Update Education Methods and Boost Business with
E-Learning and EdTech

Electronic education or e-learning is a format of presenting training materials through a virtual environment (either via the Internet or through a local medium). The main goal of this field is to provide eager remote students with convenient access to new spheres of knowledge 24/7.

Thus, various cloud collaboration tools are already used in 72% of schools while 57% have specialized mobile devices used by students, and 48% have their own online classes according to statistics.

In turn, EdTech defines all projects aimed at optimizing the educational process through modern technologies. Typically, such projects have a software part and are based on the most trending currently technological developments.

Nowadays, many IT companies are focused on developing e-learning software and tackling the EdTech industry, annually bringing millions of dollars to the global market capitalization of the IT market. Thus, according to Statista, the education software market will reach $7.9 billion somewhere during the current year 2020.

That's why we can say with great confidence that education startup funding is a rather promising business corner holding lots of potential revenue.

Note also that in the current situation with protracted quarantine, many educational organizations are simply forced to switch to electronic education - students are not able to attend lectures physically anyway. That is exactly why so many IT companies are experiencing increased demand for software development in this area.

Along with this, there are a number of technologies that allow software developers today to create some pretty outstanding projects in the field of EdTech. The trendiest software tendencies include:

• Mobile-friendliness;
  
  
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML);
  
  
• Gamification;
  
  
• Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR);
  
  
• Cloud computing.
  
  

Electronic or online remote learning has all the regular tests, to which you prepare with the help of videos, online streams, web lectures, educational material, and interactive courses. At the same time, students get a choice - to be present in the virtual room at the time appointed by the teacher or complete all complete tasks at a time convenient for them.

Such flexibility at high educational standards is provided, for instance, by such online learning resources as Moodle, Coursera, Khan Academy, edX, Udemy, Udacity, and others. They offer tens of thousands of courses in completely different disciplines, with some of them being based on the curriculum of top universities in the world.

Moreover, there are also many educational online resources that are focused on corporate training and qualification boost. Currently, some of the top leading enterprises employ various learning tech to help new employees better adapt to the workflow and existing experts grow further professionally. As a result, the numbers speak for themselves - a study by IBM demonstrates that every dollar invested in e-learning solutions makes a $30 return.

And in terms of enterprise efficiency metrics, introduction of e-learning makes:

• the trained company staff 14% more productive and 19% more engaged and satisfied;
  
  
• customers 17% more satisfied;
  
  
• production teams 24% more able to customize products and processes on the go;
  
  
• product delivery time reduced by 22%;
  
  
• time-to-market reduced by 12%.

Mobile education can be considered a branch of e-learning aimed at providing users with round-the-clock access to educational materials through mobile devices. It can notably lower user dependence on particular locations for work and study. From a technical point of view, this means adapting these materials to mobile frame rate, volume and duration requirements since students are often on the go. To create a strong user experience, it is necessary to optimize content and make it responsive so that it performs properly and engages.

On top of that, often, a mobile e-learning application is able to better adapt the learning routine according to a particular user's pace of life, level of knowledge, individual progress in training, etc. Machine learning may analyze individual results for such optimizations.

So, what does ML stand for in education? Basically, ML applications in education form an excellent basis for creating good student learning outcomes. Based on the history of results, machine learning mechanisms will select the optimal approach for building a further scenario of the educational process.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence combined are used to automate the testing of knowledge and, in general, act as virtual tutors and adapt courses in the most customizable way possible.

Considering that such machine learning models improve continuously over time, an increasingly more personalized educational experience can be achieved. And with tailored approaches to different course groups, the overall engagement of students, thus, completion rate and, as a result, solution creator's income are boosted tenfold.

Gamification is the major education trend that implies the use of game elements or game principles to educate students. It helps students get the same level of involvement in the learning process as if they were playing an exciting computer game. There are two basic types of gamification:

• content gamification (it introduces game elements into routine processes in order to change the content of what you do and make it more playable);
  
  
• structural gamification (the use of various interactive elements as well as stickers, points, etc. to reward and encourage students).
  

The typical way you introduce gamification in learning is based on:

• storytelling and characters;
  
  
• competition and teamwork;
  
  
• levels;
  
  
• progress indicators and ratings.
  

Gamification-induced e-learning experiences come in very efficient in the corporate workplace as well. For instance, the Deloitte Leadership Academy training program was significantly boosted by the introduction of gamification models. In particular, the total number of users returning to the site to complete a weekly program was increased by 37%.

AR in education helps visually design digital information (images, video, text, graphics) on top of device screens and combine virtual objects with a real environment. Virtual reality, which creates three-dimensional models inside the lens of VR devices, offers developers even more opportunities.

Such teaching methods can become the main tool in education and revolutionize the learning of both schoolchildren and students. Teachers can use virtual and augmented reality in online learning tools for students to interact with various objects in three-dimensional space. For instance, this comes in handy in biology classrooms, where 3D models can sufficiently replace living mice and frogs.

Augmented and Virtual Reality can offer benefits for the industrial environment, too - from enhanced worker guidance to training during the production process.

As for the optimal format for the presentation of mobile training solutions, now developers give a clear preference to cloud environments. They provide a reliable connection to the server and allow teachers to download arbitrarily large amounts of information.

In general, the essence of cloud education is to provide hosting users with remote access to services, computing resources and applications via the Internet. Compared to the traditional approach, cloud computing for education creates ideal conditions for managing large infrastructures and serving various user groups within the same cloud.

At the same time, software vendors do not need to pay for excessive computing power, as would be the case with local physical servers. In addition, cloud providers typically provide maximum Internet connection availability, minimizing the likelihood of DDoS attacks.