Education trends 2020: EdTech becomes an integral part in education sector

The year 2019 saw some incredible technological advances in education. With EdTech all set to disrupt the future of education, the coming year promises to continue strongly on this path of innovation. However, the acceptance of EdTech has been far slower than desired, with universities continuing to be stubbornly averse to new forms of teaching and learning. With that being said, let's dig into EdTech and how it is becoming an integral part of the classroom.

Personalized learning is the buzzword of the hour and rightly so. No two students learn alike. Imagine a classroom that accommodates the varied aptitudes, attitudes, and abilities of each learner.

Not only that. EdTech can help educators make classrooms far more interactive than they are today, reduce distraction and improve student retention significantly. These outcomes have been proven in a number of surveys.

Just as how technology has reduced costs in banking, retail, travel and almost every other industry, EdTech can significantly reduce tuition costs. Education is expensive and students who take loans find the ROI unattractive. The cost of delivering education could be brought down significantly by using technology-enabled machines that could do all the heavy lifting in the classroom, including blended learning, 24x7 tutoring and a lot more.

Live classroom sessions could be halved without



much loss in the learning outcomes. In fact, it may even get strengthened on account of the uniformity of content delivered solidly.

Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality in education is receiving a lot of attention and rightly so. Experiential learning supported by powerful AR/VR learning aids could simulate a real-life environment impossible to fathom in a conventional classroom. I just cannot think of another technology that can get students excited and interested to learn.

Consider students walking through a warehouse that uses the latest technology, learning on-the-go versus hearing about warehouse management from a lecturer in a classroom. Using AR, they would learn what it would take to manage such a place. Technology to deliver such experiences is already available so it's only a matter of time before all classrooms transform into action-packed AR/VR hubs of learning.

Online education - the fastest-growing segment in education today - has transformed into such a powerful medium. Thanks to recent advances in emerging technologies, online learning has evolved to become a sophisticated, engaging and well-accepted means of delivering quality education. With just a laptop in hand, it has become possible to get an enhanced classroom-like experience with peers and faculty from all over the world, without ever leaving your home country. Was this even imaginable a few decades ago?