Online education has seen significant growth in today’s world of technological advancement and internet revolution. Forming one of the most important aspects in today’s education domain, it has taken away the limitations of sitting in a classroom for learning; hindrances such as transportation, location, accessibility, and cost.
With more than 500 million internet users and hundreds of local as well as global business tycoons willing to invest in the future of education — online education in India has picked up pace since the last few years. In fact, the e-learning market in the country is estimated to be worth more than $3.5 billion.
While many top-class universities now offer distant online courses bringing the best instructors and professors into the homes of students, online education has revolutionized the way we look at education in the current era. In terms of online enrollments, India ranks second only behind the United States — comprising over fifteen percent of students worldwide — the students get access to some of the best courses around the world and get skilled in various domains.
Years back, I conducted a series of live interview sessions with some of India’s top educators and YouTubers to lay practical emphasis on online education. Various educators from many states of India, including Jammu and Kashmir, joined the sessions, put their views about online education, and shared their experiences being online educators on the largest educational platforms in India.
The educators stressed the benefits of online education for the teaching and student community, its role in empowerment and entrepreneurship, and the revolution it has brought about in the overall learning and educational scenario in the world during the current times of technological advancement.
When talking about the benefits of online education, one of the best and foremost benefits is easy accessibility. A student does not need to visit a particular location to attend a course; rather, they can pick up a course from any country and successfully complete it in the comfort of their home.
Having said that, since the last few years, information and communication technologies have revolutionized the education system by introducing virtual classrooms and online tutorials to make quality education affordable and accessible to all. With regard to this development, the Government of India launched various projects such as the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) and the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT). Moreover, the NEP 2020, by streamlining the education system, also focuses on technological advancement in online education.
The second important benefit of online education is cost-effectiveness and affordability. Since these courses do not require students to physically attend class, it is mostly a cheaper alternative that enables people to learn at lower costs. While some believe that online education is not as effective as traditional education systems, it can be said that these courses enable students to understand and learn the course at comparatively lower costs than offline education.
Moreover, students from various backgrounds can opt for such courses provided they have a smartphone. A student gets an opportunity to learn from the best teachers around the world without a limitation of space, time, or money, and definitely, it gives an edge factor over the traditional system of education.
More to say, online education courses are flexible — a student gets to choose what, when, how much to study, empowering them beyond measure, and the variety of courses available on online platforms offer a huge canvas to the learner’s community. While some people believe that an online degree does not hold as much value as a traditional degree, this is not true. The degree holds just as much value, and how you perform on the online course helps to shape your career.
In the current scenario, massive open online courses (MOOCs) are seen as a powerful technology-enriched tool to address the challenges of learners in underdeveloped countries like India. According to experts in the education sector, MOOCs have emerged as a strong weapon to combat employability skills challenges by providing cost-effective access to customized courses from the best teachers and universities across the globe. Moreover, many top universities are now designing customized lectures and curriculum for MOOC platforms.
Easy accessibility to high-speed internet on mobile phones and an increase in demand for a skilled workforce has acted as the prime factors. To exemplify it, Coursera and edX are among the top global MOOC providers — with edX offering over a thousand courses from over a hundred global institutions, and from over ten million global learners at edX, around one million are from India; while Coursera has a partnership with over a hundred of the world’s universities and offers around two thousand courses and around a hundred specializations – having more than twenty-five million global learners, of which around two million are from India. However, India has always been a priority market for edX because of its strong partnerships with Indian Institutions like IIT Bombay, IIM Bangalore, and BITS Pilani, and blended learning partners like NIIT and Pearson to impart job-ready skills to learners.
In conclusion, it can be said that the future belongs to a blended education/learning model or largely online. MOOCs (online education) though can’t replace universities in actual sense, rather may help in enhancing the quality of education by incorporating blended learning. This model would create better efficiencies and can foster a better quality of education as a whole.