A seasoned education management professional, Mr. Yeshwanth Raj Parasmal is the Co-Founder and Director of 21K School – India’s first online school. He holds an experience of over two decades in designing and executing innovative curriculums and learning techniques that are directed at creating an ecosystem of application-based learning for students. Based out of Bangalore, Yeshwanth has spearheaded various entrepreneurial ventures including Strategum Eduserve and Vyaasa Learning Solutions aimed at benefiting students, teachers, and the education sector at large. Over the course of his enterprising career, he has contributed to the establishment of 75 educational institutions and managing investments of over INR 1100 crore.
The Indian education sector is under paradigm shift; in the midst of such rapid change, the first step towards the progression is – schooling. The advent of novel Coronavirus put the world to a pause. The pause slowly started turning into evolution, learning and adaptability – Evolution of new thoughts, learning new processes and adapting to new normal. As a consequence, to this, a lot of changes are being seen in the last few months and the most significant being a shift from traditional, on ground schooling to online/ digital education which includes use of virtual platforms, new technologies, updated software and laptops, Smartphone or tablets as the prime tool to facilitate education. Apart from eliminating all the stumbling blocks, online schooling and digital learning has shown an increase in retention rate, reduced human efforts through automated devices for checking assignments and keeping a track of attendance, introduction to technology at a young age and increased knowledge prospects.
What is Online Schooling?
A virtual school which aids education completely online or virtually, an online school uses technology at its best without any geographical barrier and the hassle of travelling to the school. Over 1.2 billion students, globally, were stopped from attending school owing to the COVID – 19 pandemic. Even before the onset of the pandemic, the education industry both nationally and globally was undergoing changes; the pandemic accelerated the process. Online schooling offers a personalized and well-structured curriculum and a highly affordable fee structure. It allows students to learn at their own pace along with the flexibility of learning hours. According to various studies, e-learning takes 40-60% less time than traditional learning since students may choose between activities, pause, re-learn, skip, and even fast-forward through the topics they wish to learn. A rise in number of online courses and enrollment to these courses have been seen during pandemic as it has become easier to avail courses irrespective of one’s location and available time.
Why is the shift from traditional learning effective?
As they say, “Change should be the only Constant” and it is the change which leads to the NEW. Seamless online/ digital Education is a result of technological advancements and is also leading to emergence of newer technologies. The younger generation’s interest in gadgets like smartphones, laptops, tablets have helped them adopting to online education. Online schooling has already started gaining popularity because of the results it has delivered in the last few months. Online education effectively boosts learning process for a number of reasons:
- Career Choices In a country like India, students sometimes feel they are a part of herd race and career choices are often enforced upon them. The digitization of education widens their horizons and gives them exposure to various career choices which traditional form of learning might not provide.
- Flexibility of time and location Students can enroll themselves for multiple extracurricular activities as they save time and energy which would otherwise be invested in travelling. It also gives them the liberty of learning from mentors across the globe.
- Economical Online education is much more economical and budget friendly which can help students and their parents save money and enroll for other specialized/ professional courses.
- Access to information: The use of internet and online learning platforms give access to various tools and software which can enhance the learning experience and give more exposure to information as compared to on-ground learning
Conclusion
Online schooling in India is progressing and providing brighter prospects to the education sector hence enabling the youth to make the most out of it. Online learning includes variety of courses and provides un-matched learning experience including multiple languages, recorded lectures, virtual learning tools, video conferencing, better learning platform and focused skill development which the traditional education system lacks. Also, the pandemic has made this platform ideal for both the students and the educators.