The Edtech space in India has gained much momentum, thanks to the increased remote learning environment since 2020. Some of the start-ups  catching up in the edtech space are Whitehat Education, Mindlogicx, Meritnation, Masai School, Practically, Skillmatics, Testbook, and Culturealley among others. In previous blog, we talked about top edtech companies that became unicorns for their unique platform and tech solutions. This blog talks about promising edtech startups soon to enter unicorn club.

Quizziz

Quizziz is a platform that is now being used in group assignments, pre-test reviews, classes, pop quizzes, and formative assessments and is known for creating and selling gamified student engagement programs. The edtech platform is customizable, available for all age groups, and accessible across any device and platform, with more than 10 million users, this edtech start-up is forecasted to soon make its entry into the unicorn club of India. While technology-based learning is only recent in India, Quizziz is also now integrating regional languages for wider adoption here.

What makes Quizziz unique and different from other edtech start-ups is that they do not pitch their product as a “supplementary education” beyond the schools. The USP technology of Quizziz is gamification and analytics. Speaking of the tech stacks, this engaging learning platform makes use of over 15 technologies, including Moment.js, jQuery, Node.js, Express, Google Workspace, Amazon Cloudfront, Amazon Web Services, and MoEngage, among others.

Cuemath

Focussing primarily on one subject, Bangalore-based Cuemath has over 3,000 centers in the country. Cuemath focuses on improving mathematical concepts. This edtech start-up was founded in 2013. What’s unique about Cuemath is its platform called LEAP which customizes each worksheet and class according to the student. The company claims that its students can complete courses 20% faster than other competitors.

Addressing the pain point of students, i.e. weak foundation in Mathematics concepts, Cuemath is now recognized for its unique math learning system. The company offers online after-school math classes, and also focuses on coding lessons. Cuemath has an AI-powered platform that helps students in moving at their own pace. Cuemath makes use of over 18 technology services and products and 50+ technologies on the website. Some of these include jQuery, Google Font API, Viewport Meta, and Google Analytics, among others.

Toppr

Mumbai-based Toppr helps K-12 students with online examination preparation and aiding students in classrooms. Toppr’s structured courses are powered through interactive video lectures, doubt-clearing sessions, practice question sets, and test series. Conceptual learning, application, practice, and comparison are four steps in which classroom teaching is done at Toppr. It also focuses on adaptive question practice and goal-based learning.

Toppr offers technology solutions by recognizing the problem of need-gap. Toppr Doubt is the solution for helping students clear their doubts at any time, in real-time through experts. Toppr is using its investments in developing an AI-based Toppr School Operating System, in an attempt to unify in-school and after-school learning.

The digital tools or technologies used by Toppr include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, for understanding students’ behavior.

Classplus

Founded in 2018, Classplus aims at digitizing the tuition/ coaching system through its coaching institute management software. The SaaS-based platform addressed a major pain point of teachers by helping them create their individual apps to provide coaching and course content to their students. Classplus platforms are mobile-first and offer unlimited cloud storage and data security features. Content of teachers may include video lectures, shared messages, online tests, and homework. Classplus offers ease of tutoring and digital payments. This edtech firm has over 200k users on its platform. In its tech stack are some of the popular technologies like React, Ubuntu, Amazon Web Services, CleverTap, OWL Carousel, jQuery, and Bootstrap among others.

If you are brainstorming a new edtech start-up project, catch up with our tech team to make a product that’s pitched for long-term success.

The EdTech or education technology sector was among the least funded sectors in India till 2019, but with the rise in remote learning, the ed-tech sector saw more start-ups and investors’ money flowing in. Over the last two years, there has been an exponentially rising interest among investors in edtech companies. So, what makes an edtech start-up a success story?

The success of an edtech start-up depends on how satisfied a customer feels with the product and does this product has a long-term vision. Long-term vision can be defined well when a company identifies the pressing pain points of end-users and addresses them with the right digital solution, such as AI, machine learning, and big data, and combines it with the tech stack. In this blog, we list out the fastest growing edtech start-ups in India that address the unique challenges of their end-users through their tech solution.

Byju’s

Byju’s, one of the highest valued edtech start-ups in the world currently, provides personalized learning programs through advanced technologies like interactive 3D learning classes. Byju’s has leveraged its content by reinventing personalized curricula to suit individual students’ requirements. BYJU’s focus has been on delivering quality education with accessibility, use of technology, visualization, and creativity. To create unique solutions, BYJU’s cross-functional team brainstorms together to develop course content that is not yet available around the globe. BYJU’s attains its competitive advantage by building synergy between different global acquisitions, thus creating unique learning platforms.

On the tech side, Amazon Web Services is the cloud platform for its mobile and website app. For gaining a deeper insight into student behavior, BYJU’s uses Amazon Redshift for its data warehouse management.

UpGrad 

UpGrad enables students to achieve career goals by letting them learn higher education programs through top global institutes like IITs, the University of Arizona, and more. UpGrad had a learner base of over 2 million as of August 2021, which doubled in just 8 months, thus making it the largest platform offering higher education.

One of the biggest challenges for UpGrad was to overcome the stigma around the credibility of online courses for recruiters and students. The company invests in three core competencies- new programs, product and learning experience, and greater awareness. What sets UpGrad apart from its competitors is a hand-holding technique for each learner, which it bills as ‘student mentorship’. Upgrad makes its website more dynamic and enhances operability due to frameworks like Nuxt.js, in-house editors, and CMS.

Vedantu

Bangalore-based edtech start-up pioneered live online tutoring in 2014 to students aged between 3 to 18 years, with an aim of augmenting lessons from schools. Vedantu also helps students prepare for competitive examinations, primarily medical and engineering exam. Vedantu enables learners to access free recorded lessons through satellite TV, YouTube, and its app. Customized teaching patterns, interactive LIVE classrooms, and doubt clearing sessions are some of its key highlights.

Vedantu worked on the pain point by understanding that classrooms are never fully equipped to solve each query, or match an individual's ability and pace. Vedantu was thus launched to solve the challenge of offline learning model through its next-gen, instinctive platform WAVE (Whiteboard Audio Video Environment). WAVE is the AI-enabled platform, which uses more than 70 parameters to make classes more interactive.

Unacademy

Unacademy helps students prepare for the country's major entrance examinations. Unacademy’s uniqueness emerges from its LIVE classroom sessions through talented educators. All these class sessions are also available offline, which makes it simpler for learners to access videos at their preferred timing from the comfort of their homes. As of February 2022, Unacademy had over 750,000 active paid subscribers.

The company worked on the greatest challenge of democratizing education in India and making education accessible to all. At present, around 70% of the company’s active learners are from Tier-III cities where there is an absence of top educators. Unacademy is now focusing on adding more exams, teachers, and languages into its mixture. Popular tech stacks used by Unacademy include Google Fonts, Google Analytics, HTML 5, iPhone / Mobile Compatible, SPF, and Viewport Meta.

LEAD

Founded in 2012, LEAD acts as an enabler for schools where they can combine pedagogy, curriculum, and technology into their learning and teaching systems. The company claims to have over 5,000 schools, serving over 2 million students across 500 cities in the country. LEAD invests its resources in building integrated and exceptional learning environments.

Digitizing and transforming inexpensive private schools to cater to the students from moderate and low-income households is the challenge addressed by LEAD schools by creating an integrated system. LEAD schools’ business success comes from running school management software applications. It is the full-stack retraining, assessment, and education solution for the small towns. The unique characteristics of the software include course content delivery, teacher’s training, instructor performance management, and student learning surveillance.
 

In our previous blog, we talked about how adaptive learning and badging in gamification can have a critical impact on higher education. The rising demand for these digital tools amongst institutions has prompted edtech companies to focus on technologies that empower education. In this blog, we list our three core digital tools that can greatly impact and transform higher education.

Blended Learning

Also known as hybrid learning, it combines the best of online and offline worlds to deliver lessons to students. Blended Learning comes with a range of benefits including better opportunities for experiential learning, enhanced teacher and student interaction, a more flexible teaching, and learning environment, and time management and flexibility among others. About 53% of the students are willing to adopt the idea of online courses offered on a blended or university-owned platform, suggests a report by Pwc.

Popular models of blended learning are:

• Flipped model that enables educators to share education content before the class session. The instructors can share this content on LMS, or through e-mails.
• Face-to-Face Driver Model uses webinars or Zoom meetings to deliver a learning session. While the learning takes place online, assignments can be set later and shared using LMS.
• Enriched Virtual model of blended learning enables students to complete their coursework online, while also attending webinars. Here, the attendance is ad hoc and enables learners to grasp concepts at their own pace.

Apps supporting hybrid learning

• Edmodo app integrates with Google Apps and Microsoft Online and serves as a collaborative platform for teachers, students, and parents.
• Lesson Paths enables flexible and individualized learning and works on a playlist model. One can assign a playlist that already exists on the platform or can create a new playlist. Students are eligible to have their playlist as well.
• Voicethread enables the articulation of students’ thoughts, along with collaborative participation. The platform enables the uploading of over 50 different kinds of files. Students can comment through different means like a phone call, text, video, and chat.

Enhanced Classroom Technologies

The adoption of classroom technologies in higher education space is revolving around “Learning ready classrooms”, a word coined by Dr. Maggie Beers from San Francisco State University. The current focus is on designing and scaling equitable and inclusive learning spaces with tools for active learning like writable surfaces and wheeled furniture.

Apps for smart classrooms

• SCALE-UP rooms have circular tables along with displays. This allows students to work on their assignments, plug in their laptops, and simultaneously share screens. 
• Too Noisy is the app which monitors and controls the level of noise in a classroom.
• Class Dojo is a behavior tracking app where teachers can monitor students’ behavior.
• Teacher Kit is a class management app that puts multiple tools into use and organizes class data. It also keeps track of the students’ performance.

Learning Analytics

This digital technology is used with online learning services, where its application involves the implementation of new structures and methods that are dependent upon predictive modeling. Learning Analytics implementation in higher education brings in key strengths, such as the availability of multiple visualizations for staff and students, the ability to use powerful, pre-existing algorithms, large volumes of available educational data, precise models for adaptation and personalization of learning, and growing insight into learning strategies and behaviors.

Apps supporting learning analytics

• OnTask, an analytics solution, integrates data from learning management systems or other online learning tools and enables instructors to define progress indicators. The dashboard allows instructors to check students’ progress, both individual, as well as aggregated.
• The Threadz, a tool for developing network visualizations, makes use of learning analytics by giving instructors manipulable visualizations of students’ interaction and communication within forums. It uses reliable metrics which indicate students’ degree of engagement.
• Simple Reports, a platform that draws historic data of course registration from the past, and matches it with the current one, gives a clear understanding of students' data. This gives a clear demographic understanding of students to understand likely future choices in which a student is to major.

Investing in digital tools for transforming higher education can help institutes reap tangible benefits on operational and strategic goals. Digital tools mentioned above can improve the performance of institutions by redesigning the campus experience. In our coming insights, we shall focus on how the institutions can plan a successful roadmap around mounting revenues and operational and pedagogical challenges. 

About 13% of the universities and colleges are already engaged in digital transformation, while 32% of them are in the process of developing DX strategy, as per recent research. Another 38% of higher education institutions are exploring the possibilities and scope of digital transformation. The figures aptly suggest that the technological shifts through digital transformation and the usage of new tools are transforming the operating models, value proposition, and strategic direction of higher educational institutions.

In this blog, we’ve created a list of such digital tools which can transform higher education by ensuring extensibility, scalability, agility, interoperability, and data integrity across different platforms.

Adaptive Learning

Delivering custom learning experiences that match the needs of each individual through real-time feedback, pathways, and resources are called adaptive learning. Instructors can tutor students by making them understand unique and difficult concepts. Since the instructors adapt to the needs of learners, therefore it is called adaptive learning. Three core pillars of adaptive learning can be summed up:

Adaptive Content where students can answer questions by responding with feedback based on certain responses like review materials, hints, and more. This can be seen as an upgrade from just marking the question correct, or incorrect without reasoning.

Adaptive Sequence means a continuous process of collecting and analyzing students’ data to automatically alter what a student would see next.

Adaptive Assessment can change the questions presented to a student, depending upon what or how he/she has answered the previous question. This method can be seen as a benchmark for understanding a student's progress.

Adaptive learning digital tool focuses on the use of technologies that emulate educators’ talent to facilitate a great learning experience for each student. Adaptive learning technology adapts to students using various technical variations, which include algorithm adaptivity and design adaptivity.

Apps based on adaptive learning

• Leading ed-tech firm Byju’s offers unique learning journeys apart from guided learning paths, recommendations, and actionable feedback.
• Cerego, the adaptive learning platform for higher education, enables the improvement of students’ learning capabilities, and progress tracking.
• Quiklrn, is a part of the National Education Alliance for Technology (NEAT 2.0). It enables integrated AI-based Learning Services for a personalized experience.

Badging in Gamification

Badges are motivational digital tools that reward learners after they’ve achieved a set level of difficulty. collecting badges during gamification of education transforms the education process into fun, which stimulates learners’ response to newer learning materials.

Gamification badges are an alternative to the traditional grading system. Due to learners’ motivation to “acquire new badges,” gamification is among the top-demanded features in the Learning Management Systems of most higher education institutes.

Apps based on gamification

• Khan Academy correlates learners’ performance with score gains (badging) on standard achievement tests.
• Coursera, a platform with universal access to the top universities, also has this rewarding process, making learning fun.
• Udemy, a gamified education app platform, allows learners to access university courses from across the world. It uses progress bars to indicate a learner’s advancement.

In our next blog, we shall continue to speak about the other three key digital tools that can transform higher education. Our next part focuses on the blended learning model, enhanced classroom technologies, and learning analytics. 

Better customer experience is increasingly taking importance in  marketing decisions. As per Salesforce.com study, 75% of marketers now undertake Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, which is up 22% from last year. User-centricity, visual shopping, empathy, automation, and trust were among top themes that dominated customer experience in 2021. In this article, we are going to understand the top themes of customer experience in 2022 and beyond. After sifting through various data points and reports, we’ve distilled five core themes ranging from societal shifts, use of emotion analytics to data security and privacy for better customer engagement strategy.

Strategic Planning for better customer engagement

Budgeting, using resources efficiently, and ensuring returns are top considerations of  customer engagement strategy.  Some 53% of the 250 CX practitioners believe that they feel pressured around providing returns for digital CX investments. The Vice President of Customer Transformation at Quadient, Scott Draeger said, “If you spend marketing funds to create an expectation, you better deliver to the standard you set.”

Brands that have dedicated CX digital teams to create potent digital user journeys can produce consistent branding. However, major challenges arise around lack of rigid data infrastructure which can be used for full optimization of digital experiences.

Proper planning can result in a unified customer data view through a robust data infrastructure, which helps brands in making wiser decisions, and delivering quality customer experience. Integrated data ecosystems can lead to convenience and personalization in interaction felt by customers in DX space.

Understand Customer Journeys

The pandemic shed a light on societal shifts in customer experience. Now customers do not base their brand loyalty solely on product or price. CX teams cannot just rely on quantitative data for product delivery, or other decisions. Reliability, ease of communicating with a brand, features of product or services, packaging, and advertising- all these factors encompass customer experience. In the complex digital experience hierarchy, modern marketers must adopt a smart approach to map customer journeys.

Qualitative research at each stage of customer journey and innovation with the way the voice of the customer is heard is now seen as a primary battleground for higher competitiveness among brands. That is why the brands need to lay higher emphasis on customer journey analytics. To put this in context, by 2026 the market size of global customer journey analytics is expected to grow at Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 20.3%. This will increase from 8.3 billion in 2020 to USD 25.1 billion by 2026, which explains the importance of tracking customer journeys for an excellent CX.

Emotion analytics

Emotion analytics use customer insights from different channels and customer touchpoints like social media platforms, emails, chats, texts, and calls.  There shall be a significant rise in real-time emotion analytics. In the next two years, market size for global emotion analytics shall grow to USD 4.6 billion at Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.8%. Services and software catering to emotion analytics, such as speech, facial, text, and video analytics will continue to remain key tools that drive CX in 2022 and beyond.

Countries like Canada and the US are investing heavily in research and development of innovative technologies in emotion analytics. These countries continue to remain early technological adopters in different verticals like banking, retail, financial services, and manufacturing.

Figure 1 below shows that the North American region will hold the largest emotion analytics market by 2024.

As we reflect back on CX in 2021, there will be more emphasis on how well the communication specialists imbue technology with human emotions. Making interactive technology more accessible and usable, and celebrating the innovations in advertising in these segments shall be the dominating themes of CX in 2022 and beyond.

Consistent customer experience

The need of the hour is to deliver seamless, smooth and most essentially, consistent customer experience. When we speak of consistency, the key points we highlight include-

• Ensuring relevance, quality and context of experiences to avoid customer vanish
• Quick interaction and response are at a centre for excellent CX. According to Forrester, 45% of customers in the US shall abandon online purchasing if they do not get quick answers to their queries.
• Customers look for instant gratification which comes from personalised and immediate experiences across timelines, platforms, and channels.  
• Modern customers look for frictionless experiences from brands by way of round-the-clock communication. That is why 66% of the customers believe that they are more likely to choose brands that value their time.

Consistency means that brands do not abandon their customers after product or service delivery. However, in the digital landscape, the damage from poor CX can be repaired with technology innovations and human intelligence.

Transparency around data privacy & security

Cyber security statistics are alarming, which is indicated from the fact that around 30,000 websites are hacked globally on a daily basis. In such a scenario, dealing with customers’ privacy concerns, security, data breach, and transparency continues to remain a top challenge for brands. To deliver an outstanding customer experience, the brands must assure customers about what they’re doing to mitigate such risks.

The marketing teams collect actionable insights and comprehensive analytics through different touchpoints. Proliferation of numerous mobile and digital technologies has also led to data accumulation through external and internal sources. Lack of efficiency in managing this huge chunk of information can often lead to data loss, information misuse, and security breaches. As a part of excellent customer experience in 2022 and beyond, the brands must implement tighter cloud security and privacy practices.

In 2021 there has been an industrial change which affects the ability of marketers to accumulate and use customers’ data. From Google eradicating third-party cookies to Apple’s iOS15 updates there have been key reforms in the way customer data is being used. Yet, the vendors must instil a level of trust in customers by ensuring a higher level of data security.

Conclusion

Proper planning can result in a unified customer experience through a robust data infrastructure. This helps brands in making wiser decisions, while also delivering quality customer experience. Customer experience in 2022 is going to be focused on standardisation and consistency of communication across channels, understanding emotional analytics and customer’s journey, while having transparency about security and data privacy. 
 

Effective communication among various stakeholders in the education ecosystem can have a positive impact on students’ achievements. But, Parents have faced multiple communication challenges with school in the remote learning model. Only 30% of the parents, whose kids received online instructions, are very satisfied with the way school handled communication, according to the Pew Research survey. In this article, we list the key challenges to parent-teacher communication and ways to overcome them.

Challenges and Recommendations

Limited time & capacity

Effective engagement with parents gets hindered when they struggle to combine their professional and personal obligations. This becomes especially challenging for single parents and full-time working parents who have either young children or multiple children. Some parents also lament the diversified platforms or varying systems used in schools.

Recommendations

1. Flexible communication schedules can help meet parents’ requirements such as time constraints.
2. Online survey tools can help schools learn about parents’ availability and time constraints. They can help schools collate responses from parents and turn them into actionable programs. 
3. Virtual meeting tools such as SchoolCloud Parents Evening can arrange for staff-parents meetings virtually. 
4. Consider investing in an app for parents if your institution has not done that already. Such apps enable parents to receive instant updates on mobile without accessing their inbox.  
5. Use of chatbots, mobile apps, websites can be used to support communication with parents. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality- Virtual Reality, and 360-degree imagery are efficient tools.
6. Quality over quantity of communication will help get focussed and positive attention from parents.

Varied level of Education amongst parents

The confidence of parents in supporting their children at home varies with their education levels. Parents schooled beyond high school feel more confident and prepared to support children in remote learning with ed-tech tools. A recent study from the Netherlands highlights that less-educated parents could be less supportive of their children in remote learning, and the reason is partly that they feel less capable of helping them. Such parents also represented a negative attitude towards learning themselves thus hindering communication in online systems.

Recommendations

1. Getting to understand and know parents will help schools open channels of communication. 
2. Encouraging open dialogue during parents’ evenings or review meetings will help build trust among parents. 
3. Giving 1:1 reassurance that the goal of the school is to work collaboratively will help parents in supporting interactions better. 
4. Easy Instructional resources such as short videos, sample answers, and visual instructions could help brief parents in assisting in-home learning.

Lack of Internet access & digital skills

20% of the LearnLab surveyed students in 22 school districts of Kansas City had no access to the Internet. This not only makes them miss the opportunity of virtual learning but also leads to a divide in parents’ experience. Such families often remain disconnected from the school and have under-representation among parents’ sentiment feedback.

Similarly, the Ofcom report shows that 9% of the UK students had no access to a computer device at home and over 880,000 live in houses without an internet connection. Parents’ lack of digital skills is another barrier that makes them feel incapable of supporting online instructions from schools.

Recommendations

1. Reducing the need for home connectivity can help bridge the digital divide.  
2. Making instructional materials downloadable will help parents who lack internet access but have mobile devices. 
3. Continuing to maintain paper-based communication will ensure inclusivity for those who lack devices.
4. Getting educational channels that deliver instructional content and assistive technology could help parents support their children better. 
5. Coaching parents on ed-tech tools through orientation and forging partnerships with ed-tech providers can also help ill-equipped parents.
6. Consulting parents on tech implementation decisions is essential. parents should have the freedom to choose ed-tech tools that they are most comfortable with.

English language proficiency

Parents with English as an additional language (EAL) may feel under-confident in interacting with school or getting involved in the education of their children. Parents with EAL and limited language proficiency may be deterred from text messages, emails, and newsletters from schools.

Recommendations

1. Allow native language communication with interpreter apps. 
2. Getting translation apps and services for better communication.
3. Investing in school communication apps with multi-language support.
4. Keep it simple by avoiding educational jargon, figurative language, or idioms that may be misunderstood by parents.

Conclusion

Technology can drive change and improve the operating model of the education ecosystem in simplifying parent-school communication. CIOs should understand and communicate the impact that technology makes on new and evolving ways of education digitization. Implementing these recommendations with a solid communication strategy can help build trust amongst parents in the remote learning environment.

On International Women’s Day 2022, I had an opportunity to interview a ‘super-lady’ from our team- Indra Patil, Software Development Engineer. Indra joined Valuebound on July 17, 2019, and has the success of VB360, our in-house transparent management system product to her credit alongside her team. Indra was also awarded the ‘CEO Excellence Award’ 2022 during Valuebound Annual event recently. Here’s a sneak peek into my conversation with Indra about her work and life.

Given the complexities and responsibilities squared on women’s shoulders, how difficult is it to maintain a work-life balance, especially in remote working scenarios?

Indra: Every woman juggles through her day to strike a perfect equilibrium between work and family while both of them are of utmost importance to her. When COVID-19 hit, the company took one of the wisest decisions to go 100% remote. Even though it’s challenging to handle my 4-year-old daughter in a remote working scenario, I’m still happy to work in perfect harmony of career, and personal life.

What is one quality that sets you apart from others?

Indra: Perseverance, and the ability to take on the challenges head-on. I think that’s my greatest strength, and it also sets me apart from others. I value time and thus ensure that I use it wisely even in my spare time. The tech industry is an incredibly exciting place to be at. I took a step into this unique world, and trusted that I could make a difference with my skills. I’m making each day count!

Do you feel that being a female you had to work harder for career advancement?

Indra: It’s not hard to answer that question, because I don’t believe that I’ve to work more arduously than my male colleagues. I don’t see it like that, for that matter. I have hardly seen my competition as male versus female. I think it’s more of a competition about you becoming better than the former you. Or, it could be seen as a competition of human personalities.

On International women’s day, what would be your advice to younger women entering the workforce today?

Indra: My sincere advice to younger women out there is to be free of the bias in your head. Do not enter the world with a judgment of men versus women, because when you do that, you’re being unfair to yourself. However, I also strongly believe that irrespective of gender, everyone’s feelings are valid. ‘The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is also Break The Bias, and it absolutely resonates with my thoughts right now.

Secondly, no matter how cliche it sounds, always believe that you can achieve anything- the power to accumulate and apply knowledge and experience is in your own hands.

How do you think Valuebound invests itself in the development of women leaders?

Indra: Women have an excellent gender representation on Valuebound’s headcount, and there aren’t any glass ceilings here. Valuebound always gives equal opportunities to grow and enhance capabilities by investing itself in three core principles - Empathy, Excellence, and Continuous learning- all of which, I believe, are paramount to creating great leaders- whether men or women.

Being felicitated with this year's CEO Excellence Award is a great motivation for me. I take pride in being a Valuebound employee, which is also a GPTW-certified organization.

There are over 1.6 billion students across 150 countries who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the last two years, according to recent reports by The World Bank. As an immediate response to recurrent lockdowns, Institutions adopted e-learning or remote learning solutions. To simplify e-learning, there has been a significant surge in online learning tools supporting video conferencing, learning applications, and virtual tutoring. India’s Ed-Tech journey dates back to 1990’s with the launch of companies like Educomp. In this blog, we shall discuss the rise of e-learning, the response of ed-tech companies to cater to the education market, challenges and solutions around online classrooms.

Response of Ed-Tech to cater education sector

The development of next-gen advanced learning technologies to cater to the rising remote learning landscape is an immediate response of ed-tech companies. There has been a dramatic increase in AI-based learning applications, mobile learning firms, and mostly ed-tech unicorns. To put this in perspective, the world online education market is projected to reach $350 Billion in the next three years. The investments made in the ed-tech companies reached a historic height of $18.66 Billion in 2019.

In response to the rising demand for online learning models, various education technology companies like BYJU’s and Tencent classroom, have seen a significant rise. After the Government in China instructed about a quarter of one billion full-time students to begin online studies, Tencent Classroom saw 81% of K-12 students attending online school in Wuhan.

Video conferencing apps for teacher-student interaction and collaboration, real-time project co-editing, calendar scheduling, and auto-translation apps are other tools that bolster education capabilities. Rise of the digital options, engineering capabilities, and distance learning solutions to cater to the rising demand of e-learning are some of the immediate responses amidst and above lockdowns.

Emerging evidence of the effectiveness of remote learning during the pandemic has led to a rapid revolution of the education sector, but will the hybrid model of education sustain, or emerge? Some suggest that unplanned e-learning with little preparation, no training, and limited bandwidth is unconducive for sustained growth. This poses some challenges of e-learning that still need to be tackled.

Challenges of e-learning

Among the key challenges of online education are-

Technological limitations

No training, limited bandwidth, and lesser preparation especially in remote locations are among the major constraint of online classrooms. The disparity among students regarding access to necessities for e-learning, like a computer device, and internet connection are among the key challenge. In Austria, Norway, and Switzerland some 95% of the students have access to a computer, while in Indonesia only 34% can get this accessibility, according to the data from OECD. Difficulties with modern technology include installation issues, downloading errors, audio and visual problems, login issues, and more. Technical problems, and difficulty in understanding key instructional goals form major barriers in remote learning.

Limitation with students’ learning capabilities

Students with limited learning capabilities or disadvantaged backgrounds struggle to adapt to e-learning methodology. UNICEF data shows that as many as 463 million children could not adapt to online education due to economic disadvantage. A major portion of students across the world find e-learning boring. Among 21,678 U.S. high school students surveyed by Yale, about 75% had a negative self-reported feeling regarding remote learning. A chunk of students feels disengaged or bored about 60% of the time (refer to Fig.1).

Limitations at the teachers’ end

Exhausted teachers are another factor that must be considered while talking about the obstacles of e-learning. Lack of personal attention and absence of two-way interaction is another key challenge of e-learning methodology. Mediocre content of course curriculum adds to major issue as well. There’s also a lower level of preparedness among students, and also some teachers regarding the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS). Building a positive learning attitude among students is a key challenge of e-learning, especially for the teachers.

Solutions to Challenges

While building a digital education ecosystem seems the only possible solution right now, e-learning is perhaps only 10% of the whole scenario. Digital education shouldn’t be solely seen in reference to technologies and innovative solutions but must be able to include other critical areas regarding all levels of education. Some of the possible solutions to key challenges of e-learning are-

Building an all-inclusive academic infrastructure

A digital education ecosystem must be inclusive of a robust academic infrastructure that does not remain confined to labs or virtual classrooms, but also include examination conducting, admissions, and providing analytics and insights to parents and students. The education industry also must weave elements of alumni connections, incubation, internships, and placements in the ecosystem.

Focusing on students’ and teachers’ needs

Sustaining non-cognitive skills like motivation, goals, and personality traits, among students should be a focus since these factors can create a direct and positive result in context with socio-economic outcomes. An effective hybrid digital education model must incorporate technology-based interaction among students and teachers for higher engagement. Online course curriculum must include dynamic, interactive, and more interesting activities to hone students’ skills. Content relevance, effective strategies, and group-based activities can help in enriching content. Humanizing learning processes and using group forums or social media for interaction can help in 1:1 communication amongst students, teachers, and parents.

Adopting innovative technological approach

Innovative pedagogies for education delivery, certifications, assessments, student administration, industry and governance linkage, campus activities, and alumni engagement, must be implemented. Fixing technical issues with content testing, pre-recorded video lectures, and having Plan B in place can be the possible solutions. Finding solutions by focusing on pedagogical issues, and laying greater emphasis on case learning, collaborative learning, and project-based online instruction can go a long way. While Edtech cannot replace personal interaction, it can contribute to instruction enhancement to make content delivery interesting, and engaging. Governments must work to bring down the digital divide by focusing on threefold objectives- equity, accessibility, and quality.

Conclusion

The EdTech sector has boomed in the wake of rising online education amidst pandemics. By 2021, the Edtech sector reached about 2 billion dollars, and continue to rise this year and beyond, according to Google and KPMG reports. However, the challenge of the education sector doesn’t just remain confined to finding new technologies, but also reviving the whole digital education ecosystem with reimagination. Helping students, teachers, and also parents with digital literacy, especially in remote and inaccessible regions is the key here. 
 

Consistent evolution in the digital world has led to technological change in the education and assessment industry as well. The global EdTech investments reached USD 18.66 billion in 2019. Vendors experienced a further rising demand for digital education solutions after the onset of COVID, in 2020.

Research Gate surveyed students’ attitudes toward online exams across four faculties- Management and Economics, Interdisciplinary Studies, Humanities, and Technical Sciences. The proportion of “Very Positive” responses from Interdisciplinary Studies, and Technical Sciences was on the higher side, as depicted in Fig. 1.

In 2019, 37.4 million students had enrolled for higher education. The online education market in India is expected to grow by 14.33 billion dollars in the next 4 years. The seriousness of adopting online examination in India can be understood from the fact that almost all the competitive exams adopted the online CBT examination system. But what makes online examinations so popular now? In this article, we discuss the future of the online examination system with a focus on functionalities, advantages, and barriers.

Functionalities of online examination methodology

By understanding the basic functionalities, we can move towards the advantages and limitations of the online examination system.

• Creating examinations

Before conducting the examination, an exam paper needs to be created. Examination software, apps, and platforms are equipped with a range of features, such as question bank management, test engines, and more. Such features enable hosting different kinds of exams with multiple sets of papers, and level of difficulty.

• Conducting examinations

Conducting an examination could be a tedious task, since it requires filling students’ data, such as registration, exam proctoring, seating arrangement, and examination venue. Online registration portals and online proctoring can help in conducting examinations hassle-free.

• Assessing examinations

Online systems can assess and generate candidates’ reports and results automatically. The majority of examination evaluation tools come with AI features that prevent errors. On evaluation, detailed reports are generated, which consist of topic-wise, subject-wise, test-wise, and question-wise analysis of exam papers.

Advantages of online examination system

• Reduced burden of administration

The need to print and circulate question papers, organize logistics to transport these question papers, and have invigilators at the examination center makes the entire process costly and burdensome. But, the completely automatic nature of online examinations makes them useful and highly accurate. This eliminates the hassle of the pen-and-paper mechanism.

• Eases examination-related requirements

Conducting examinations through digital means makes it simpler for the conducting body to manage the tasks associated with organizing. In conventional examination methods, handling question papers and answer sheets becomes a tedious and expensive job since a lot of manpower may be needed. However, with the online examination system, question papers are created easily using automated tools. This eases the job of those who create the paper once an assessment organization approves the question bank. Results are also generated quickly and communicated in detail to the examination-takers.

• Scalable worldwide reach

Unlike traditional examination mechanisms, students need not travel to the examination center using digital methods because online examinations break the barriers of geographical boundaries. Remote proctoring is another benefit of online examination because online exams can be easily conducted with transparency, and fear of unfair practices.

• Other benefits

From the students’ perspective, some of the other benefits of the online examination system according to the Research Gate survey include faster results, time-saving, improved structure, readability, and correction possibilities, interesting, better, and convenient ideas, environment-friendly, and being up-to-date. The same is indicated in Fig.2.

Barriers of online examination system

• Network concerns

Connectivity forms the major challenge of conducting online examinations. Network issues can delay or postpone examinations. This can affect a student’s mind negatively.

• Security concerns

In a system of online examination, data is either shared online, or in cloud storage. However, a digital ecosystem brings the threat of hacking and data breaches. Security threats are especially worrisome for the examination system because it involves leaking question papers, which can sabotage the sanctity of the mechanism. Online examinations are excellent for multiple-choice question patterns. But they still need to be developed for descriptive or broad question-types.

• Accessibility in remote geographical regions

Reaching out in rural geographical locations is still a daunting task, especially where the students are economically downtrodden. Lack of accessibility of computers and networks in such regions poses a major barrier to implementing online examinations completely.

• Other barriers

Some of the other barriers of the online examination system, as reported by students in the Research Gate survey include more time requirements, lack of structure, problems with question types, longer preparation time, and trouble with typing. Some of the students also feel that online examinations involve more costs than benefits. Fig. 3 below depicts the same-

Conclusion

There are various ways for management to gauge the viability of the online examination system. There are instructive establishments that use technology to approach the online examination system through enlisting, evaluation, expense installment, or simply observing and smoothing the process. Online audit, use of webcam, amplifiers, and controller as a means of sorting technique can help in playing out reviews.

When implemented properly, these solutions can help in providing a range of improvements in contrast to conventional methods, because of their automated mechanisms and robust processing. In the upcoming days, innovation in technology and ed-tech companies will ensure much more development for a smooth operative experience in the online examination system.

Gartner defines gamification as “the use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.” According to Gartner’s definition, there’s a clear difference between gamification, and video games or loyalty programs, because gamification uses techniques that nudge people to achieve set goals.

The University of Chicago has an interesting perspective towards gender loyalty for gamification. Statistics show that adult women gamers can outnumber men under the age group of 18 years. This shows that gamification is gender-neutral and has a wide appeal to engage everyone. If designed well, and with engaging features, gamification has a huge potential and scope in keeping learning fun and relevant due to similarities with learning.

Gamification and Learning: The Similarities

Many fundamentals of gamification and learning are the same, which is why more educators are exploring the scope of gamification in making learning an automatic, fun, and relevant process. By understanding the scope of gamifying education, educators are exploring the possibility of applying elements of games in situations that are non-gaming per se. These elements can motivate or influence students’ behavior.

Three core elements of games (Fig. 1) that are particularly relevant to education include-

• Mechanical Elements like instant feedback, onboarding, and incremental progression
• Personal Elements like rankings or leader-boards, visibility and status, and collective responsibility, and,
• Emotional Elements include the psychological flow of emotions.

Fig. 1: Source

The University of Chicago shows a simple comparison in the table below explaining striking similarities between gaming and learning activities.

Gamification	Learning
Exploring new world	Exploring new subject or topic
Quests	Learning Objectives
Earning points or badges	Getting grades or awards
Social interaction due to collaboration and competition	Social interaction due to collaboration and competition
Learning from failures	Learning from failures
Time limit and stress	Assignment deadlines and pressure

 

Advantages of Gamification in Education

Gamification in learning or education comes with “four freedoms of play,” as defined by the Creative Director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Education Arcade, Scot Osterweil. These are also categorized as advantages of applying the mechanics of gamification in education.

Freedom to Fail

Humans have a natural tendency to avert failures. This is specifically applicable to students at school, who tend to avoid failures due to fear of real consequences such as lesser marks even in minor assignments. Such a tendency can inhibit learning because it holds back students to explore experimentation.

However, when it comes to gamification, students assume that mistakes are bound to happen. Thus, failure becomes a smaller concern, and achieving goals by experimenting becomes a focus, hence making learning fun and relevant.

Freedom to Experiment

When students feel that they’re free to fail, they tend to heighten their freedom of experimentation to reach goals. Experimentation comes with the direct benefit of permitting self-directed learning, which enhances the quality and volume of learning. In the absence of explicit instructions, students tend to observe, learn, and focus more.

Freedom to experiment also increases students’ knowledge and creative thinking ability. Instead of limiting to operate within limits of facts, gamification allows students to explore new avenues to accomplish their set targets.

Freedom to Assume Different Identities

Gamification opens a new world for students. One of the key aspects of games is escapism, or the ability to experience a uniquely different life temporarily. As a central theme of learning, gamification can provide a huge scope as a powerful pedagogical tool, because when students assume new roles and see the world from a different perspective, they tend to dive into new areas of knowledge.

This freedom could prove quintessential to the basic education level where students can replicate skill-building into real-life learning.

Freedom of Effort

Most gamification techniques come with an internal rhythm where teams put in a collective effort for achieving targets and relaxing while other teams do the same. In gamification techniques where a single player is involved, the games are designed with moments of relative inactiveness. This takes the form of informational/ entertaining cut scenes, or while handing out the new target/ task to achieve.

Alternative durations of intense action, concentration, and relaxation doesn’t overtax students or exhaust them. Instead, it makes learning fun and relevant. On average, children of age 5 years can concentrate at a stretch for no longer than 10 minutes. The same is estimated at 20 minutes for teenagers. In a gamified environment, students’ concentration can be focused on pursuing a single task or completing assignments.

Automated Teaching

The greatest advantage of gamification in keeping learning fun and relevant is the automation of tasks, which otherwise is performed manually by educators or instructors. For instance, certain apps, such as TabRider and Duolingo are designed to provide instant feedback to students, which allows them to know if they’ve chosen the correct word or not. Such apps enable practicing with a virtual teacher. When the students perform in class with the actual teacher, they can devote more time to difficult issues that cannot be addressed using software or games.

Gamification: Pedagogical Innovation to incentivize students

Applying the techniques of gamification in education will incentivize learners in exploring learning independently and efficiently. This is due to the reason that gamification helps in building connections amongst academic community members because it encourages competition and collaboration.

Whether the educator is teaching in-person or remotely, gamification has a tremendous scope as a social dimension for teaching and learning. Further, gamified learning tends to immerse students in content, thus cultivating a positive mindset towards the learning process. This leads to learning becoming less laborious or boring, and more fun, relevant, and rewarding.

Gamification can be easily applied in a range of educational situations, which may range from casual to digitally sophisticated, informal to analog. Instructors or educators can create gamified learning activities according to diverse durations, complexities, and scales.

Conclusion

Despite the amplifying scope of gamification in learning and education, limited and unreliable empirical data regarding its effects on education is not enough. A pilot-scale scientific study is needed before affirming or drawing conclusions. However, the achievements of implementing gamification in education models are impressive, especially in Mathematics and English. Gamification can likely become successful when started at basic education level or at skill-building levels in universities. In a remote learning scenario, exploring alternative education styles can help educators before students’ interests drop.