“Real change takes place in deep crisis” – just how many times have you heard this phrase before? I can almost bet that the majority of your 2020 has been based off this line alone. The year has completely upended our lives, yet we, still, can’t tell exactly how deep the long-term effects of Covid-19 will be on our habits, institutions and economies. What is certain, however, is that the events of 2020 have become incredible catalysts for change.
The educational sector, one of the most affected by the 2020 crisis, is representative of this. Abruptly, education went digital and, for millions of students all around the world, turned towards virtual platforms and remote communication. As a consequence, the attention on EdTech and its rush to finding innovative solutions (both technical and pedagogical) has been higher than ever before.
However, the question remains to loom in the air: ‘
Well, before we answer, we need to firstly consider a few factors. Our doubt behind remote-learning is very much justified based firstly on how a majority of language schools had found themselves unprepared at the pandemic breakout and – almost one year later – are still adopting remote learning solutions, rather than embracing full-blown online modality.
Let’s lay all the essential facts on the table:
Primarily speaking, EdTech applies technology to education in order to serve a wider audience, while boosting learning practices and facilitating teaching labour. Though still considered as an emerging industry, EdTech was not established just this year solely in response to Covid-19 (online-courses have been around for decades now). Fun fact: The first full online course was offered in 1986 by the Electronic University Network.
In 2019, long before coronavirus, high growth and adoption in education technology was already gaining massive traction, with global EdTech investments reaching $18.66 billion, and the global online-education market projected to reach $350 billion by 2025. Language apps, video-conference tools, AI-powered learning experiences, and auto-translators are just a few examples of what language-education was already amplifying by last year. However, main drivers of the tech were innovators who completely embraced these solutions as new teaching methods. For the majority of traditional schools around the world (at the time) on the other hand, such tools simply played assist to the traditional face-to-face teaching methods.
What the Covid-19 outbreak essentially did was highlight to everyone that online learning opportunities were limitless – and that what was considered as innovation, turned into necessity to keep students learning, while saving businesses all-the-same. The demand of online solutions has increased at incredible speeds – with ongoing digital transformation drastically accelerating.
Now, based on available data pre-Covid19, paired with the clear advantages that come with online learning will adoption of online-learning solutions persist post-Covid19?
Without a doubt our answer is a big YES.
Not only will online-learning persist, but the sector is projected to thrive to new heights.
Online learning will be probably integrated as a hybrid solution, where a mix of online and offline methods will be used simultaneously (depending on various needs in institutions). Online learning is not temporary. With new goals of increasing student engagement and retention, as well as standing out of the competition, the market is an evergreen for language schools worldwide.
More-so, we further expect investment in EdTech to be way higher than numbers projected in recent years. Supercharged by this year’s pandemic, research into advanced technologies specific to education will not cease to accelerate, while the whole educational sector dives further into its financing.
At Edugo.AI, we have witnessed what has just been discussed above for ages now. As an EdTech company focused on exploring the market of language learning for more than 3 years, we built a highly-personalised platform for language schools; integrating disruptive techniques like A.I. alongside Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies. Through our expertise, we have brought the teaching and learning experience to their most optimal levels thus far. Our advanced software not only creates personalized content in real-time, but provides true and dedicated solutions that meet each unique learners’ needs.
Years back (long before Covid-19), we were approached by what would be our first language-school client who expressed the need to retain its students. To be more precise, the institution offered ‘study-abroad’ programs, and wanted to extend their pre-existing language-offers to students who had returned to their home-countries even after completing courses. However, traditional face-to-face approaches, nor remote learning solutions could fully solve this particular issue. Through extensive research and development, we completely designed our online-learning platform. The institution now still offers the learning experience without limitation of program duration or geographical boundaries; perfectly combining both synchronous and asynchronous training.
This year, we have experienced a rapid rise of awareness of the potentials of online-learning among school managers worldwide, with even faster adoption from language schools. Even with vaccines now beginning to roll out globally (and the idea of going back to normal life seemingly nearer) we continue to see language schools searching for disruptive solutions specific to language learning, helping them grow online while standing out from the competition.
