Online Education as a Key Business Opportunity During the Pandemic

Online and remote education, surely, existed before the pandemic. For example, it provided learning opportunities for adult learners who couldn’t enroll in full-time education plans at the universities due to work or other circumstances. It was also a go-to option for people living in remote areas for whom attendance would mean covering substantial distances, and so on.

However, only in the 2020 year, online education became really popular among all audiences because of the Coronavirus.  Actually, it became a major trend since social distancing became one of the cornerstones to stop the Covid-19 spread. So, for many learners, as well as businesses in the education domain, going online became the primary option. In this article, SOLVVE is going to discuss how online education became not only a part of our daily life but also a new turf to start and grow businesses fast.

Social Distancing as a Catalyst 

Social distancing disrupted our daily communication patterns, including education. While the old teaching environments and modes cannot be used, the industry fell somewhat short of readymade solutions. But not because there were none of them, but because there are two main challenges in adopting them.

Firstly, there is a human resources issue. While technically there can be enough teachers and instructors for offline courses, there will most probably be a shortage of properly trained professionals when classes move online. Not all teachers have enough skills and training to provide remote educational services. Students as well, might not be familiar with online learning environments, software, and practices.

Delivering material through online lectures, distributing and collecting assignments, running seminars and tests, etc. will require the restructuring of materials and employment of new teaching methods. Those who are already savvy with the methodology and technology will have to cover for those who are not. Thus, some teachers may be overwhelmed.

Secondly, not all educational institutions and students have relevant technology at their disposal to engage in online classes. Depending on the availability of funds at the institution and its readiness to transfer the processes online, some of them might hesitate to revamp the existing model or build an educational service online from scratch to keep up with the trend. However, there are numerous business benefits in doing so. Let’s inspect them one by one.

Benefits of Online Education for Service Providers

Cost Efficiency

Delivering educational services on sight requires not only setting up a location with equipped classrooms, but also considering commuting times and expenses for both teachers and class attendees, not to mention all sorts of related expenses. Take, for example, paper and printers to create handouts or maintaining a coffee area, etc. 

If you take your education services online as a provider, there surely will also be associated expenses like costs for creating a tutoring platform or developing a language learning app. However, from a long-term perspective, such initial investments are relatively fast to return. If, for instance, we consider printed handout examples, there will be no need to buy or print new materials and books every time a new batch of students enters a track or a course. 

Scalability

Same to the example above, physically extending a classroom, changing location, and admitting more people into a course come with certain issues. As your business grows, you need more staff, more classrooms, more books, etc. Finding new localities and premises for your growing business is a hassle as well. 

On the other hand, scaling your online education business is much more simple. Actually, it doesn’t really matter how many people attend an online conference over Zoom or Google Meets. Therefore, you can cater to more people with the same effort and funding. But, of course, if your platform requires technical support to withstand an increased number of users, for example, you should not hesitate to contact experts to help you with that.

Consistency

Just like in offline teaching, online education presumes to have a set of teaching materials and assignments. However, compared to regular offline courses, online teaching can be way more consistent. For instance, if students are watching pre-recorded lectures, then all of them will get exactly the same pieces of information in exactly the same way controversial to in-class situations where the delivery can be affected by the mood of a teacher or the atmosphere in the classroom.

Also, engagement and progress can be easily measured and graded with online tools without taking the teacher’s time to draft and check tests. In addition, depending on the approach, one can customize the content so that students could move on to the next step only after they have finished the previous one or vice versa.

Personalization

Pretty much similar to other industries, education tends to provide highly-personalized solutions to students. Online education is manyfold easier to personalize compared to usual on-sight teaching. 

Providers can work with students across borders and time zones to deliver content at a convenient time that fits one’s schedule. With that, online education can work with diverse audiences thanks to technologies that can facilitate delivery to people with disabilities or other special requirements that are difficult to provide in a physical facility.

Besides flexibility in timing and accessibility, eLearning is one of the top industries that are extremely friendly to the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning solution that are driving personalization forward at high speed due to its recommendation systems, around-the-clock available chatbots to answer students’ requests, and automated translations to get in touch with educators all over the world.

Better Retention Rates

It is quite natural that students who have an opportunity to receive personalized education and training without going through the stress of attending classes and squeezing them into tight schedules are more likely to finish their education successfully.

To Conclude

High-quality education providers are always in demand. However, right now, it’s the perfect time to enter the market of online and remote education as demand is soaring and there are still a lot of gaps to be filled.  Ultimately, if you have any questions or ideas related to products or software solutions for your eLearning projects, do not hesitate to contact us. Let’s get started!