To say the educational technology, or EdTech, sector is exploding is like saying McDonald’s has sold a few burgers here and there.
According to the EdTech Market: Global Industry Analysis, Trends, Market Size, and Forecasts up to 2027 report from ResearchAndMarkets.com, the global educational technolgy market was valued at around $85 Billion in 2021 and is expected to reach approx $218 billion in 2027, growing with a CAGR of around 17% during the forecast period from 2021-2027. When a tech sector is expected to more than double its size over the next few years, it means the rest of us need to pay attention.
Three key trends appear to be driving this growth, guaranteeing EdTech will stay in the business spotlight throughout the course of this decade.
The first of these three major trends is personalized learning. Ever since the dawn of the Internet, the ability to connect directly with anyone anywhere in the world has been a feature for marketers, but in education, it’s not just a feature -- it’s the fulfillment of a dream.
By now, most analysts have factored into the equation just how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted students globally, prompting the introduction of technology designed to streamline the transition from the classroom to home learning. The result has been the introduction of a wealth of digital resources that have helped bridge the gap for students of all ages in a multitude of educational settings.
“Creating individual lesson plans and personalized learning has not been as easy or as possible as it is now, there is so much more technology and access to digital content in the classroom,” Matt Cole, senior vice president of global educational technology giant Promethean (PRW) told Forbes Magazine in December 2021. “Teachers are able to see which students are keeping up, which students are falling behind and which students are maybe ahead. With that data comes the ability to take the next step, which is to move to personalized learning.”
Gamification is the second major trend that will drive educational technology farther and faster this year. One of the age-old challenges for educators has been trying to increase a student’s enthusiasm for learning in a world that is constantly presenting all kinds of media-based distractions. The idea of turning education into gaming has reached peak-level attention. Teachers have long been turning lessons into games for students, but now companies are turning gamification of education into an art form. Moreover, the appeal of gamification transcends the typical K-12 audiences, expanding into secondary education and beyond.
Some games teachers are currently using include Kahoot!, Pictionary, and even Minecraft: Education Edition. After all, what better way is there to engage students than harnessing the same games they play in between lessons?
“Gamification is a powerful tool in education that can be harnessed to really inspire and motivate students,” said Daniel Acutt, both a mentor and investor in Genius University, whose parent company, Genius Group, Ltd., is planning an IPO. “Learning games and apps, from times tables to languages, are set to be increasingly and widely included on the traditional curriculum. Yet the future of educational technology and education systems will be the classroom in the cloud – combined with high tech delivery and high touch tuition – that will become the heart of education, not merely the wrapping around it.”
The third trend driving educational technology forward is AI-driven teaching programs. As AI begins to transform business and industry, it is also changing the way students, teachers, and even school administrations interact. Some of the AI modules being used include automatic grading systems and AI teaching assistants that can be programmed to answer basic -- and some not-so-basic -- questions for students.
Technology Review highlighted one primary example of this advance:
“David Kellermann has become a pioneer in how to use AI in the classroom. At the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, Kellermann has built a question bot capable of answering questions on its own or delivering video of past lectures. The bot can also flag student questions for teaching assistants (TAs) to follow up. What’s more, it keeps getting better at its job as it’s exposed to more and different questions over time.
“Kellermann began his classroom’s transformation with a single Surface laptop. He’s also employed out-of-the-box systems like Microsoft Teams to foster collaboration among his students. Kellermann used the Microsoft Power Platform to build the question bot, and he’s also built a dashboard using Power BI that plots the class’s exam scores and builds personalized study packs based on students’ past performance.”
As the world continues to tunnel out from the pandemic, it’s clear that the innovations put into play as a consequence of that crisis will be sticking around for a while to complete a paradigm shift that may continue to transform learning over the next decade.
