The cost of education has risen over the years. Instructions come at a premium and that premium per hour has been steadily increasing. Every minute spent teaching and/or learning has value. Hence, administrative functions such as taking attendance, dealing with absentees and collecting homework are now seen as cutting into that premium teaching time. Automation of classrooms is helping ease things.
Automation is affecting and will continue to affect all aspects of human life; enhancing several areas by working as a support mechanism to human efforts. Hence, humans will have more time to engage in executive functions than in administrative or manual functions. For example, in schools and colleges, automated workstations can enable students to complete and submit homework, attendance can be taken through biometric systems and teachers and students can have more quality time.
Similarly, in factories, humans can concentrate more on doing the executive and creative functions while robots or automated systems can take care of the labour aspect. However, this has been seen to have a decimating impact on job roles, especially for the labour markets. So, where automation can help businesses improve their ROI through decreased work-times; it also impacts labour markets gravely and creates unemployment. This leads to the requirement of upskilling or adding new skills to one’s repertoire. Going forward, automation will open paths for new job roles. Everyone, students as well as employees must keep this in mind and have a flexible learning approach to keep in the fray.
Automation is also a way forward into futuristic life. With Google’s self-driving car, writing assistants and other automated machines, human life is looking at never before comforts and ease. All this comes at a cost, and that cost will be the middle-class jobs that will be lost to machines. However, this very trend in AI, machine learning and overall automation are leading to another trend that’s becoming popular and widely accepted – online courses and online learning.
Students, even employees, now have the option to learn new and more relevant courses online through platforms such as Talentedge and MOOCs. As per a KPMG report, in India alone, the market value of e-learning was $247 million with the number of students at a staggering 1.6 million in 2016. The scope is increasing because of increasing internet penetration making education accessible even in remote areas.
Your key takeaways
As a student or employee, you must keep an open mind. Keep learning in the age of automation, AI and machine learning to stay up to speed with the machines. You have the option to opt for short online certification programs and executive training courses to enhance your learning and to add new skills to your repertoire. The machine age is upon us and it heralds survival of the fittest. Get your armour ready and shining.
More Information:
Importance of E-learning in India