Changes in the education system have been growing for a long time, with digitalization as the main factor of this transformation. The breakthrough came this year as about 1.5 billion students were unable to attend school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The educational systems all over the world have to undergo a significant change as a result of pandemic. Teachers were forced to master new and advanced tools like Zoom, while maintaining the quality in education as they teach online.
This digitalization in education is likely to continue, which is both good and bad at the same time. On the one hand, there are new tools and possibilities including ones that were originally not associated with education at all. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that we can’t see into the future without any accuracy. 2020 was an unexpected, volatile rollercoaster that disrupted the campus life of every college student. However teachers and tutors still need to plan for this year. The recent reports and student surveys give a peek at what the future is holding for the education sector. Here after some predictions that will affect the classrooms in 2021:
Development of educational Learning Management Systems.
LMS enables the teachers to track the progress of the students and aspects that requires the attention of the teachers. There are already several well-known systems like Google classroom, Frog etc., but the market for new LMS will only continue to increase in the coming years. As the number and popularity of LMS rises, the number of phishing sites associated with educational services will also grow. Their main goals are like stealing personal data or spreading spam within the education community. Data shows that during 2020, about 168550 users encountered various threats distributed under the name of popular online learning platforms or videoconferencing applications compared to 20.45% in 2019. In addition to this LMSs opens up the potential for new, unexpected threats, such as Zoombombing. And if schools are continuing to conduct remote learning, there is a chance for these systems to continue to be a popular attack vector.
Students will demand for more affordable course materials
The budgets of the students were always strained, but the pandemic compounded to this stress. Some of the statistics relating to this are:
Two-third of the students who had jobs before the pandemic had experienced job insecurity, and one-third of them lost their jobs.
21% of students applied for unemployment insurance and 15% applied for SNAP benefits and 15% for emergency aid.
Addition to this students and families have asked for tuition reduction. 93% of the students believe that tuition should be lowered if classes are going to be held completely online.
This pressure will put the students in looking for a way to save money across the academic experience. They will start demanding the class materials required for the course to be more affordable.
More attention will be paid to video services
Video services like YouTube, Netflix, Schooltube, KhanAcademy etc. will get more attention than before. There will be more creation of educational video content either existing as finished product or partially used by the teachers in the classrooms. To be clearer, about 60% of teachers are already using YouTube in their classrooms. While videos can act as a powerful tool, there will be a lot of age-inappropriate content that can be found on popular video services (YouTube/TikTok/Instagram, etc.), creators of this content can use educational topics to attract attention of the students. Although this threat is not new to the world, with the growth of digitalization, it’s relevance will keep on increasing.
Students will tend to reconnect with the campus life.
2020 was a bad year for the students. Last year lacked so many fun activities that made the campus life special. Data revealed that more than one quarter of the students polled said that they missed the campus life and a true feeling and experience of a campus life. We are not still sure about the safety of the social gatherings this year. Teachers should create a sense of community in their class even if it is a virtual one. Around one-third of the students reported that their online classes helped them to feel more connected to other students, instructors and the institution during the pandemic.
Gamification of the educational process
Almost everyone at school nowadays already knows about learning with Minecraft, but apart from this, there are many services that allow you to learn through games like While True: Learn, Classcraft, Roblox etc. As soon as you integrate games into the classroom, you will expose the students to the same types of risks they would be facing while gaming from home. The risks can be like trolls and bullying, malicious files disguised as game updates or add-ons etc.
Classroom conversations about mental health will feel normal.
The year 2020 has induced anxiety among the people especially among the students. Almost half of Americans reported that the pandemic has affected their mental health. It has become higher among the students. 82% claimed that they are dealing with anxiety problems. Some other events also occurred in 2020. People started talking about anxiety and stress. Therapy became a normal part of the talk. 71% of students said that they made use of the tele-mental health services from their schools or from outside mental health services to relieve their stress and anxiety.
The fear on discrimination is the main reason why the students don’t seek mental health advices. When we talk about these issues, it will reduce the stigma. This year will be a trend of normalizing mental health conversations in the classrooms. Teachers and institutions should help the students in solving their anxiety and stress problems.
If we are talking about the future concerns in the educational sector, it will be privacy. Managing it in any service requires the involvement of users, but many users, especially younger children don’t know how to control their privacy settings. There are also many services that provide tools for setting up the educational processes online, and educators will mostly like using more than one. They will have to pay special attention to each tool they are using and protect their personal information and also data of the students.
Elvis Education ERP from Estrrado has a comprehensive learning management system. Elvis is one powerful, completely integrated ERP for your entire campus. Learn more
