. The Bill & Melinda Gates organization acknowledges the role of game-based learning in a big way and therefore has helped launch of GLASS labs in various schools. The coming year is going to usher new gaming tools with an aim to make the teaching process more effective.
By implementing social networks for the benefit of education one can initiate social learning. There are few examples in which social networks like Facebook are being harnessed in a systematic way for educational purposes by schools and institutes of higher education. Educational groups and events are created on this social networks which deal with various subjects.
Moving to cloud
As educational resources are taking the internet route and with schools trying to push their IT infrastructure cost low, cloud has emerged as an appropriate solution in such a situation. More and more institutions are moving towards cloud-computing to meet their needs. Such cloud-based solutions have given rise to collaborative environments where the students can work on the same dataset at the same time while being physically far away from each other. Besides, with cloud storage the amount of data that can be stored and used by an individual school can help grow an individualized learning environment.
Adaptive learning
Basically a sub domain of E-learning, adaptive learning is making its way to individual students in a more widespread fashion than before. By adaptive learning we refer to the usage of computers as interactive teaching device to offer a student a more personalized learning experience. In this form of learning, the course content is tailored as per the needs and aptitude of every student individually. There are many tools out there in the market which offer excellent adaptive learning platform. Indian schools and higher educational institutions are adopting such tools like Knewton which act as an aid to teachers in their education delivery.
