Major events are often an inflexion point for rapid movement in innovation. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused the greatest disruption in the education system, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners across 190 countries. The crisis has worsened pre-existing education disparities, and exposed a massive divide, especially in an economically fragmented society like India’s. While education has been a passport to prosperity for billions of people, the primary method of delivery hasn’t changed in centuries. However, we are currently at a Netflix moment for education – on the cusp of a serious revolution. Social distancing has propelled the need for online learning, and tech-led integrated systems are delivering quality learning to people in the comfort of their homes.

Overnight, schools were forced to transition to digital learning, often without having the necessary skills and tools required to disseminate quality education. Despite significant internet and mobile penetration, there is a need to go beyond online classes where teachers conduct classes and mark attendance. Thankfully, the systematic cooperation with technology has allowed for opportunities such as unlimited video conferencing, auto-translation, real-time collaboration on project work, and as well as, calendar scheduling and syncing.

Edtech companies are aiming to provide application-based education that is largely digitally driven with a strong focus on developing job-ready individuals. Edtech is a relatively nascent, but fast-growing sector, and yet, very few companies are catering to individuals with the skills to be job-ready. The need is for companies to recognize the gap and form a young team with a strong talent density that recognizes the requirements of today’s youth. Many companies are providing specialized industry-specific courses that help students kickstart their careers in the field of their choice.

Students are concerned with clearing the paper in the first attempt itself, given the amount of preparation that is required. Additionally, many students are not well-versed with soft skills like presentations, giving interviews, or Excel, which is crucial in the job hiring process.

Some edtech companies found an opportunity in adversity and are keenly aware of these challenges and hope to overcome these by providing application-based learning to students. It has been noticed that companies in India either achieve “scale” or “quality” — few manage to do both. The aim should rather be to actively work towards motivating students to achieve ranks and be job-ready.

Companies should aim to deliver a superior learning experience through intelligent learning management systems, for example, a lot of leading edtech companies have learning management systems that integrate advanced analytics with education to help standardize content, evaluate individual progress, and draw detailed insights, allowing them to deliver education in a tailor-made, interactive and innovative manner. An amalgamation of case studies, models, mind maps, and study tips creates an effective roadmap to intuitive learning, providing students with the opportunity to be placed at leading multinationals.

The path to success may not always be smooth especially since the pandemic but as education providers, it is our responsibility to shift to delivering education online, which means tackling the issue of digitally-averse students. Have a high teacher-student ratio and a plethora of software tools aimed at improving remote learning to help guide students into this new phase of learning. 

In a post-Covid era, consumer centricity will be the key for education systems, and deploying technology at a large scale will harbour innovations for a remote learning future. Schools and institutions will have to work in close collaboration with edtech companies for turnkey solutions that are easy to implement and provide ongoing professional development to its users while having product efficacy. Student learning must be personalized in this mass production environment. Combining technology will help cater to students who may be visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners at the same level. Through a tech-integrated learning system powered by AI and machine learning, a high level of personalization can be achieved.

In a post-Covid reality, being job-ready no matter an individual’s economic background is critical to inclusive progress. Through technologically-enabled solutions, we must aim to provide last-mile access to those who dream of a lucrative future in finance and accounting through the effective use of digital resources.