COVID-19 is a major inflection point in the civilizational development of the contemporary society as it passes through various phases of industrial revolutions. Pre-COVID-19, the technological realm was ready to trigger a major disruption, but the societal realm was putting pauses upon it. The wrath and fury that ensued as COVID-19 became a global pandemic in the span of a few months meant that there was no choice but to embrace the digital in all its ramifications. Certain industries underwent this transformation organically, albeit quickly. This chapter attempts to portray the digital transformation of education just before and during COVID-19 and then goes on to discuss how the cultural shift into the digital-dominant, post-COVID-19 world could lead to disruption in the educational industry, potentially displacing “old school” models with new technologies and practices.
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Education has been very reluctant to embrace digital technologies, primarily due to the firmly held belief that high touch face to face interactions in physical spaces is critical to learning; factors such the unwillingness of the teachers to master the educational technologies, glaring digital divide, unavailability of custom-made educational technologies, etc., contributed to this (Djan & George, 2016; George & Nair, 2016; Khatun, George, & Dar, 2021). However, the early adopters of digital education quickly proved that, rightly executed, it was no way an inferior alternative. Also, the sudden influx of exogenous innovators into the educational space made traditional providers realize that they may face soon face an existential crisis, if not changed fundamentally and quickly. This led them to the hunt for radically new bases of competitive advantage in education; as we write this paper, the educational landscape has become a crucible for some of these most pathbreaking developments in any social sphere. Even public school systems have embraced this wave in big ways with a spending of more than $3 billion a year on digital content alone, nationally (Herold, 2016).
The Covid-19 Pandemic in the Spring of 2020 forced educational institutions to rapidly adapt their traditional in-person instruction to online (remote / non-physical) learning (Schleicher, 2020). It has been one of those only ‘one-of-its-kind’ challenges (Daniel, 2020). Without having any readymade alternative, governments around the world were quick to close down schools and colleges (Zhu & Liu, 2020). The use of internet technology and applications such as video conferencing and learning management systems (LMS) were critical to make the transition to exclusively online learning relatively seamless, however the degree of effective implementation and successful adaptation varied across institutions, as a 100% digital educational environment was uncharted waters for most (Batubara, 2021). An involuntary mass cultural shift was initiated, resulting in new priorities and preferences for educational stakeholders, consequently germinating new possibilities and offerings that may have never gained traction without the fertile ground of opportunity cultivated by a global pandemic, serving as the catalyst for “educational recalibration” to current and future needs (Aristovnik et al., 2020; Lall & Singh, 2020). It is equally likely that Covid-19 merely exposed a future that has already been with us for some time, a future that escaped the radars of all but those who were closely working on it.
This paper offers glimpses into the lived experiences of educators and educational administrators regarding the digital transformation of education just before and during Covid-19, and then discusses how the cultural shift into the digital-dominant, post-Covid-19 world could lead to disruption in the educational industry, potentially displacing “old school” models with new technologies and practices.