siliconindia | | August 201819Skype call with anyone from any-where is pretty much the norm today. The ecosystem to facilitate online education had already been created. Online coaching also tore down many barriers, specifically location-based dependencies. Not every city in India has the infrastructure or the access to good coaching classes. This forc-es students to migrate to educational hubs, like Kota for IIT preparation or Old Rajender Nagar and Mukherjee Nagar in Delhi for UPSC coaching.There is a catch here though - these residential courses are heavy on the wallet. Besides that, not every student is in a life stage where he/she can drop everything and shift to these centers of mass training - working profession-als are being a case in point. Online coaching works like a charm in these cases. The convenience of taking a course anytime and anywhere you want is just the icing on the cake.The second reason for this par-adigm shift has more to do with the style of teaching itself. Whether class-room coaching is really effective has been a subject of debate since a long time. It is a well-known fact that every student has a different learning style and a different rate of absorption. The traditional mode of coaching forces you into a passive learning routine where students grasp concepts in a patchy manner, which keeps building over time. The program is just not designed to be self-paced. In a class-room, one-to-one coaching is quite difficult, so unless you are proactive who interacts with your professors and gets your doubts resolved, you are going to remain one among the herd of clueless students.What is the answer to this problem? Is it personalized coaching? The answer is a resounding yes. Is it affordable for everyone? In an offline scenario it may not be, but it is possible with the help of technology, as proved by various innovative startups. The early adopters in this space started with a content heavy focus, where they provided world-class online content. But, here the onus was on the student to consume and absorb that material. Then there are firms who tried to solve the problem using adaptive testing. This again, was only a part of the solution. The real problem solvers took a three-pronged approach to gain the edge - diagnostic testing, video-based lectures, and the most important component of all, personal mentorship.Early success for companies using this model proves that this holistic ap-proach is the way to go. However, it is not devoid of challenges. The biggest one is scaling-up, with a need to re-cruit thousands of qualified tutors. But as China's Tutorgroup, with over 2000 teachers has proved, it can be fixed with a managed marketplace for train-ers. So have students bought into this form of learning? The answer to this depends on the kind of course they are doing. It is common these days for working professional to take-up career advancement courses in digital marketing, finance and technology. These are predominantly undertaken online. As per a report by live mint, re-skilling and online certification is the dominant category in India, with a 38 percent share.There are companies offering full-fledged online courses for exams like IELTS, which is a language-based exam. This is no contest actually. There is a dearth of good quality of-fline teachers and secondly, a large section of these test-takers are work-ing professionals, for whom online courses work just perfectly. Students are also opting for online courses to prepare for exams like GATE & IAS.It is clear that online education is here to stay. That brings us to the next question - what is the future of on-line education in India? It is no guess that online education will permeate the K12 segment as well. As per the EY-FICCI report, the K12 segment has a staggering size of 250+ million students. The quality of education im-parted at this level is questionable, to say the least. The rote-based learning system doesn't make it any better ei-ther. This opens the door to a world of opportunities. So, once these early movers solve the challenge of scal-ability, there is nothing to stop them from venturing into this space. It is clear that online education is here to stay. That brings us to the next question - what is the future of online education in India? It is no guess that online education will permeate the K12 segment as wellAnirudh Swarnkar
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