The pandemic has forced academic institutions to go digital. It hasn't been a smooth ride for most of the teachers, students and even the institutions. But there are many training institutions who are still not sure whether to shift to an online platform, found a study by Skill Monks. Out of the 1226 training companies surveyed across India, only 298 said that they want to walk towards automation and invest in digital solutions. This means that 928 or 75.69 per cent of the companies feel that they will wait and watch a little longer before they jump to a decision.
But what are they waiting for when the future looks undeniably digital even though internet penetration is around 37 per cent? There are three major reasons, said Rameshwar Mandali, CEO and Founder of Skill Monks. "A lot of them are in a wait-and-watch mode. The second reason is a massive fund crunch. They have been shut for the past six to seven months. The third reason is that the centres are now scattered across cities. They would want to regroup, consolidate their forces and then think of a tech-based solution," he said.
The survey was conducted in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Noida, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, Kanpur, Anand Nagar, Surat and Visakhapatnam out of which training institutes in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Visakhapatnam, Kanpur and Lucknow were willing to make this shift. "Most of the institutes had a brick and mortar set up. They do not have a guaranteed enrollment like schools and colleges. They have to not only spend on digital learning solutions but digital marketing as well. But we are expecting them to regroup and adapt in the next few months," said Mandali.
The year 2020 might have been the worst year of the millennium but it undeniably gave a boost to tech being used in teaching. "But going forward, in the future, we will have a hybrid setup. We will not get back to the 'only offline mode' neither are we going to be entirely digital. We will probably have a boost of around 10 to 15 per cent in the usage of digitised solutions for education," said Mandali.
