We all know that the education system which used to run through offline learning procedures via schools, colleges, and universities, had to face huge harm when the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost in every country, only if for a few months, all the offline learning institutions were closed down to slash the unrecoverable outburst of the highly spreading, deadly virus. This was the time when online education, with immense swiftness, made its way into the education system and now, it seems like students are preferring it over offline classes.

In the whole world, more than 1.2 billion students, at one point in their education life during the Coronavirus outbreak, had to leave outgoing offline schools, and take classes online in the comfort and safety of their room.

From Classrooms to Home

This shutting down of colleges and schools changed the shape and form of the ongoing education system to a great extent. Schools started to continue classes and take exams through online platforms, the colleges also started to do the same thing. Many universities issued new academic courses and degrees only for their online students.

As universities all around the world are easily providing education and degrees completely through online education strategies, the urge to attain an educational degree has risen over the years.

Education Became Easily Obtainable

More and more people are willing to take a new degree or learn something entirely new, which they would have never opted for if the education system remained completely offline as it was before the virus outbreak. So, we can say that online teaching is rapidly increasing and enhancing the stigma of attaining more knowledge and literacy among people.

An Affordable Mode of Education

Besides being easily available, where you can learn courses from distant institutes which were almost impossible for you to attain in the offline form, it is more affordable at the same time. Institutes have kept their course fees lower compared to their charges in the offline mode. Many results have proven that in recent times.

How Online Education Gained Sudden Fame?

It is not that online learning is completely a new thing to the world. Many institutions provided their courses on various subjects or languages online for quite a long time. From music to maths, from science to foreign languages, many students used to learn a wide array of things online. For instance, native French tutors are teaching the royal language for quite a long time now with ultimate precision. But the point here is that it has never received the publicity and hype during the pre-Corona world. The whole idea of online learning and its sheer benefits became known to people after the pandemic when students had no offline choices anymore. So you see, online education is not a sudden thing, but what’s sudden is the deserving recognition it got in the contemporary time.

The Pace at Which Online Education Is Growing

As we already mentioned earlier, offline education faced a massive hit due to the pandemic outbreak, and students from 186 countries globally, had to shift from the offline mode to the online mode of education (a number as massive as 1.2 billion in total). However, we see that schools and colleges are reopening again, and students are shifting back to the normal mode of education once again. But, that still has not ended the importance and growth of online education in recent times. More and more online educational platforms and EdTech Startups are emerging day by day, assuming that it is now the new future of education. By growth, we will like to give you an example to verify how rapidly online education is taking the centre stage. The US edTech investments were at 18.66 billion dollars in 2019 and by the end of 2025 (only six years), the investments are likely to cross over 350 billion US dollars. This is enough to show the drastic boom in the online education business. In almost every developing country of the world, the business regarding online education is rapidly rising.

Conclusion
Even when we as human beings get completely rid of the Coronavirus, and the world becomes free of this virus, online education will still be as notable and prominent as it is now in 2021. It is possible that the obligations associated with online education will not remain as notable as it is now. Today the outstanding craze revolving around online education is probably because of the forceful shutting down of all the modes of offline institutes. However, no one can deny the fact that online education is the near future of education. Education, when it is based on the online system, has become easy to attend, comfortable, and affordable. As days go by, every institution/university is offering something or the other only for online education.


Image Credits:

Image 1: Image by Marco Verch Professional Photographer on FlickrImage 2: Image by Nenad Stojkovic on Flickr