The pandemic has radically transformed education across the world. With the unprecedented need for virtual learning, students are taught remotely via a plethora of digital platforms. With this sudden shift away from the classroom in many parts of the globe, many wonder whether the adoption of online learning will continue to persist post-pandemic and how such a movement might affect the global education industry.
OpenGov Asia had the opportunity to speak exclusively to Marc Alexis Rémond, Vice President of Sales, Meeting and Learning Experiences, and regional business leader for Barco Meeting Experience solutions.
Marc Alexis is a seasoned professional and entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience selling and marketing technology products as well as in providing consultancy services. In his extensive career, Marc has written many technology blogs, contributed numerous business articles and spoken at multiple industry conferences on digital transformation and the future of the workplace.
In the exclusive interview, Marc stresses that online learning readiness is still poor in the education sector. Education institutions need to restructure their content so that it can be delivered via online platforms. Marc is convinced that those platforms are not specifically designed or natively built for teaching and learning but are built for meetings.
Efficient and effective learning and teaching platforms must be developed and created expressly for the use of educational institutions. Marc believes that the future of education systems will be hybrid, indicating that there will be a mix of students in the classroom and a portion of students learning from home.
When this takes place, there will almost certainly be significant challenges. Attention allocation, for instance, could be a challenge. A teacher may forget or neglect remote students over those physically present in class. As a result, the level of interactivity or engagement between remote students and teachers could fluctuate with negative outcomes.
In light of this, Marc shared their latest educational platform ‘weConnect’ which allows educational organisations to take the next step towards transformational teaching and training. Barco has collaborated with the world’s leading business schools, universities and corporate learning and development departments, to develop this powerful learning solution.
Its capabilities in an educational environment easily surpass those of video conferencing tools used today. With its innovative and differentiating teaching and learning experience, it allows interaction in real-time with learners, in any set-up to deliver new levels of engagement, learning outcomes and retention. Through this cloud-based platform for education, Barco strives to develop and supply technologies to improve online and learning experiences.
The platform promises to be an essential and reliable cornerstone of a learning institution’s digital strategy as it promotes collaboration and active learning, onsite and online.
With an intuitive user interface, users can launch spot polls or quizzes to encourage active participation and collaboration. The platform can get audience feedback with silent questions and user analytics after class to optimise future classes and learning outcomes.
Educators and learners can share content and participate in class discussions using any device. The platform aims to minimise and standardise classroom infrastructure with a solution that securely integrates into a campus network and Wi-Fi, supporting single sign-on (SSO) and API connectors to legacy systems and can automate dynamic room configuration and plan sessions.
Pedagogy technology in this space needs to be brought together to be part of that digital transformation strategy. Marc is convinced it is vital to integrate pedagogical aspects to anything related to students and the practice of teaching and learning.
Marc touched on the topic of digital enrolment and orientation which can now be done through leveraging online learning platforms. Students around the world can apply to their preferred university from another country, across all borders because of online enrolment. He suggests that all learning institutions should consider adopting online platform enrolment to give students across the globe better access to high-quality education. This would benefit not only the educational sector but also the economy.
Overall, the internet has transformed how we work, play, communicate, administrate and, most importantly, learn today. Almost all barriers to education have dissolved in the digital age. Marc believes that innovative, efficient and online learning platforms would be a key differentiator. The educational sector must start developing and highlighting online platforms for the betterment of the education system globally.
In the end, Marc is positive that online education platforms and digital initiatives will redefine – for the better – the course of learning and education. They are a safe solution to traditional learning and teaching methods in critical times and to those with limited access to a physical classroom. They are the future.
