The practice that started several decades ago with postcards exchange between a professor and students has metamorphosed into e-learning or distance education.
According to Britannica, “distance education, e-learning, and online learning is a form of education in which the main elements include physical separation of teachers and students during instruction and the use of technologies to facilitate student-teacher and student-student communication.”
Today, e-learning (remote) learning is driving an educational technology revolution.
The evolution of distance education is not a recent phenomenon. It’s not clear when distance education started. According to several sources including Florida National University, distance education began in the 1800s when an “English educator, Sir Isaac Pitman taught shorthand by mail.” He did this by sending postcards to students and the students in term would mail back their assignments to Sir Isaac.
In Spring 2021, I enrolled at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to get a second masters’ degree in Business Information Systems and Analytics. Because of the pandemic, the classes were taught via zoom for both Spring and Fall semesters. I completed my first-year study into the program without necessarily having to be present in the class. All that was made possible because of access to a computer and the internet.
What was traditionally meant for adults has now become a reality amongst kindergarten through twelfth-grade students.
According to SP-Edge.com, in terms of market size, the US EdTech- k12 market could reach USD 14.2-20.2 billion by 2025. An increase in demand may be due to several factors including covid-19, free services, and partnerships among school districts across the United States.
E-learning has received a boost during the pandemic, especially amongst K-12 graders. This is made possible because of augmented education where organizations are delivering quality education to children in the comfort of their homes.
Educators and parents are scrambling for e-learning because the online learning platforms offered free access to their services in response to the crisis. For example, Outschool offers $50 in free classes for families affected by the pandemic, sp-dege.com.
Another reason for increased e-learning across the United States is through strategic partnership. Many school districts in the United States have partnered with online learning platforms to gain access to virtual classrooms, digital resources, and communication solutions. For example, in May 2020, Stride established a consulting service to aid school districts to aid e-learning to their curricular or mode of teaching and learning.
This kind of partnership has enabled school districts without augmented technologies to deliver quality tuition to K-12 graders across the United States especially during the pandemic.
The market architecture hinges on online school operators, content and technology providers, and product solution providers. Stride Inc., for example, specializes in providing e-learning to the state, school districts, and parents who are engaged in homeschooling.
Pearson, a veteran in the education sector also provides curricular and extra-curricular classes to compliments traditional learning systems for both K-12 graders and high school students. In 2020, to facilitate during the pandemic, Pearson developed services for school districts to aid them to migrate to e-learning. Pearson used its global brand to raise $459 million to support Connections Academy to provide vocational qualifications for students who have not been able to complete high school.
As schools embrace digital technology to promote e-learning models, a record number of institutions have emerged to meet the current demand for e-learning through digital technology. Disruptors include but are not limited to Kahoot!, Duolingo, Age of Learning, DreamBox Learning, Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, and BrightSpace.
It’s imperative to note that, through digital technology, these organizations in partnership with states, school districts, and parents have delivered high-quality education to both K-12 graders and high school students. Almost every organization including schools has embraced the virtual classroom experience, a new normal that has come to stay.
For example, Duolingo, a technology education disruptor provides language learning and literacy tool to improve student learning. Also, Stride Inc. has also developed an app that connects students and professionals with scholarships. Delaware Education Department has also partnered with Discovery Education, a software company, and DuPont, a chemical company to provide K-12 graders with courses delivered online that are flexible and easy to understand by students.
Despite a growing market for e-learning, there is a myriad of challenges confronting the industry. A surge in e-learning has largely been attributed to the emergence of the coronavirus. As a result, many fear that e-learning would disappear after the world concludes the pandemic.
The question is “Why abandon something that has been working efficiently?” In fact, research shows that e-learning has improved the quality of education. The introduction of e-learning has led to the personalization of the curriculum to meet the personal and individual needs of every student.
E-learning enables students to cover more syllabus than in-person class interaction. IBM reports that students are able to learn five times more material in e-learning than in in-person classes. Online learning has improved learning transparency, quick assessment, content coverage, and retention rate.
Perhaps the pandemic has helped to expose a long-term underlying problem with traditional education. Children have different needs in learning, and e-learning provides for the individual, not the group. Traditional learning, focused on the group with less regard for individual learners, can no longer rule the educational world. Digital and distance learning are here to stay.
