The ongoing COVID-19 crisis is creating irrevocable damage around the world. But it has also made every sector to be more innovative and look for new ways of sustainment and growth. The education sector is no different. To move forward and enable continuous learning, the entire education ecosystem—students, teachers, parents and education providers–are collectively ensuring to stay committed to new ways of education. To ensure a way forward they are now adapting to online learning models.
In the pre-pandemic era, many universities across the world were already following distance education and online learning models to bridge the learning gaps and make education available to students across the world.
Education sector is considered to be one of the forward-thinking markets which is open to embracing new technology. Even prior to COVID-19, according to a report published in 2019, online education services were growing rapidly and expected to become a $1 trillion industry by 2027.
Though accurate figures are a bit of a far fetch at the moment, there has been a steep increase in educational institutions adapting to online learning models with the help of Cloud due to COVID-19 crisis.
Cloud Empowers Online Learning – Here’s how –
Cloud is emerging as the most trusted platform that facilitates this biggest shift in the education sector. Many collaborative learning methods, for example, are completely running on cloud platforms. Universities are now open to adopting various cloud consumption models—be it public cloud or private cloud or hybrid cloud (which gives the best of both worlds!).
Though remote learning as a concept has been around, scalability was a big challenge for the model. During COVID, remote learning had to be made available to a large number of students, irrespective of where they are. Cloud is ensuring that remote learning systems can be scaled up rapidly, allowing hundreds or thousands of students to access information at once.
In fact, Cloud resolves many issues that were faced previously with respect to scaling, infrastructure, and accessibility– all at once. It provides limitless usage and the storage can be upgraded as per requirement giving institutions the freedom to scale up or down according to the current demand. Thousands of students can login at the same time, submit assignments and participate in discussions in a seamless manner.
Leading universities are leveraging cloud to build a digital foundation without any disruption and help enable continuous learning. Educational institutions with a solid network infrastructure in place could handle the influx of traffic and manage the heavy load of thousands of logins at the same time with ease.
Clearing the myths around leveraging the cloud for online learning
The initial concerns around security are slowly fading, as cloud is now considered secure and allows users to maintain privacy and confidentiality with its custom sharing options. Data leak was a major constraint in remote learning models. With Cloud, the users or the owner of the material has complete control on how to share and give specific permissions and keep the data safe. The cloud technology has top notch security in terms of data being in encrypted form thus allowing only specific users to have access.
Educators are continuously being asked to upgrade and move to an online teaching model. To help ease such transitions, many cloud models are currently in the market that’s best suited for universities across the world. Cloud services move across geographical barriers and allow students and educators to access content relevant to their field of interest and also grow in respective career fields.
How Amazon Web Services (AWS) is helping Edtech startups to unleash the potential of Cloud Technology in the areas of Online Learning (E-Learning)
Edtech startups especially are banking on cloud technology now more than ever. Some of the biggest innovations in the education space today are fuelled primarily by cloud-based platforms.
AWS, for example, has introduced an EdStart program that empowers start-ups in the education sector to grow with their technology architecture. Many start-ups like Enguru, ClassPlus, and Eckovation have signed up with AWS to ensure that they come with the most relevant innovation. In the current market conditions, cloud allows startups to quickly stand up new systems in a highly cost-effective manner.
In a way, cloud is bringing in some level of democratization to the ecosystem by removing many technology barriers around accessibility. It allows teachers and students to access information from the safety of their homes, without really being left out amidst the rush to transition to remote learning models. Some of the cloud technology enablers like AWS Educate for example are used by more than 200 countries and it enables 10,000 educators spread across 2400+ educational institutions to reach thousands of their students and stay connected.
With cloud, education institutions are now able to provide a level playing field to all the learners—just exactly what education is aimed to achieve!
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