The 21st-century educational panorama needs a change. One of the main reasons is that digitalisation and economic factors such as market demand have changed our lives.
And, as education is a crucial factor in improving our society, it has to keep up with current trends to satisfy current needs. Therefore, its delivery has to change as well.
Fortunately, technology has an answer to our requests: edtech. Edtech might be expensive, but there are valid reasons to take the risk, as the return on investment is enormous.
Even if there are more, this article lists three main reasons for investing in digital technology in education.
What is edtech?
First, let’s clear one thing out: the meaning of edtech. A few decades ago, the entire world mainly used the term edtech to describe all the cases of delivering education in the classroom with the help of any technological means.
Thus, even deploying a monitor with some PowerPoint slides or showing an educational video on a TV meant that an institution was using edtech.
But in the current times, the term includes every untraditional, technology-related approach to delivering education. That means that edtech is connected to teaching methods and everything else, going from learning material to the management of an educational institution.
The concurrence between higher education institutions.
To put up with current changes, it’d be better if HEIs (higher education institutions) invest in edtech to shift to digital learning.
It is not only about being ready for another crisis – like the Covid19 pandemic that forced almost everyone to shift to online classes – but being able to compete in the current educational and socioeconomic panorama. The main reason is that digitalisation is slowly pushing the entire world towards automation.
If colleges and universities do not keep up with the process, they’re most likely unable to compete with institutions offering digital learning solutions.
Whether private or public, HEIs exist to educate their learners. But those colleges and universities who refuse to deliver their students an education with modern means will probably be overthrown by their competitors.
Unfortunately, disadvantaged students only sometimes have access to learning material. That is where edtech comes in: universities and colleges could provide free learning material to all their students by investing in digital learning platforms.
That means giving equal opportunities to everyone, including learners with cognitive difficulties, since the digital version usually comes with bigger fonts, easier ways to find definitions and figures and even audio formats.
Moreover, edtech helps to reduce the environmental impact since there is no need to print textbooks and maybe even to commute. So, edtech makes education more affordable and accessible to all types of students.
Modern learning needs.
The world-famous sentence stating, “The client is the king,” is also valid in the educational world, and universities and colleges must respond to modern learning needs. Whether private or public, students are HEIs’ clients. But, as time passes, technology develops even faster than we imagine, and more and more students have difficulties embracing traditional learning methods.
The reason for that change is undoubtedly digitalisation which, by making the flow of information faster, shortens the learners’ attention span.
Edtech is an excellent solution to that. Besides, it can be deployed to help HEIs in planning tailor-made paths for their enrolled students.
With the help of data-driven approaches, edtech offers different solutions for making learning more personalised and pleasant. Besides, as the labour market is becoming increasingly competitive, personalising learning paths might also help students’ future careers.
Gamification of learning.
Moreover, we have to admit that being in class doesn’t automatically mean learning. Therefore, many tech start-ups and initiatives have recently been using gamification of learning.
Gamification is mainly used to engage learners, and this approach leads the students until they are the ones to discover the concepts they must learn, which, of course, is also of great help to educators.
HEIs should encourage these ways of delivering education and using technology in their lessons. Besides reducing their workload, it would also greatly help improve the student-educator relationship as the educators would become team – or class-leaders rather than strict and, if you will, boring lecturers.
In other words.
To summarise, the educational panorama has to renovate itself and invest in edtech because it is the future of education. Besides being able to compete with other educational institutions, the benefits of investing in edtech are connected to the democratisation of education and moving modern learning needs.
ACS – ASOMI College of Sciences is investing in all the latest solutions that edtech offers in the educational field. We firmly believe that education, and its delivery method, can and will make a difference.
If you want to be inspired by the ACS College’s technology-friendly approach, check out our technology and innovation-themed courses by clicking here. And don’t forget to read our innovation-related posts by clicking here.
