Over 530,000 schools in Indonesia have closed due to the coronavirus outbreak, affecting 68 million students from pre-primary to tertiary levels and emphasising the critical need for effective EdTech. The situation is forcing a rapid and widespread increase in the country’s use of technology which is expected to have long-term consequences for the market.
Information and communication tools (ICT), Web2.0 applications, and the impact these resources have on education are rapidly creating new challenges for instructors and learners who are faced with online learning. Teaching and learning in an e-learning environment differ from traditional classroom settings, posing new challenges for instructors and students participating in this online learning environment. To ensure instructor and learner success in this new learning environment, there is a need in e-learning to identify the challenges and consider best practice solutions.
As per a recently published EdTech landscape survey for Indonesia, the sector is beginning to catch up with global benchmarks. One such solution helping the nation is a Jakarta-based Ed-tech start-up. It has created apps that allow everyone involved in the educational process – school administrators, teachers, parents, guardians, and students – to keep track of work and communicate with one another. It is announced a $4 million Series A, led by an Indonesia-focused venture capital firm, with participation from returning global network of operator-investors.
While some teachers use Google Classroom, this ed-tech company was founded to support Indonesia’s K-12 National Curriculum and Islamic Curriculum programmes, which are used in both private and public schools. The company is also working on new verticals, such as software for preschools and university programmes.
The platform currently has four major parts: the school management system, which is designed for administrators, and the other part of the feature for teachers, which allows educators to track student attendance, create and score exams, and organise class activities. The third section of the platform is designed for parents; it allows parents and guardians to monitor their children’s progress and communicate with teachers. Meanwhile, the final feature is for students, and it allows them to look up their test results, attendance records, and school activities.
The Ed-tech company had also launched an Online Assignment feature before COVID-19 and during the pandemic, it added Interactive Class to enable remote learning. The company’s co-founder and CEO stated that the company intends to add new features and adapt Interactive Class for other uses once in-person schooling becomes the norm again. “We believe that many of the digitisation in schools adopted during the pandemic will continue to be used for the future, changing the way administrators manage schools and improving transparency for local education authorities, teachers and parents,” he added.
OpenGov Asia reported that private university closures mirror a wider trend in the country and have expedited the closure of several institutions, including some that were already in trouble before the pandemic. Last year, the Directorate of Higher Education of the Education and Culture Ministry (DIKTI) of Indonesia announced that 12 private universities in Jakarta had closed down due to a lack of students and other problems.
These significant challenges for the nation’s university system, some fear, could lead to massive closures of more institutions. In this backdrop, Indonesia is keen to improve its education sector, but various assessments indicate that it still has a long way to go before achieving that objective. Nonetheless, the country is aggressively pursuing a strategy towards development and, by 2025, the Indonesian government intends to have created a world-class education system.
Increased demand for online learning is propelling the rapid expansion of Indonesia’s leading EdTech platforms. The current health crisis has forced the government to revise its plans, but it remains committed to implementing some of the strategies to keep educational progress on track. The integration of platforms and software dedicated to assisting the education sector would alleviate the burden on both students and teachers in terms of teaching and learning.
