According to official figures, there are 21.7 million students who enrolled for the upcoming school year and only a little over 500,000 electronic devices available to lend to teachers and public school students. While the opening of classes has been delayed to October, online learning during the pandemic may still be difficult to attain because of the lack of devices among students and schools.
In the digital age, lifelong learning is necessary if you don’t want to become obsolete, according to Apptitude CEO Mars Veloso.
We know it is important to equip students with the right skills. But education should not end after graduation. Now, more than ever, every worker should embrace lifelong learning.
“I think that continuing education, or more generally lifelong learning, is no longer optional. It’s a requirement to keep up with quickly changing environments and regulations,” lawyer Mars Veloso, CEO of learning management platform Apptitude, told Digital Life Asia.
“Being a bank teller today might seem like a stable job. But as UnionBank has clearly shown, these jobs can be replaced by machines in the span of a year. The BPO industry is under threat by chatbots. There have been promising AI developments in the medical fields. As an example, radiology may be quickly eclipsed in the coming years with better pattern detections.With this digital milieu, the only option to those potentially affected by the shifting tides is a new perspective on education. One geared towards optionality rather than job security.”
Mapua University President and CEO Reynaldo Vea says schools must be prepared not just to offer remote learning to students, but also to train personnel for remote work.
Online education has been around for many years. Yet just as the pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of businesses, so too is it changing the education system. This is why schools must accept that remote learning will be part of the new normal.
“The quarantine accelerated the adoption of online education. When the schools reopen, possibly in August, many students and parents, I believe, would still be fearful of face-to-face classes. There would be a need for an online option. Having developed their capabilities to implement online education, the schools would most probably want to keep it as an alternative mode of delivery over the long term. Online education will be a facet of life in the new normal,” Mapua University President and CEO Reynaldo Vea told Digital Life Asia.
“In order to thrive in the new normal, schools must prepare themselves to implement remote learning, whether the approach be through fully online education or through distance education. The former requires learners to have the required device and connectivity for it to be effective. The latter is more forgiving. The medium of the materials could be electronic (USB, DVD) and print, and the manner of content delivery could be electronic (internet, TV, radio) and physical (postal/courier, bookstore, in-school). Aside from satisfying demand from a segment of the student market, remote learning could also help schools solve physical distancing concerns in the classroom by reducing the resident student population at any given time,” he said.
