With an increasing number of big corporate houses entering the educational sector with ERP solutions, there are a lot of schools taking help from advanced technologies to upgrade their ageold system, says Beas Ralhan
With an advent of 3G and 4G Internet connectivity and Internet-enabled TVs and Wifi consoles, video-based learning in schools is witnessing an unparalleled growth. In 2014, video-based learning will continue to transform the primary and secondary education realm. Irrespective of the age, students have natural ability to understand visual media. Renowned educators will put in more focus on teaching and encouraging video-based learning.
Videos are being used to re-create scenes from important pieces of literature to give students a more engaging view of history and the world. Not just for the learning purpose, video-based learning also prompts the children to think creatively and be thoughtful. Besides, the easy-to-use green screen technology is doing wonders, the video-based learning allows students to render virtual environments like news rooms or stages for mock presidential debates, moulding them into more confident and worldy-wise adults.
These debates or simulated parliament sessions are then webcast so that students can interact on the online platform and share views. They learn to cultivate and respond to feedback and this is a very crucial skill in the 21st century. Apart from making abstract concepts easy-to-understand, these solutions help children through simulations, activities and standardisation of assessments. Also, the higher education space is in a period of great experimentation on online learning. learning through visual aids today has instilled a healthy desire in students to share quality work in a digital environment and innovative teachers are capitalising on this medium to help students succeed in an ever-widening digital world.
The education sector in Asian countries has witnessed a massive growth in terms of the number of institutes and students in the past few decades. Not just the scope of learning for the students but the associated policies and procedures related to admissions, teaching, interaction and examination have also grown manifold and been streamlined. The IT tools offer promising solutions to enable effective management of various functions. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a web-based application that can be accessed from anywhere and you can effectively manage your workforce to increase productivity.
It incorporates and automates recruitments, financial aid, admissions and administrative functions like human resources, accounting, payroll, and billing. It has also academic functions easy like recruitment, admissions, registration, time table scheduling, attendance, teaching and lesson planning and students’ records.
This trend has induced a growing need in schools and academic institutions to use technology that delivers education through digitised content. These institutions are implementing an ERP solution that helps them manage the campuses in a cost-effective and efficient way.
With an increasing number of big corporate houses entering the educational sector, the schools are now implementing the ERP solutions to optimise the resources available at the school. There are a lot of model schools taking a lot of help from these technologies to upgrade their educational system. Some of the schools which use ERP solutions are Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kochi; Himali Boarding School, Kurseong; Navy Children High School, Mumbai; Modern Convent School, Delhi and GRD Academy, Dehradoon.
According to the latest report by Gartner, the software as a service or SaaS (Software as a Service) based ERP solution is expected to grow at 28 per cent CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) in India. The public cloud services market in India is growing at 29.8 per cent in 2014 to total $550 million. Spending on SaaS will hit $218 million in 2014, growing 30.3 per cent from 2013 through 2014. Gartner predicts that from 2013 through 2017, $4 billion will be spent on cloud services in India and SaaS is the largest overall cloud market segment. The integration of the ERP system in the educational institutions is completely justified because of the increasing requirement for centralised access to data. The need to optimise resources leading to better scheduling of staff members also leads to the incorporation of the ERP system.
The cloud-based ERP systems are now taking over the traditional methods of managing data because of its various advantages. A cloud-based ERP solution is one which provides enhanced data storage capacity, security and control. It also gives a real-time access from anywhere and helps in quick, yet well-informed decision making. With this cloud-based solution, the institutions don’t have to make expensive upfront investments in IT hardware and servers and not to worry about dedicating significant personnel resources to managing it. They are usually fast and easy to install than on-site deployments. Maintenance is much easier since the cloud-based ERP provider is responsible for keeping the technology up-to-date. Most importantly, with cloud technology, product enhancements are painless, customisations and integrations automatically update with system upgrades which assures that the business is running with the most advanced capabilities.
The education industry is going through a transformation, yet the changes in the system are really slow as compared to the other industries. There are many complex reasons for this slow pace of change, including lack of resources and resistance to new practices. However, the most important obstacles to realising the potential of digital technology in education are provisions of copyright law concerning the use of educational content, as well as the business and institutional structures shaped by the law. The solution to these problems is only to understand the importance of digital learning in this era of tech-savvy parents and children. Focus on the infrastructure and resources to make content available to all so that the authorities are inspired to make amendments in the provisions of the copyright law is also important. These changes can be instilled in the law and society only when we understand the significance of e-learning.
The writer is CEO, Next Education India Pvt ltd