Today, Education Is At A Crossroad Where It Has To Go Digital: Dr Santanu Paul, TalentSprint

Why is there a need for transition (from physical to online) in the education system? 

The journey towards online/ digital has been going on for many many decades across various sectors. For example, Finance has gone to becoming fintech, payments have gone digital over time as we have moved from paying cash to paying through Google Pay and PayTM. With COVID, we have seen telemedicine going digital -- healthcare advice being offered through various online methods as it was no longer safe to travel out of the home to visit a doctor in person. If you look around, every technology that is critical for us has gone digital overtime.  

Today, education is at a crossroads where it has to go digital. Safety and sanity is important and colleges, schools and universities can’t operate anymore like before, with large numbers of people congregating in the same place. Digital methods of education can ensure classes continue while no one needs to travel. TalentSprint’s very own digital education platform iPearl.aI, which stands for AI-powered Interactive Platform for Remote & Experiential Learning,  is becoming super popular among top academic institutes and corporates as it combines features and capabilities that make teaching and learning interactive, engaging, fun, scalable and safe.  

How feasible is this transition? 

All transitions are feasible and you know when there is no option, transitions become inevitable. For example, remember how during demonetisation when there was no cash in the market people started paying digitally. Feasibility is a function of a situation, an outcome of a situation.  

Pre-COVID work from home would have been considered infeasible by many people across many sectors. Today it has become natural to all of us. We are running a company with everyone working from home. By the same logic, while teachers and students can’t come together physically, education also can’t stop. There is no alternative to going digital, and that’s the only way. When there is only one way to do something and you have to do it, people accept it, and start improvising, using various methods and technologies. Over a period of time, leveraging the power of technology, it not only becomes easy, it sometimes becomes more efficient. 

Just as technology has made work from home easy and efficient, similarly people are attending and learning online through digital methods. Sometime back a lot of people couldn't even accept online learning. Now it is no longer that way as it is not a question of feasibility anymore. Schools and universities are running all around us. Life is returning back, to a new normal, through digital methods. 

How does an Edtech company manage the massive online education enrolments? 

Education companies don’t have typical limitations. Edtech companies don’t have physical limitations. And an education technology company runs on a platform. And by definition in a platform with digital, we don’t have classrooms, we don’t have sections. We don’t have to worry about the number of seats available. Technically, everybody with a connected device and an internet connection is a student. There is never a late opportunity as we don’t have to be limited by class size. Enrolments are happening online, delivery and teaching is happening online, even graduation ceremonies are happening online. Everything that needed a physical incarnation before is now happening through digital means where no one needs to leave home. And we are doing extremely well. 

What are the challenges ahead for the EdTech sector and how does an e-learning company overcome these? 

Learning has a few components, eg classroom learning where you learn from a teacher, and that is happening very well through digital means. There is no challenge there. But there is another very critical component of learning which is social learning--where you learn by engaging/interacting with your classmates, your peers. Today as classes are happening online, the only complaint you hear from students is - I wish I could be in school with my friends, I miss my classmates. That seems to have a major gap. The social aspect of learning, which happens through peers, through interaction with friends and classmates, that’s the missing piece and the main challenge in digital learning. It would be interesting to see how that gets solved, over time. 

Is the sector subdued or thriving in today’s difficult times? 

The ed-tech sector is thriving. It has got the biggest ever push forward. For decades people have been debating what is the purpose of physical education and the belief has always been that “Oh! You know, if people don’t sit in the same classroom with the Professor, you can’t really learn”. But the current situation has shown that digital learning isn't just possible, it is also very efficient, scalable and safe. So apart from the fact that social learning is compromised, the current market situation is very favourable to edtech and online learning. 

We are crossing over into a new era where there will be no looking back. Many companies around us are making announcements that suggest that even after the pandemic is over, there will not be a situation where 100% of people will go back to the office. We are hearing about various degrees of work from home, eg 30%, 50%, being announced by companies. Similarly, post-pandemic, education will never go back to exactly what it was. It will become a lot of online lectures combined with physical campus experiences. So we may go to campus for social reasons, but not for learning from teachers. A new model, a new normal is emerging. 

How can companies stay ahead of the curve by introducing online intense programs for their employees? 

This is already happening, and now it will get accelerated. Earlier, companies were willing to spend money for employees to travel to far off places and learn in a physical campus, or a physical classroom format. That will stop. I think from now on, companies will put the money behind digital learning methods and content rather than the travel and the hospitality of employees.  

Companies are partnering with learning companies, education technology companies to provide catalogues of online courses, online programs, online certifications. Just as an employee gets a bunch of services from HR, Finance, etc, similarly the L&D department of companies will start providing learning to employees as a service, through digital methods. Employees will have to sign in to a portal to access an online catalogue of courses and learn digitally. While some courses will be mandatory, some might also be offered as part of perquisites, eg every year you can use xx budget to learn courses of your choice online and get yourself trained and certified. In this approach where no one needs to travel, nor do companies need to spend money on travel and hospitality, we expect people to spend more time learning digitally. 

How has TalentSprint reinvented itself and the push that we have taken in this new world? 

Working professionals are seeing a huge transformation in their personal lives and careers. TalentSprint is supporting them by offering various deep tech executive education programs in digital delivery format, I have already mentioned those.  

The other big transformation that’s happening now is in learning institutes. Most academic institutions are realising that their beautiful physical campuses are not viable or capable of delivering learning in the current new normal situation brought about by the pandemic. They now need digital campuses. The future institutions are going to be those which have the right combination of both physical and digital presence. It’s not enough to have big lovely buildings, you need to have wonderful lovely online platforms too to go along with them. Similarly, several corporate houses have realized the need for a strong digital platform which can continue to offer learning programs to their employees. TalentSprint’s digital delivery platform iPearl.ai is in demand from both academic institutes and corporate houses.  

iPearl.ai was first implemented in 2013 and has been continuously upgraded with rich features and functionalities. The platform has been perfected to meet the needs of learning institutions, faculty and students over the last seven years. This feature-rich platform has been tested for scale with over 300,000 students across India and abroad so far. iPearl.ai is highly secured and is hosted on the cloud with over 99.9% availability. Built using best-in-class open source tools and SAAS services, the platform can be implemented quickly for any institution. 

TalentSprint is in discussions with several top IITs, IIMs, private educational institutes as well as top corporate houses to deploy iPearl.ai. A simple analogy is of a home chef who wants to cook great meals. iPearl.ai is like a fully loaded kitchen which the home chef can rent as it has everything they need to cook and serve great meals. We have all the technology stack needed for varied digital education needs, both corporates and academic institutes. We are talking to several institutes and companies to offer iPearl.ai platform as a service. Several of the academic institutions are considering iPearl.ai to restart their academic sessions as planned earlier while companies are considering offering learning solutions for employees.