ICTpost Education Bureau
India has one of the largest education systems in the world with a network of more than 1 million schools and 18,000 higher education institutions. More than half of the country’s 1.2 billion population falls in the target market for education and related services.
In India, e-learning courses could be made more popular through availability of broadband connections at competitive rates, regional language-based content for technical subjects, two-way interaction for doubts, and performance feedback with students. The real India, the bottom of the pyramid, still lacks education and guidance to a proper career. e-learning could be a solution for employability.
As per ICTpost estimates, India’s online education market size is set to grow to $ 60 billion by 2021. The key factors leading to the growth of the E-learning market in India include low education coverage, rising demand from various segments after Covid-19, growing personal computers and internet penetration, increasing government participation and convenience factors. Strong opportunity exists in the market due to low coverage of education in India. This coupled with the fact that demand from other education segments are rising, will drive the e-learning market.
Indian youth are technology-driven today and find e-learning to be especially appealing. For young working professionals with a desire to escalate their careers faster, e-learning is convenient as they can pursue their degrees in their own space and time.
Global companies in sectors like KPOs, BPOs, publishing houses along with domestic retail education have established centres in India.
Untapped Market
In India, with internet gaining popularity and mostly young people proficient in using it, e-learning seems to have good growth in higher education. Some of the popular online education institutes in India are Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, and private schools like Symbiosis University and Sikkim Manipal University are offering online courses. The demand in India has sparked interests in some of the foreign universities and they have also established tie-ups with Indian universities to offer online courses. But India is yet to travel a long way to shift the mindset of people from distance education to online education.
It might be a news to some of us to hear that industry experts state that the market size of competitive exams preparation (GRE, GMAT, CAT, IIT-JEE, AIEEE, SAT, TOEFL) in India is currently $3.5 billion and service providers find online competitive exam preparation courses as yet another profitable market.
Challenges
The key challenges identified are accreditation and recognition issues, expensive mode of education and lack of awareness and acceptance. There is still institutional resistance to online learning. Whilst tablets have helped to stimulate the e-learning market it is important to remember the costs of Internet access and the lack of bandwidth in many rural areas. There is also a lack of attention paid to instructional design and learner support leading to high drop-out.
The schools of the 20th century were clustered around the idea that time would be constant and learning would be variable. Students were presented with subject matter over a fixed period of 180 days and then their ability to master the content in that period of time was tested. It was accepted that some can master certain content quickly and others need more time. Simply replacing one fixed time model of education with another is futile. It is now believed that time is not important: gaining mastery or excellence in a skill is. Schools of the past were essentially filtering institution, separating those who learnt quickly from those who did not.
Today with computers taking over, jobs that can be done with minimum education are fast diminishing. Skilled jobs and the need for lifelong education are on the increase. Schools of the future should therefore be institutions, which will provide whatever support is needed to achieve excellence. The idea of schools as a fixed time activity is being replaced by the concept of continuous learning built around a variety of tools and techniques. The 21st century classroom will be wherever the learner is located; at school, on the bus ride home, in the park, at a museum, or in the playground.
Traditional tools (e.g., books, pens and paper) will co-exist with the high-tech tools of the telematic era. The teacher’s role in this distributed setting will be quite different from that of content presenter and test giver.
The Internet eliminates geography as a limiting factor. A child in a remote hamlet can have the same access to the same reference materials as one located in the cosmopolitan city. Time is transcended by telematic tools. Technology will have an increasingly positive impact on the student’s creativity.
