Needless to say, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused various changes in different industries, and education is not an exception. With being trapped in their own houses, all the learning process participants needed to find an effective solution of modifying the traditional education system and making it accessible for every student, as it was before the pandemic hit. Today we’ll go deeper into the specific changes we can see in education during the pandemic and how they benefit the learning system improvement.

Why Did the Changes Happen?

At the pandemic’s peak, over 45 countries in Europe and Central Asia have closed their schools, thus affecting over 190 million students. And, since none of these countries was completely ready for the online classes, the unexpected pandemic hit has given a huge rise for the learning losses and increases in inequality.

This factor has made teachers from all countries find some new effective and safe methods of education that can assist in the learning process and provide identical opportunities to traditional in-class learning. Thus, as the fight with the COVID-19 pandemic was going, the remote education model had started its reinforced development as well. Every country has created a strategy for organising distance learning: using remote educational experiences developed earlier, social media channels, online learning platforms, emails, smartphones, apps, and even TV broadcasts.

The Main Changes in Education System During the Pandemic

The significant changes caused by a pandemic hit have resulted in creating the new learning system we are currently using – Education 4.0, which includes the best practices of traditional learning involving all the digital tools and technologies to cover all the needs and requirements of the educational system completely.

1. More Online Learning Resources

After more than a year of the remote learning experience, more and more teachers have included online libraries with free access to textbooks, research, case studies, etc. Since the pandemic hit, several initiatives have been undertaken to help students and educators smoothly transition to online learning models.

Thus, the learning resources like Studocu start providing free access to the various learning courses and materials to help students better engage in the new educational processes.

2. A New Concept of School by Screen

After the year, when some of the education systems made nothing but the good old school by the computer screen, it has become clear that the temporary concept of remote learning created to save the situation of the education system during the pandemic has become a competitive alternative to the traditional learning models.

Because of that, some schools start implementing online classes options to meet the diverse needs of learners:

• for teenagers, who need to combine work and study
• children with health issues, that can’t be present during classes
• kids who learn online more effectively and want to keep learning online

Additionally, that’s a perfect way of introducing the specific courses that are less common for a certain area. For instance, students from other schools can also join the classes remotely for learning foreign languages.

3. Student Accelerated Learning

Another great catchup for the current education system is focusing on the current knowledge level of students and meeting them “where they are” to cover the learning losses caused by the learning system change. With this said, some countries have shifted the focus on the learners who are behind in grade-level work and need help choosing the effective tools that make their studying processes more effective. That is a much better and more considerable option rather than giving children the information they can’t understand and use in the next lessons.

4.The Mental Health of Students Matters

Pandemic hit has also caused the schoolchildren to be more depressed and anxious because of the inability to study in the familiar environment and meet the new learning challenges on their own, as the recent survey by the Ohio state experts. By April 2021, the students’ burnout had reached 71%, when in August 2020, the number of students with mental health troubles was up to 30% less.

That is why it has become critical for educational institutions to focus on mental health improvements, mindfulness, social-emotional learning, and equitable support distribution. This measure is a great step towards beating the depression feeling and developing self-control skills. Additionally, schools can build a comprehensive and equitable system of student learning support.   

5. The Teaching System Has Been Optimized and Digitalized

Remote learning has made many teachers face the challenges of learning new software and adapting the curriculum to online teaching. And, when the first issue can be easily resolved, it’s still hard to keep them engaged in the learning process and track their progress when holding online classes.

For this reason, teachers have mastered their knowledge in learning technologies and improved their skills as psychologists and cheerleaders, too – all these to enhance the learning routines and keep the students interested in what they learn about. No one had trained them to do this before the pandemic started. Still, all these efforts helped to define the new effective strategies teachers can employ for further offline and online education development.

6. Computer Incorporation

The lockdown caused by the COVID-19 situation has shown the real value of computers and software for online learning. Millions of devices and hotspots have been purchased and employed to ensure comfortable and efficient teaching and learning online.

With this said, educational institutions realised that when you needed the in-class presence, a paper and pencil are gone: lots of the learning processes can be optimized and digitalized.

Conclusion

As we can see, the education system during the COVID-19 pandemic has been greatly changed, optimized, and digitized to deliver high-quality, engaging, and efficient education services to students worldwide. These changes have shown that online education can be a reality and doesn’t always require in-class lessons and paperwork. That experience gives us a precise idea of what kind of learning systems we can expect in the post-pandemic times.