Has COVID-19 really accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, maybe by a few years? Will these changes remain long term? Companies in many sectors have changed the way they do business. Digitisation has been on the fast track ever since Covid struck. A report of the McKinsey Global Survey of executives estimates that this change would have taken at least four years to occur during normal times.
Companies resilient in their approach have withstood the disruption much better than those that were less organised. They had temporary solutions to meet many new demands quickly than they had thought possible before the crisis. Many invested an intellectual capital and substantial amounts of money in adopting the change. However, will it increase the number of customers, sales and profits? It remains to be seen, what it would take to cover the return on investments (ROI) made.
As the Covid Pandemic surge seems to be ebbing, work from home (WFH) is slowly changing to work from office (WFO). Will it be back to business as usual? How must balance be struck so gains accrued through online are not frittered away? Companies that made products were slower to adopt changes than the B2B or B2C sectors. Even healthcare and pharma, financial services, and professional services saw adoption of a massive digital culture. Many start-ups have provided effective online support for local kirana shops, pharmacies, vegetable vendors, and individual businesses during Covid. AgriBazaar, a full-stack agritech company replicated the physical mandi with an e-mandi aggregator model on which we all have placed orders even as farmers registered and uploaded their produce. The pandemic saw both entry and exit of new competitors in company’s “market/value chain”. It will be interesting to see if initiatives taken during Covid continue to deliver.
Even as the industry has been surging ahead with adoption of technology, the education sector’s response has been knee jerk at best. Whereas a little more than 950 universities and 45000 colleges suddenly went online, not all of them adopted digital technology nor invested in it to reach their students. This resulted in many students, being sometimes in and sometimes out. The leadership of these institutions will have to carry the blame at least in part. One of the reasons for a sluggish adoption could have been the fear of student and faculty resistance to changes, the other being institutional silos that impeded quick adoption.
Biggest changes are the most likely to work in the long term. Admittedly, reaching education to everyone was a challenge. It was also not practicable that all those thousands of colleges and universities would have individually subscribed either to the components that administer a university or to the content. Cost to student would have been prohibitive apart from the redundancy. Surely, all applications like the ERP/CRM, LMS, exam management and digital records could have been aggregated on a multi-tenant architecture and each instance white labelled so that every institution or university could have used them in a collaborative mode.
Good third-party content also could have been aggregated over the above platform so it reaches everyone. Certainly, a great opportunity to teach and interact with students remotely. Adequate investment in data security and migration to the cloud was needed. For a maximum throughput and minimal interference required for conduct of nationwide teaching or conducting examinations, the government could have enabled channels 1, 6, and 11 in the 2.4 GHz ISM Band. Further, DTH Channels and Cable TV Network would have proved useful. UGC could have promoted massively online education through enabling provisions.
The digital divide could have been bridged by both the government and the private sector. That none of the above was done must be an opportunity lost and the nation would bear its opportunity lost cost. An imperative for success is to have a culture that encourages experimentation and acting early. Universities cannot only preach. They must adopt and drive change if they want to see change in the society.
The pandemic provided multiple opportunities for businesses to function. However, technology was at centre stage not just for cost efficiency but also for operational ease. Speed in experimenting and innovating was at its peak. Education sector should have led the way by reimagining the delivery models and rethinking education structures alongside of aligning with technology.
Tipping points have manifested in various ways in the past. Technology adoption or digital disruption isn’t new. COVID-19 crisis certainly is a tipping point of monumental proportions. Further changes will happen as the situation eases and human situation evolves. The pandemic has taught us that we must learn both tactically, in the process of making specific changes to the way we conduct education and organizationally to how we manage our institutions/universities. The pace of change may not slow down. That said, have our institutions been up to it? How will they fare in the post covid times?
Many have just seamlessly, gone back to business as usual or cosied to the way they were conducting education before the pandemic. The classes have started functioning with some restrictions still in place. The students have started attending classes and happy they are, for they now can come out of their homes. The technology challenged faculty or those who would not want to exert are happy that their misery may be over. The technology enabled faculty were using it anyway. The managements are happy that the worst may be over and that the admissions would happen again. The government is happy that the institutions are functioning, classes have begun after almost one and half years without having to make much of investment, or change to new thought processes or face politically loaded brickbats.
Parents in this country would sell everything that they have for educating their children. National Education Policy (NEP) speaks of a large-scale technology infusion in our institutions, adoption of value-added courses and personalised learning. Personalised learning, multiple entry and exits and credit accumulation cannot be realised without use of focussed technology. More than anything else the 50 GER critically depends on technology and virtualisation of education.
Every crisis provides an opportunity. Covid provided one. Even as some businesses adopted and prospered, education sector only did it in bits and pieces. The opportunity cost of an unlived dream is not only that dream, but also the dreams the dream was meant to inspire.