Although the levels of edtech use during the pandemic may have set an unrealistic bar for the industry, the growing trend of homeschooling and implementation of hybrid paradigms in education centers, edtech platforms will surely see demand rise as they are both cost and time effective for parents and schools. For countries struggling with overcrowded classrooms, edtech solutions may come in handy for schools to compensate for lack of human resources. Ultimately, due to its digital nature, the amount of data being registered and computerized may lead to further optimization of the teaching process. Teaching staff are already benefiting from the digital transition in education, as moving to remote studying opens up the possibility of giving lessons to a geographically disperse group of students.
Higher education has also introduced communication and assessment software to help distance learning develop into a legitimate substitute to on-site higher education. In fact, universities are more than willing to implement whatever technology would lead them to increase revenue from tuition fees in exchange of relatively little investment. For instance, the wide implementation of learning management systems, especially Blackboard, exemplifies to perfection how edtech can contribute to the traditional university experience without necessarily replacing it. Also, as new generations have shorter attention-span, driving up engagement is fundamental for successful teaching, and that’s the main reason behind the success of apps like Kahoot.
Furthermore, due to need or pleasure, the possibility of learning different languages as effortlessly as possible has become a priority especially for younger generations. Duolingo has managed to continuously build up its user-base, and in turn, become the most downloaded education app for almost ten years. Similarly, the labor market has caused in part the sudden interest in learning other languages, and also the demand for specific skills in many job descriptions has fueled the industry for online nondegree courses. Market leaders like Coursera, Udemy, or Articulate have managed to monetize on the fast-evolving job market by developing education resources to cover valuable pieces of knowledge and training for useful software.
In the pursuit to learn new skills, learning new trades as become just another category of entertainment, MasterClass aims to capitalize on this modern renaissance by offering online courses from celebrity-professionals that excel in different fields. However, this type of highly qualified lessons, could definitively experience a quality leap by employing VR and AI technology to further personalize the learning experience.
In the short-term, edtech may be part of the solution to tackle some serious issues that have fueled economic inequality. For some of these poorest countries where the main issue may be the lack of teaching staff and underdeveloped infrastructure, edtech software can make a huge difference. Especially for those countries with a very significant proportion of its population living in the countryside.