Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the give and take of education is taking place online. Next Education is a fast-growing, technology-driven company revolutionising the education system in India. In an exclusive interaction with BusinessUpturn.com, Mr Beas Dev Ralhan, Chief Executive Officer at Next Education answers important questions regarding the future of online education in India.
Here is an excerpt from the interaction:
How the education system will change post-COVID-19? Will there be more online classes?
Mr Ralhan: The rapid adoption of online learning solutions has brought a significant change in the perception about online learning – from being seen as an alternative option to being considered as an essential tool to supplement or even replace traditional learning methods. Edtech has transformed the face of education by offering the best and most reliable online learning solutions. Various collaborative online tools and learning management systems are helping schools and educational institutions to enhance the interaction between teachers and students to create an experience similar to a real classroom.
Although an offline education system is prevalent in India, with the new developments due to COVID-19 crisis, it is believed that a combination of online and offline learning may become the new norm. Schools and educational institutions should steadily adopt online learning solutions to aid the traditional classroom approach. With the added benefits of this approach for both students and teachers in terms of skill development, digital proficiency, personalised learning, decision-making abilities, and time management, teachers will be able to design new-age pedagogies that help shift the focus from rote learning to interactive learning and accomplish holistic development of students.
However, till the time schools and educational institutions reopen, online classes will continue to rule the education system. Owing to the many advantages of online classes like interactive and engaging remote learning, and anytime, anywhere learning, online classes have made education more accessible and engaging.
How do you think your live lecture solution can help educational institutions to improvise standard of education?
Mr Ralhan: To help schools make a smooth transition from offline to online learning, our ‘Live Lecture’ stands up to this promise. Unlike various e-learning platforms that offer online classes via web conferencing, our Live Lecture replicates the actual classroom experience and helps educational institutions to augment their pedagogy.
- Live Lecture enables teachers to create a virtual classroom, with top-notch data security, to facilitate long-distance learning.
- The live Lecture is controlled and monitored only by the teacher. To ensure data security, students and teachers are provided with unique login credentials and only the students of the class can join the session.
- To keep a track of all the students, teachers can take live attendance as the list of students attending the session is displayed.
- Students can revisit the recorded sessions as many times they want and also receive real-time notifications about the sessions.
- Teachers can also conduct live online doubt sessions and can also check the understanding of students by asking them questions.
In short, the Live Lecture provides an uninterrupted teaching-learning environment through a secured platform. By replicating the actual classroom environment, it instils enthusiasm and interest among students to learn and attend the classes regularly.
Do you think artificial intelligence will replace traditional teaching pattern in future?
Mr Ralhan: Traditional teaching methods don’t offer personalised learning, collaborative environment and tools to identify the learning gaps of each student. However, with the ongoing intervention of technology, the teaching methods have become more structured to give better, more streamlined results. The relationship between educators and students has evolved as learning became more collaborative and educators have become more perceptive and understanding of the student’s problems.
Powered by artificial intelligence, the new-age pedagogy focuses on the overall development of students. Here’s how artificial intelligence is driving 21st-century teaching-learning:
Quality education accessible to all: Through smart content, quality education is more accessible to a larger population. Educators can now offer interactive and engaging online classes. Even textbooks are replacing digital content in the form of audiovisual content, ebooks, PDFs, presentations and more, aiding to engage students of all grades and ages.
Personalised learning: With the help of AI, now teachers can fully identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses and work on them individually. Personalised learning techniques such as adaptive learning are gaining popularity among students and teachers.
Checks courses and identifies improvement: It helps students with immediate feedback about their performance and improves their understanding of the subject by suggesting remedial courses.
How do you plan to achieve the mission and vision of Next Education?
Mr Ralhan: Next Education firmly believes in imbibing all relevant 21st-century skills in today’s learners and leveraging technology along with innovative learning strategies in the products.
Thus, working towards our vision of providing optimal solutions for all K-12 stakeholders, we are constantly working to evolve our products as per the requirements of all stakeholders by incorporating the latest technological developments. In line with our mission to be the leading edtech SaaS platform delivering personalized 21st-century learning, we have developed a world-class integrated SaaS platform, Next Learning Platform, that truly stands up to our mission and vision. This platform enables all the stakeholders to communicate and collaborate in the learning process. It offers effective and transparent management of all academic and administrative operations within the platform.
Going forward, we plan to develop more such products that aim to revolutionise the education system by overcoming the challenges faced by each stakeholder.
From 2007 till 2020, how has this journey at Next Education been for you?
Mr Ralhan: For more than a decade now, we, at Next Education, are developing state-of-the-art products by leveraging the latest technology. With an aim to provide quality education to all, our approach has been to innovate and develop products that cater to the requirements of all K-12 stakeholders.
More than a decade long journey at Next Education has been full of innovations, challenges and opportunities to devise innovative methods to make education accessible and affordable for all. In these 12+ years, we have focused on providing products and solutions that empower educators to help learners handle the challenges of their future professional lives as well as to develop 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and problem-solving capabilities.
For the last couple of years, we have been working to develop a SaaS platform that facilitates seamless integration of content for effective learning and smart administrative solutions for improved planning and reporting and that has made the company one of the finest end-to-end education solution providers in the country today.
