The term “digital transformation” is nothing new and has been used in various contexts for some time. Our current global pandemic is forcing cities and entire countries to adopt policies of social distancing, accelerating digital transformations, and requiring organizations and institutions to adapt fast.
Digital transformation is the process in which an organization adopts a digital approach in its activities, using tools and techniques that allow greater agility, flexibility, control, and optimization of resources, that result in a better return on investment (ROI). Social distancing measures and quarantines adopted around the world have impacted, if not all, the vast majority of economic sectors, but the educational sector was hit hardest. The entire structure of educational institutions had to be reimagined to keep business running and students learning.
Below we reiterate four tips as your educational institution acclimates to continued digital transformation.
Provide quality content suitable for digital education
Just as in face-to-face (F2F) education, online teaching also requires that your curriculum and content catalog be high quality to provide effective learning. The difference is that in the digital world it is even more important that you offer this material in an adapted and personalized way.
Learners need to have access to materials with which they identify themselves and feel engaged to study, making them more encouraged to self-study while also retaining more information in each lesson.
Offering a diverse collection of educational content, that is easily accessible, constantly updated and with different types of approaches is essential to ensure student engagement.
Equip, prepare, and train your teachers
Digital tools are essential for your school to carry out a complete digital transformation, but it is worth remembering that they are complementary – not substitutes – to the efforts of your team of teachers. Here at Voxy we always talk about using software to take advantage of the potential of technology, allowing people to explore what humans do best.
Your teachers must have digital tools at hand that enable them to maximize their potential. This means not only a video conference solution between teacher and learner, but also a platform for managing live class schedules, dashboards for monitoring the performance of each class or specific students and, the appropriate training for each of these solutions.
Like you, your teachers also need to supplement the best way to continue delivering quality education, and proper training of the teaching staff is essential to ensure a smooth transition without losing quality.
Take advantage of the digital flexibility
An intrinsic characteristic of the internet is flexibility. Nowadays it is rare to be at a location that does not offer connection via wi-fi or at least has a good data signal for mobile internet. Of course, the internet is not always available, so it is also important to offer an offline solution that is accessible, but all this connectivity means that you can take advantage of this flexibility in favor of your school as well.
Look for a way to offer your education not only on laptops and desktops, but also on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Currently, in Brazil, each person spends an average of 4 hours and 45 minutes a day on their personal devices. Digital transformation helps you to insert yourself in this important space of our day-to-day.
It is also necessary to understand how people interact with content these days, and an important concept that has been gaining momentum in recent times is microlearning. In its simplest form, microlearning is a method of learning that delivers information in a smaller and easier-to-digest format. Yet, microlearning isn’t only bite-sized training. Microlearning is hyper-focused and offers the right amount of information in the right amount of time, to help learners achieve specific goals.
Keep track of your performance and results
Digital solutions allow the collection and analysis of data and information, which is extremely useful for your school to understand not only the evolution of each student throughout the course but also the financial return on the investment (ROI) achieved as a result of digital transformation.
While your teachers can monitor information such as the individual progress of each learner or class, student engagement during the course, and other information on teaching performance, your school can track the use of the digital platform, the number of learners over time and similar data that helps to identify the impact of all these movements on your business results.
If you work in an English school and want to keep up with digital transformation to take advantage of new opportunities in online education and also offer even better learning to your students, count on Voxy to help you.
