Social distancing transformed the lives of people in the world. It’s directly impacting how we relate, work, consume, and even study. Julio Monroy, Country Manager of CognosOnline Chile, tell how the e-learning is changing the classrooms forever.
Since the end of last year, Education in Chile has seen the urgent need to implement different technological solutions to virtualize different areas of the educational field, to give continuity to learning.
Julio Monroy has had the opportunity to work in different Latin American countries. Despite the technological development and economic stability that Chile maintains concerning its neighboring countries, it’s development related to e-learning was pity. The percentage of students in virtuality was less than 3% compared to Peru, which was around 8%, Colombia 12%, and Brazil 25% at that time.
The development that year in the matter was incipient, some institutions were developing and investing in platforms that would allow them to enhance their virtual classrooms; but others only implemented online supports such as class repositories, pdf, and presentations without a correct notion of e-learning.
The prevention of migrating to the virtualization of education and generating 100% e-learning educational models obeyed, among many other factors, the traditionalism and the custom of what was being done and how this worked overtime. However, we are in a new one that opens the doors to implement and adopt new technologies to revolutionize the sector, transform the business, and deliver new value propositions.
In a few years, information and communication technologies have gained ground in educational institutions, within their different levels, and in the training of professionals in the public and private sectors.
But the great growth of educational technology in Chile has arisen from the social outbreak that, together with the pandemic, has acted as an accelerator for institutions to adapt to virtual models of synchronous learning, according to Monroy.
A clear example of this can be seen with Blackboard Collaborate, which is present in more than 18 universities in Chile, and now the supervision and surveillance tools for exams such as Sumadi.
We know and we have accompanied the great step of universities and institutions towards virtual education, putting together ambitious projects to virtualize complete careers; developing courses for undergraduate and continuing education, offering more and better alternatives with quality content, training their teachers and other professionals who make life within virtual education.
Chilean education in the new normal and post-pandemic
You cannot go from face-to-face to virtual models from one moment to the next. Although there are currently 100% virtual careers in most universities, they are not yet ready to begin this process in all their faculties.
However, when the situation normalizes, education will progressively migrate to a hybrid model of higher education. In about four or five years, universities will probably develop virtual academic offers, in most of their careers, in alliance with universities in other countries so that people who wish to study through much more flexible and personalized models can do so.
For this, educational institutions will have to adapt to new demands and improve their specialization proposals in e-learning format, since they will be in greater demand. The training of the future requires quality, flexibility, and personalization in the experience, so it is essential to establish models by competencies that provide the student with adaptive and personalized learning.
Today, much Chilean public and private universities, in addition to technical training institutes and centers, are already investing in the virtual infrastructure necessary to deliver new and updated academic offerings to students. Decision factors such as the proximity, price, and prestige of a traditional university, will no longer weigh as much as a modern and innovative academic offer, flexible (100% virtual or blended), with the possibility of obtaining a double degree with a university from another country and with high levels of employability and good salary level of graduates.
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