How Has Covid-19 Transformed The Education Sector?
Disclaimer
The post below was written by Career Karma. It focuses on the change in the way we educate children and young adults due to COVID-19, and the kind of effect it has on society. It highlights important issues like the growing financial gap between classes in society. It also exposes the lack of resources available to address mental health problems accelerated by the pandemic.
How Has Covid-19 Transformed The Education Sector?
The education industry has completely changed with the Covid-19 pandemic. Our society has changed a lot since the beginning of this century with all the technological developments. And the way we learn transformed into something that adapts better to society’s new needs. Here is how the education industry has changed.
Adoption of Digital Learning
When the Covid-19 virus was declared a pandemic in March last year, governments worldwide implemented a week-long lockdown that is still in place in some countries. It meant not going out of your house, and the exceptions were going out for basic necessities like food or healthcare products. For education, it meant cancelling in-person classes indefinitely.
Almost a year later, most institutions worldwide continue to be closed. Thus, the only way to continue learning was to adopt digital learning platforms. It was a massive transition into online learning like never seen before. Institutions, teachers, and students alike were unprepared for the sudden transition.
But the EdTech companies came to the front to supply the platforms that institutions needed. The schools and universities that didn’t have online learning platforms use tools like Google Classroom, Zoom, or Slack to continue teaching. Other institutions outsource to existing online learning platforms. But they adopt digital learning rapidly, and they will probably continue to use it after the pandemic.
Bigger Gap
The aspect where the pandemic has really transformed the education industry is that it has made the gap in kid’s education worldwide bigger. It is a reality that access to education is not equal for everyone. Some groups have better chances of reaching higher education, and in some countries, people don’t even get to finish high school.
Even in the US, only a selected group has the means to pay for a university degree or have enough opportunities if they are great students. But the lack of access has reached the early stages of education with online learning. Not every household in the US has stable access to the Internet. It means kids without Internet or even computers to continue learning.
Imagine what it is like in underdeveloped countries in Latin America or Africa. The millions of kids affected will lose a year at least of learning. They will fall behind on education, and we will not probably see the effects of this gap till many years in the future.
Need for Mental Health
The pandemic brought to light society’s increasing need for mental wellbeing education. Almost no institutions include in their curriculums classes where students can develop their emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize your emotions and how to manage them. This skill helps you to overcome difficult situations where your emotions can overwhelm you.
Does a pandemic, several months of lockdown, and isolating yourself from others sound overwhelming enough? Many people start suffering from mental health problems this year. And our education left us with no preparation on how to manage this situation. If the industry puts its mind to it, they can update the curriculums at all levels to teach and later reinforce the soft skills needed to have good emotional intelligence.
Shared Responsibility
Because the industry transitioned to online learning and, in turn, is introducing new technologies, the accessibility is greater than ever, at least, for everyone that has Internet access. And we are not talking about only classes but about access to information through the Internet.
Every time you want to learn about something, you can probably find a blog, Youtube video, free course, or digital book about it. And it is all at our fingertips. It means that education is becoming more of shared responsibility.
The learning process doesn’t weigh only on the teachers and educational institutions. Instead, students can learn any time they want from anywhere. In other words, people that have Internet access and don’t learn new things is because they don’t want to.
In Summary
The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed education forever. It initiated a massive transition into digital learning faster than many people thought possible. All institutions worldwide, universities, schools, coding boot camps, or language schools had to continue with digital learning.
It also widened the gap between upper classes and underrepresented groups. It highlighted the need for a curriculum that includes emotional intelligence. Finally, education is becoming a shared responsibility rather than solely being the responsibility of the teachers.
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