How Digital Transformation Is Impacting The Elearning Sector

Akanksha Chaturvedi Apr 28, 2022

The era of technology has arrived, impacting every sector in multiple ways. High-paced technology has majorly benefited the education industry transforming the preface of the sector, giving a whole new angle to education through introducing e-learning. Online education has democratised education wherein it has touched the places where schools couldn’t. With everything getting digitalised, every household has phones which makes it easier for the new-age learning platforms to reach out to families to provide education for their kids. The interesting part is that e-learning allows the child to get educated from any corner of the world and learn anything about the subject or activity they want to. Digitalisation has really given people the power to do things more conveniently, more efficiently, and customise their way. Even though companies are evolving digitally in real-time, still companies are facing some difficulties to let the masses adopt advanced learning and skill development practices. But, the organisations are well equipped with digital resources, which help to know their target audience thoroughly as well and to develop strategic approaches towards the market. Digitalisation acts as a catalyst in highlighting the growth opportunities and prospects to help consumers to adopt e-learning with ease. Digitalisation has also helped new market entrants and established companies to strengthen their position in the market and pave their way through diverse approaches to stabilise the competition in the market.

The education industry leaving the traditional ways behind and moving forward towards the digital era has shaped the industry in such a way that it has strengthened its roots by penetrating education in every part of the country. Personalised education has been introduced by e-learning, which allows the child to learn at their own pace, and to be specific about what they want to learn. Artificial intelligence is another fruit of digital transformation, making e-learning platforms more advanced, faster, better adaptable, and easily accessible platform. Through digital transformation, these advanced features of e-learning can offer video-based or text-based content with visual effects, and 3D effects, which entitles students to take interest in learning. It is difficult nowadays to grab the attention of students for a longer period of time as they are all the time surrounded by so many distractions on the internet, so emerging ed-tech platforms s have to come up with many creative ways to keep the study material more interesting and to hold on to their attention for a longer period of time. Also, by combining the capabilities of IoT, enterprises are expanding the platforms to deliver better applications enabling learning to be in a non-time and geographical manner. The largest contribution of digital is the incorporation of technologies like augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. The AI actively contributes to personalised learning and allows customisation to the children, even planning schedules according to the needs of an individual. While the blockchain is an un-hackable technology hence the data is secure and breach-proof. Organisations are exploring the use of this technology in the creation of digital certificates. The industry is getting advanced, more adaptive, and more accessible which will take the sector technologically forward.

Though the industry is pacing in the right direction, there are hurdles or challenges that an organisation might face which are important to rectify in order to overcome it. The biggest challenge of digital transformation in the education domain is the reluctance in adopting e-learning ways. The traditional ways have become much more comforting. To adopt the new ways, fortunately, the covid-19 has given the push which was needed by the e-learning sector. Hence, it was adopted when there was no option but to adopt the digital ways amid lockdown. As things are going back to normal, many people going back to their traditional ways. Yet again transformation is a continuous process that will take time to penetrate completely and normalise e-learning. Another challenge comes wherein many of the parents are technologically challenged, making it difficult for the organisations to reach out to these audiences. The main challenge is to give out quality content at affordable pricing, the creation of content is an integral part of e-learning which takes most of the time and monetary resources.

Significantly, the digital transformation has impacted largely on the education sector which has changed the dynamics of e-learning platforms. The organisations are very optimistic about the growth of the industry in the coming future. Also, by the year 2025, the industry is expected to reach US $35 billion-dollar industry. With a population of 26.31 per cent in the age group 0 – 14 years, India is likely to reach new heights in the e-learning domain. The main objective of the e-learning platform is to educate every child in India and digital transformation has been acting as a catalyst to achieve the goal. Education being the backbone of any country, India is on the brim to become a powerful nation with education being the weapon.