How digitization empowers the growth of Higher Education Institutes and the role of iCloudEMS in bringing this digital transformation

In today’s era of computerization, the technology is stretching its wings day by day to improve the digital capabilities of organizations and individuals. Automation and storage are two important horizons of technology that aid the progress of organizations transforming their workflow in quick and inexpensive form.  Many developing technologies such as cloud-computing, internet of things, machine learning etc. are contributing to the enhancement of learning, collaborating, and decision making of organizations.

NEP 2020 has advocated the integral use of technology in Higher Education to transform traditional education systems to digitally empowered education systems. NEP has recommended the use of advanced technologies including Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Smart classrooms etc. to foster flexible and student-centric learning where focus is on the learning accomplishments rather than the content of learning. Technology catalyses the fulfilment of highest priorities and overcomes various challenges in education sector that include:

• Web-enabled functionalities for the alignment of administration with visionary strategies.

• Smart analytics utilities to gauge students’ learning and program efficiency.
• Technology enabled services for the faculty to enrich the course curriculum and develop e-learning resources.
• Digital environment to help faculty and students to be part of advanced learning and research across borders.
• Technology adaptive pedagogy and research practices to achieve a competitive edge in knowledge and learning.
• Optimum utilization of institutional resources.
  

All these digital capabilities focus on the multiple dimension growth of core functions of the Higher Education Institutes to encourage sustainable functioning models of tech-savvy campuses.

NEP 2020 has taken following major initiatives regarding leveraging technology in teaching-learning measures of Higher Education Institutes to ensure holistic development of students:

• Agencies, such as the NETF, CIET, NIOS, IGNOU, IITs, NITs, etc. will be identified to integrate online education for continuous improvement alongside considering its downside effects on students’ activities. 
• The establishment of open, interoperable technology-based infrastructure in the education sector that can give solutions to solve major challenges of the nation related to India’s scale, diversity, complexity and device penetration. 
• Online teaching platforms such as SWAYAM, DIKSHA, will be included to provide teachers with a structured, user-friendly, rich set of e-learning tools for monitoring progress of learners. 
• An online repository for content creation and dissemination will be established for the creation of coursework, Learning Games & Simulations, augmented reality and virtual reality along with a transparent system for ratings by users on effectiveness and quality. 
• Innovative solutions will be framed to address the digital divide for which existing mass media, such as television, radio, and community radio will be extensively used for 24/7 telecast and broadcasts of educational programmes in all Indian languages.
• Virtual labs will be created leveraging online platforms such as DIKSHA, SWAYAM and SWAYAMPRABHA to encourage equal access to quality practical and hands-on experiment-based learning experiences.
• Special training and incentives for teachers will be encouraged to facilitate learner-centric education and creation of high-quality online content.
• Appropriate bodies will be designed and implemented for developing assessment frameworks and analytics using modern education technologies.
• The deployment of blended models of learning will be fostered to maintain hybrid learning approach while promoting digital learning and education, the importance of face-to-face in-person learning is fully recognized. Accordingly, different effective models of blended learning will be identified for appropriate replication for different subjects.
  

It is well mentioned in NEP 2020 that technology in education is a journey and not a destination and capacity will be needed to orchestrate the various ecosystem players to implement policy objectives. In the light of pandemic digitization has been proved the life-saviour for organizations. The education paradigm shifted to remote learning overnight. In such time of crisis, thankfully some Education management systems such as iCloudEMS paved the way to uninterrupted learning & administration and replaced the chalk and board model with the digital learning in a blink of eye iCloudEMS is a market-leader that offers cloud-based Education Management to bring digital transformation in Higher Education Universities to handle every vital operation and cater the needs of all stakeholders for accomplishment of more creative and productive goals. Our ingenious services and products bridge the gap between teaching and effective learning and also extends the digital capabilities of institutes in terms of infrastructure, ecosystem development, assessment, learning, and teaching. Our major key areas include:

• Cloud-based platform to store massive amounts of data and records that can be accessed without any time or place constraints, such technology eliminates the manual storage and retrieval of information, and along with its limitations.
• Digital medium to choose and allot the courses of students in line with CBCS guidelines, the credits and other attributes of courses are also saved digitally.
• Personal Learning Management System that aids the creativity in course creation and delivery under OBE framework and makes the learning flexible and student-centric for upskilling the students.
• Student lifecycle management system for the digital organization of the integrated academic journey of students from being prospective to alumni.
• Accreditation management system that automates the groundwork of accreditation and simplifies the compilation of bulk data and reports for the associated staff members.
• Online Classes and Exam management system for the quality learning and assessment with clearly mapping of results to measure the accomplishment of learning goals.
• Managed services for ERP of Higher Education Institutes that offer a paper-free approach for important academic and non-academic tasks of Colleges and Universities and assist in channelizing the efforts of faculty in upgrading the standards of research & innovation.
  

Information technology has brought agility into the educational sector by restructuring the work situations, abridging thoughts from actions and redefining the approaches to mitigate the ongoing complexities of various activities in institutes. In this technofix age, iCloudEMS always comes forward in upgrading Higher Education Institutes with its web-based products and services as we believe that the success of any educational institution is directly proportional to the ability to comprehend, accept and integrate new and effective result-oriented technology into its work.