The Covid-19 pandemic has disturbed all industry sectors—especially in education systems of every country around the globe. Many institutions come up with the reaction to response the crisis with limited time frame and resources. Some educators have generated impressive responses on how to serve their communities to continue the teaching and learning activities. In some countries, the government promoted public and private partnerships to help bridge the gaps. The effectiveness of Covid Response Policy depends on the readiness of Infrastructure, Information Technology, Culture, and Digital Skill Level of stakeholders in each institution. Many institutions have rapidly delivered remote learning experiences, but the existing system does not fulfill the needs of all. The government needs to ensure that the education policy for pandemic crisis corresponds to Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) which is the global education goal. It aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all [1].
The education sector compared to other sectors, is still premature in defining digital business strategy, driving innovation, forcing new business model of new education ecosystem. Prior to the pandemic, many educational institutions enjoyed traditional teaching and learning experience since most institutions have long been established and digital skill is not widely adopted. The pandemic exposed change and adoption of new technology in the case that fundamental changes are needed. Education Institutions recognized that the power of Digital Transformation is forcing these organizations to change business models in response to the pressure of change in market demands, competitiveness, and global trends [2]. In this uncertainty, the challenges highlighted during the disruption can be realized by management of education institutions. It is critical to develop the strategy of student engagement so the institutions can identify how to prevent students from dropping out and manage how to response the emotional expectations. Almost one in every five students does not reach a basic minimum level of skills to function today (OECD) [3]. It is common in many countries that students have not provided widespread access to digital tools. Many students in developing countries have challenges in accessing a remote learning environment. For those living in rural areas are by far the most likely to miss out during closures. Globally, 72 per cent of schoolchildren unable to access remote learning including device, internet access, digital learning platform, and digital skill live in their countries’ poorest households [4]. It is an opportunity for government policy makers to reimagine the education plan to accommodate the post pandemic requirement from individuals which are educators and learners on how they can achieve desirable learning outcome. The transformation of the education ecosystem using digital technology provides the opportunity to help students become knowledgeable and skilled change makers through deeper learning. Post-pandemic education ecosystem should be creatively developed to manage the immediate issues while building a bridge to a reimagined education system. The new approaches would enable well-being, equity, and quality (deep) learning. To realize such improvement, it is imperative to embrace an innovative mindset. We will need to be open to rethinking and creating a powerful new future that meets everyone’s needs as described in Fig. 1.
Phase 1 Identifies the initial responses of technology disruption. It is essential to conduct self-assessment on infrastructure, devices, digital assets, and plans. By understanding the individual needs on how they want to react and reform learning patterns during pandemic.
Phase 2 When the pandemic is still creating uncertainty, we will need to understand the transition outlines how to navigate planning for reopening. How to make school become a safety place while creating a learning environment for future skills ready.
Phase 3 Post pandemic most of students treat education differently. It will not be the same. The reimagined educational approach enables all students to thrive and prepares them with future skills. The reimagining phase creates an agile innovative and future from the best of traditional approaches, and insights from remote learning. The new system should be flexible, agile hybrid deep learning models with student centric curriculum design.
Fig.1: Three Phrases of Education Reimagined [5]
Achieving a student-centered ecosystem requires Digital Transformation in multi-dimensions of vision, people, process, culture, organizational structure, and technology. Normally business processes and technology can be linked to serve the business requirement under the disruption. But people, organizational structure, and culture always become the priority of the transformation strategy. The success of Education Reimagined must come from the leaders that drive the commitment to student centered practices. The aspirations of personas help drive reimagined offering. It is important to design the education transformation journey where people and process established with technologies that enable organizational agility and support personalized engagement. Remote learning is the seamless integration between online and on demand learning platforms that complement the traditional learning experience. The future of learning derives the capability of digital technology for the opportunity to reimagine education to be more engaging, agile, personalized, inclusive, and immersive learning experience. Education Reimagined with Digital Transformation creates insights to help faculty personalize learning for personal needs of students. The future of classrooms shall be designed to accommodate learning styles and ability to use the accessibility tools; communicate and collaborative, and multimodal, interactive solutions that engage students both synchronous and asynchronous classroom are the key characteristics of Education Reimagined for Future of Learning as shown in Fig.2.
Fig.2: The Characteristics of Education Reimagined for Future Learning
Data intelligence drives the future of learning where students can enjoy individual personalization in learning preference. To get started, the institutions need to establish intelligent infrastructure which requires a holistic view of learners with data across to understand the use of data intelligence in the context of education. At this basic level, data is a system of record. Then the next level is the data platform which becomes a system of engagement. The next level is a system of influence, which generates insights based on available data and helps to predict future patterns [5]. With intelligent data systems, institutions can arrive at data-driven strategies about which students drop out and retention rates. At this final level, the system recommends actions based on data-driven insights and then recommends automated actions and response. This is the profound for education personalized experience. With Digital Transformation in place, institutions can leverage digital engagement with the students as expected from remote learning. From innovative hybrid learning experiences, AI technology plays a critical role, and it can be accessible to everyone. the possibilities for developing a truly student-centered ecosystem are endless. Technology that supports a student-centered ecosystem, spread over three key areas: data-driven tools built on an integrated cloud, an engaging collaboration platform for teaching and learning, and a foundation of security and accessibility. Digital Transformation, therefore, is not about applying technology tools into the business process, but it is also a paradigm shift of digital culture into every aspect and key stakeholders in the education ecosystem including management, staff, faculty members, alumni, parents, and students. They need to understand their roles in the digitalization process and get involved from designing, planning, to implementation and governance phrase of Digital Transformation so the enjoy benefit of Personalized Learning Design to improve education learning outcome.
Reference:
[1] “Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) | Education within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” https://www.sdg4education2030.org/the-goal (accessed Jul. 14, 2022).
[2] “Emerging Digital Transformation Trends in Education | Gartner,” Gartner, 2020. https://www.gartner.com/en/industries/education (accessed Feb. 19, 2022).
[3] “Equity and quality in education: Supporting disadvantaged students and schools,” Equity and quality in education: Supporting disadvantaged students and schools, vol. 9789264130852, pp. 1–165, 2012, doi: 10.1787/9789264130852-EN.
[4] “COVID-19: At least a third of the world’s schoolchildren unable to access remote learning during school closures, new report says.” https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/covid-19-least-third-worlds-schoolchildren-unable-access-remote-learning-during (accessed Jul. 14, 2022).
[5] M. , Q. J. , D. M. , G. M. (2020), “Education R. T. F. Fullan, “Remote to Hybrid Learning Education Reimagined: The Future of Learning,” “Education Reimagined; The Future of Learning”. A collaborative position paper between New Pedagogies for Deep Learning and Microsoft Education, 2020, Accessed: Jul. 15, 2022. [Online]. Available: www.npdl.global