Vishnu Dutt Sharma enjoys building & leading high-performance teams in entrepreneurial environments. Before VMC, Vishnu was at Fliplearn, where he helped build a world-class platform for delivering top quality personalized education to K-12 students for school curriculum and competition exams like IIT JEE, NEET, NTSE, Olympiad etc. In his earlier stints, Vishnu worked with the Myntra and Flipkart group, where he was the founding member and managing leader (AVP & Business head) of the ML and AI-driven Fast Fashion platform Rapid (later called Vorta). Prior to Myntra, Vishnu was a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group, where he consulted with top management of multiple clients in assignments spanning strategy and execution excellence for multiple sectors including Education (State Govt.), Pharmaceuticals, Retail banking, Industrial goods, Real estate development and SME & corporate banking. Vishnu believes that democratizing quality education through affordability and access is especially important to take our nation forward and is key to harnessing the productive energy of a large young population.
With COVID-19 spreading like wildfire across the world, almost every sector has got disrupted and the education sector is no exception. It is now time for the Educators to rethink and rebuild their strategies and be prepared for the upcoming and unanticipated changes.
Never in the history of mankind has it ever happened that the whole world is fighting together against a common enemy. The worst part is that no one knows how and when it ends and when everything will come back to normal. Everyone knows that the impact of this unseen problem will be far-reaching and but how much, nobody can even imagine.
Amidst this, thousands of teachers and supporting staff are trying their best to build a support system at home for parents and children and continue the learning and teaching process. In order to create a semblance of routine for students, many are providing online tutorials, online dance lessons, art, and craft classes and what not!
It is being said that COVID-19 might lead to the closure or merger of some colleges or universities but to what extent, it is hard to predict at this point of time. Private coaching institutes who were not technology-enabled and schools, colleges who are grappling to provide lessons using technology are the most vulnerable and will be hit the hardest by the pandemic.
However, the future of the education sector is not completely bleak, provided they make themselves technology enabled. The post-COVID-19 phase for the tech-enabled education sector is expected to be interesting and will open new realms of teaching and learning.
Traditional and experienced players like Vidya Mandir Classes (VMC) have managed to minimize the impact of lockdown to a great deal through online classes. They focused on enabling a great platform like VMC GURU which has solid tech enablement and students can get access to live sessions, content resources anytime and anywhere. Not only this, students can also solve their doubts anytime and practice mock tests.
Below are some of the predictions on how our pedagogies will be altered, post COVID-19 pandemic.
- Online Education will be a focal point at every institution
Pre-COVID-19, not many schools, colleges, and universities had kept online education as a part of their strategy. There was a huge variation amongst these institutions; in some of these, online education was central to an institution’s strategic planning, and in some, it was not even a part of the planning. But this will all change in the post-Corona world.
It is likely that in the future, everyone from the top to low in the hierarchy will understand that online education is not only important to generate new revenues but will be recognized as core to every school’s plan for academic continuity and institutional resilience.
It is bound to change the understanding of the Educators, how schools plan, manage and fund online education and rather than just a substitute of teachers, it will act as a crucial and inevitable support system to deliver quality education.
Subject to governance and institutional planning, the previously decentralized and distributed online course development and student support functions will be centralized. Not only this, but there will also be an integration of the management of online learning into existing academic leadership structures and processes.
- Utilizing technology to deliver quality education
The ongoing situation has compelled the educational institutions and Educators across the world to harness and utilize the plethora of available technological tools to create content for students. This has also helped to deliver lectures and provide classes to remote students in any part of the world.
The Coronavirus crisis has provided the Educators with new possibilities, new experiences, and new ways to do things differently and with greater flexibility. This will help the students to access education and learning, anytime and anywhere. It will also lead to the development of new modes of instruction that have previously been largely untapped particularly in the K-12 arena.
For e.g., Vidya Mandir Classes (VMC) are organizing regular classes as per the schedule as they have been able to put together the right technology-based interventions to ensure that students’ preparations are on track and they continue studying from the best. On the admissions front also, they have been conducting online National Admission test which has been remarkably successful with the highest percentage of test givers.
- Redefining the role of the educator
The COVID-19 pandemic will also transform the notion of an educator as the knowledge-holder and giver, as the students will be able to learn, solve their doubts and learn new skills by a simple touch on their phones and tablets. This will redefine the role of the educator in the classrooms and they will need to move towards facilitating young people’s development in terms of lifelong needed qualities like resilience, flexibility, adaptability, continuous learning, creativity, collaboration, emotional intelligence, entrepreneurial skills, etc. that only a teacher can impart.
Most importantly, these experiences of lockdown and isolation will make Generation Z, Alpha and the generations to come, realize the importance of teachers, peers, and family members. It will also serve as a cautious reminder of the importance of staying connected in person and face-to-face interactions.