Stats report that 65% of educators across the globe are looking for ways to make their lectures more engaging and employ modern digital solutions for teaching. The reason is the competition to leave a mark amongst the top players providing the best education services.
Furthermore, the EdTech software market is projected to register a (CAGR) of 19.9% from 2021 to 2028. Further, if the projections are realized, the revenues would show year-on-year growth of more than 200 million dollars.
While stats and the popularity of EdTech are painting an interesting picture, the ground reality is still in stark contrast. Educators across the globe are still stuck with the age-old syllabi, traditional evaluation methods, and effort-hogging paper generation routines that are loaded with redundancy.
https://prepai.in/blog/challenges-in-education-industry/
3. The post-COVID lockdown scenario in the education industry is teeming with various
challenges. The primary challenge is the imbalance between the efficiency, the
pace of learning, quality, and overall learning experience in offline and online
classes.
There is a huge demand for lifelong learning to cope with social and technological
changes. The educational institutions are creating literate people with immense skill
gaps, leading to unemployment or mismatched careers.
While the world is getting revolutionized with technology and disruptions at a break-
neck pace, educational institutions are still teaching about ancient processors.
Adaptation is the key to both technological advancements and accountability.
Further, the educators are stuck with the time and effort-consuming test paper
creation while grappling with the management of educational institutions in the
light of pandemic-enforced digitization.
Here, we discuss the top challenges faced by the educators and education industry
in general, and how EdTech software solutions can help to overcome them.
4. 1. Current Education System Falters in the Light of the Fourth
Industrial Revolution
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), for example, Coursera and Edx
Google
Podcasts
YouTube Videos
While the world is teeming with industrial disruptions and every day brings some new technological
advancement, the education system suffers from obsolete methodologies and education content.
Industry experts suggest that we need to focus on three Es – Education, Entrepreneurship, and
Employment; along with the three Rs – Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.
All the benefits from the Fourth Industrial Revolution stem from broad skill sets that take a long time to be
acquired in the current education system.
This has spurred many innovative learning platforms and sources, such as:
This shift in learning has occurred because the emergence of hybrid learning sources can help young
professionals acquire multidisciplinary skillsets and reduce their reliance on linear skills. This will come in
handy in managing employees and labor from multiple backgrounds and enable them to leverage
technology to make everyday jobs easier, more streamlined, and value-driven.
However, the large-scale adoption and embracing of such learning sources are still going to take a lot of
time and granular penetration of new-age learning is still a far-fetched statement.
5. Studies reveal that one out of three teens in America is bored most or all the time in
school. Further, 80% of the students feel stressed and 34% feel depressed. And all these
issues can find their roots in boredom and the mundane nature of teaching.
What makes the entire scenario gloomier is the fact that the evaluation procedure for
the students continues to be the same for ages. The students who are unable to write
fast, or describe things or events properly lag in terms of score.
However, eventually, these scores carry no paramount significance in the advanced
stages of a career, as most exams tend to be objective in nature. Hence, there is a dire
need for proper and modern evaluation and testing procedures that focus on gauging
the actual learning a student has acquired.
2. Boredom and Mundane Nature of Teaching
6. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown multiple technology challenges the education sector is
suffering from. From teachers grappling with the basic controls of online collaboration software,
to the ones that face a tough time in sharing or creating digital files, there is a whole other
stratum of challenges that still need to be addressed.
Some of the most crucial technological challenges faced by the education sector are:
Professional Development
There is a huge skill gap between the graduates and the professionals the modern employment
sectors require. Further, this lack of professional development is for the teachers as well because
they lack proper training and resources to integrate modern technologies into classroom
teaching.
Lack of Personalized Learning
Judging every student via a single exam is no longer relevant; especially when the objective
examination process is gaining popularity across the entire globe. Also, there is a lack of
technologies that can help teachers impart personalized learning, in a limited period of one class.
Hence, there is a grave need for personalization in education. After all, someone with an interest
in finance is not going to use Organic Chemistry synthesis concepts later in life.
3. Technical Issues
7. As mentioned earlier, assessments have always remained a major challenge for educators
with questions getting repeated for decades, evaluation methodologies remaining the same,
and unequal evaluation being rampant.
While several exams are now MCQ-based or objective in nature, a multitude of them is still
subjective. Also, there is a weak relationship between learning outcomes and assessment and
the students have no right to “know” whether they are assessed properly, or “how” they are
assessed.
Current assessment methods are vulnerable to bias as there is no transparency in the
evaluation process and prompt feedback on assessed work is still missing from the scene.
Classroom assessment techniques are less authentic, and the students never get to know
whether there was a mix-up or not.
Hence, in this segment, technological intervention is highly required!
4. Assessment Strategies
8. Adopting EdTech is easier but facilitating funds for mass adoption is certainly a
daunting task. Further, most of the modern technological infrastructure is out of the
budget of a majority of educational institutions.
A recent report revealed that 37% of the teachers in various institutions have taken it
upon themselves to facilitate EdTech for their students. They get whatever equipment
they feel is important by spending money out of their own pockets.
While this is certainly a noble initiative, it is not a solution.
5. Expensive Modern Technology Infrastructure
9. 6. Question Paper Creation
The process of creating question papers hasn’t changed for ages, the only difference being
that the teachers are now creating question papers on the computer. They have to make
the questions themselves, and because of the obvious limitations of humans, the questions
get repeated and many times, teachers frame questions wrongly.
While these issues are not significant in smaller education levels, such as schools, they
become crucial when it comes to entrance exams. Hence, these exams are checked by the
exam moderators and subject matter experts for maintaining integrity and correctness.
This again adds to the operational overheads and makes the entire process time-
consuming, lengthy, and subject to leaks.
When it comes to classroom teaching, there is almost no variety in assessment tests and
students get tested only for those concepts that a teacher considers important.
So, there are considerable pitfalls and challenges in this segment. Further, even if large-
scale technology adoption is done via a question paper generator, the cost, training, and
integration into the system are some challenges.
10. Student to teacher ratio is high
Limited class time
Lack of proper monitoring metrics in the virtual classroom
Students can cite network issues as the cause of switching the camera off
During the pandemic, online classes became a compulsion, instead of an option
and they are now going to be a new normal in the education sector.
However, there is no way to gauge the student engagement in the virtual
classroom because:
Further, there is no proper monitoring when it comes to online tests and exams.
Teachers cannot explain things as easily as they can do in the classes with the help
of the board and actual activities.
Hence, the students tend to lose focus and motivation to stay alert in the class.
7. Virtual Classroom Engagement