One of the areas in the tech industry which has been gaining more and more attention over the years is edutech.

At the 5th Asia-Pacific Meeting on Education 2030 (APMED2030) meeting, Shigeru Aoyagi, director of UNESCO Bangkok, stressed the correlation between education and poverty eradication.

“Of all factors considered, low literacy skills are most strongly associated with poverty, socioeconomic disparity, and particularly the gap between rich and poor,” he said. “Reducing poverty requires that countries invest in equipping their populations with functional skills in reading, writing, and numeracy.”

As bringing equal access to education becomes of primary importance to governments, more and more founders are realising the ways in which technology can be used to reach a wider network of people.

To realise this common goal, there have been many investments poured into startups working in the sectors. The Southeast Asian (SEA) region has recently seen high-profile funding rounds raised by the likes of Ruangguru, HarukaEdu, Zenius, Edukasyon, and Gredu.

In an exclusive interview with e27, Nick Hutton, Regional Director Asia at e-learning platform D2L, talks about the challenges faced in promoting e-learning adoption in this region –and why edutech in SEA still has a long way to go….. compared to other countries.

A common misconception

Before we delve deeper into the challenges, Hutton believes that it is important to clarify the common misconception about edutech.

“There is a common misconception about edutech in Southeast Asia. It is believed that e-learning is fully online. But in reality, it happens in three forms: face-to-face environment, blended learning, and complete online learning,” he says.

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He further explains that the first way edutech can enhance learning is through a face-to-face setting, where software is used to enhance learning in institutions. The second way is through blended learning where a certain amount of time is spent in class and online courses. The last way is through complete online learning.

“Asia and SEA are far behind in the use of technology in assisting learning,” he continues ” North America has taken the lead, UK is pretty ahead, Australia and New Zealand to an extent. Hong Kong and Singapore have also largely incorporated it,”.

But Hutton is of the opinion that SEA and Asia are still largely untapped markets when it comes to incorporating e-learning into mainstream institutions. 

For example, an institution in Indonesia with 40,000 students will use technology in content –but it is still not seen as a campus-wide initiative.

As the regional director of D2L, which comes from the phrase “desire to learn”, he believes that what sets D2L apart from the rest of the edutech startups, is that the platform allows learning in all three forms.

Instructing the instructor

Keeping up with edutech trends is essentially important as technology radically aims to change everything we do, from banking, socialising and purchasing. That also means, convincing teachers to move away from orthodox modes of learning to more unconventional ways.

It is not difficult to introduce Millennials or the younger Gen-Zs to e-learning. In fact, students expect to learn in a “Facebook-style” manner, he jokes. But the main problem in this region are the teachers, he stresses.

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“They see it as ‘replacing’ rather than enhancing. It is difficult to convince them to change when they have been teaching in one particular mode for 20 years,” he underlines. “And that is a difficult conversation to have.”

A changing landscape

When asked about how the government fares in encouraging edutech adoption, he does not hold back. “Governments are still very much in the dark ages,” he says.

According to him, governments find it very difficult to recognise “accredited courses that lead to a degree in a completely online environment.”

However, that being said times are radically shifting and ten years ago it was far more important to get a degree from an accredited institution because it had a lot more kudos associated to it and also because of organisations in the past looked for somebody with an undergraduate degree of a certain level in a certain field.

He comes to the conclusion that despite all the hurdles, there is a new trend of “lifelong learning” evolving. Working professionals are starting to become more interested to have more skills to compete in the marketplace.

And employees are changing the way they are accepting these online certificates. Degrees do not have to be from institutions and the future of work and learning is driving that.

The problem for higher education arises because now, and in the future potentially there will be other deliverers of education around who are starting to deliver great education in a lifelong learning mode.

Noticing the shift in the learning landscape which poses a certain amount of threat to these institutions, they are now aiming to use technology much more smartly.

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Image Credit:  Susan Yin

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