Data Analytics: Evolution And Opportunity In The Growing EdTech Sector

Vimal Venkatram Oct 18, 2021

Everyone's exploring it! From professionals to business people, graduate students to young children. The impact of the mobile-first and digital-first generation has influenced everything around us including learning and education. Today, we see even 6-year-olds curious to learn the basics of coding and a mobile device in a young child's hands gets us thinking about how education has evolved.

Data-smart educators are quickly realizing not only the value of the market but also the opportunities that can be achieved through extracting critical value from all the data that is created, captured, copied and consumed. The massive potential of data analytics and big data is taking digital education from exclusive to accessible. It is improving quality and overcoming the constraints of time, location and collaboration faced by earlier learning models.

Legacy education systems brought other challenges like socio-economic constraints with students from different income categories, outdated academic curricula and the lack of a holistic and comprehensive learning process. Today, advanced data warehousing and data sharing capabilities are rapidly resolving these problems providing new opportunities for early Educational Technology (EdTech) adopters.

They provide enterprise solutions for easy capture and processing of information along with more sophisticated learning resources for students and institutions. EdTech is leading traditional education towards a cost-effective and learner-centric approach in the coming years, delivering greater efficiencies and impact as it enables reaching out to a wider and global student community.

The emerging role of Data Analytics

EdTech refers to the combination of education and technology where computer software, hardware and education theory come together to enhance teacher-led learning and improve learning outcomes. In short, EdTech provides an opportunity to deliver enhanced teacher/student experience previously only seen in a well-managed, traditional education environment. EdTech companies develop educational technology and data-driven applications to enable educators to create and deliver customised, engaging and creative learning sessions.

The low priced availability of tools such as internet data packages, smartphones, and computer devices including laptops, desktops and VR headsets, cuts across the previous issues of cost, accessibility and geographical location and allows flexibility and access to quality online academic content for all age groups.

According to KPMG's report, 'Online education in India: 2021', the EdTech industry in India could be worth $1.96 Billion by end of the year 2021. The digital education market is growing substantially with big industry players competing against each other, offering B2C, B2B and C2C solutions for the rapidly expanding paid consumer base. Backed by rising demand in the next 10 years in the country, this sector is estimated to become a $30 billion industry, said valuation firm RBSA Advisor.

Education boards are supported by governments to create a data-centric ecosystem for integrating powerful learning technologies. Such an ecosystem creates personalised solutions that address key education concerns around learning content and methodologies.

A reliable data analytics partner offers data-driven algorithms and architectures to optimise workload management for education providers. This generates useful insights and actionable reports for educators to enhance student results, enrolment management, assessment evaluation, online lecture delivery and reduction of dropouts among others.

Assisting and enhancing the EdTech landscape one step at a time

Automated data analytics captures student-specific inputs and offers a deeper understanding of the overall education process, leading to predictive analysis and smarter decisions in advance. Strategic data science saves an abundance of manual efforts to look up user data, analyse and then derive conclusions. It provides opportunities for teachers to auto-monitor, measure, and respond to students’ individual academic progress before delivering final grades.

This process is also essential for teachers to address any unconscious biases against the progress of the students. Educators can derive personalised insights of each student within the same course material. This will enhance the interest of the student in the subject and point out, to which student and when a learning material should be delivered.

Data interpretation in the EdTech sector offers opportunities for educators to understand and organise the course material in real-time. By activating operational intelligence, educators can innovate their way of teaching as per individual student needs and thoroughly evaluate learning progression.

Carving undiscovered solutions for EdTech success

Data analytics when applied in universities offers the opportunity to build tailor-made teaching methodologies based on each student's personal pace of learning. It identifies unique studying patterns and behaviours, individual strengths and weaknesses. In EdTech, data analysis is all about an integrated approach to imparting knowledge, identifying pain points and tactfully acting on them, while helping learners to understand the same concept in different methods.

Since the start of the pandemic and obvious travel and human interaction restrictions, there has been a significant investment in data analytics as it is particularly useful in remotely collating, organizing and storing data. Effective data analysis empowers the EdTech sector to address key business, financial and expansion strategies, maximize IT potential and stay ahead of regulatory compliance requirements. Data analytics is redefining the future of the EdTech sector to deliver what all educators are seeking - to offer smart learning solutions, enhance students' cognitive skills and their overall academic journey.