Cloud Computing in the educational sector is a buzz of this pandemic era. As per the latest insights, the revenue share of cloud computing will grow from 25.36 US Billion Dollars (which is in 2021) to 53,487.89 Million US Dollars by the end of 2027. Thinking about the reason why such growth will occur!! The answer is – benefits offered by cloud computing in the field of education. From offering a flexible learning environment encompassed by strong and authentic security standards to let the educational institutions support a variety of learning styles in their curriculum in a scalable way, all this has been made possible with cloud computing.
Let’s take a look at a few benefits which the current educational sector is perceiving from cloud computing in a direct or indirect manner.
1. Cloud Computing is Flexible with Scalability
Scalability in the Education sector simply means flexible accommodation of a growing number of users. These users may either be the students, faculty members, or the higher management authorities. Here, cloud computing can flexibly let those users scale their learning curves well through applications like Google Classroom, TeacherKit, etc. You may think about how these apps flexibly support scalability! From managing the assignment submissions to tracking the progress of students by reviewing their knowledge about the current subjects of their curriculum, all this can be done in those apps. Besides all of that, usage peaks and traffic spikes which occur at times of new submissions are also managed well in a transparent and efficient manner. If the admin of those apps finds it difficult to manage the growing number of users, then he/she can scale down the usage threshold for preventing wastage of time as well as resources.
2. Cloud Computing has Nullified the Impact of Data Crashes
Data crashes occur a lot of times when your system has no protection from viruses, accidental damage (physical or formatting errors). Wondering if such crashes may impact a student’s education! Of course, this will create long-term repercussions because a student will now be not able to access the documents or files related to subjects like Maths, Physics, English, and so on. In the education sector, cloud computing has nullified such crashes with the data-loss prevention policies embedded in e-learning software. Depending upon the needs and levels of protection, the policies may be categorized from open-source to critical. Open-source means any of the students may access the data anytime without any restrictions while critical means the students need to take permission from the upper management involving teachers, deans, etcetera for accessing their study material round-the-clock. With those policies, the educational institutions may now monitor and detect the risks occurring at the software’s endpoints. Later, they may ask for assistance regarding the reconfiguration of the existing network security on which e-learning software rely. Thus, on an overall basis, cloud computing isn’t only monitoring the fraudulent activities but also imbibing automation in those e-learning platforms promisingly AUTO-SAVING the minor changes in the course content thereby nullifying unexpected data crashes.
3. Cloud Computing is Massively Encouraging Cost Reduction
Cloud Computing is a driving force for contemporary education at reduced costs. This is because cloud-based applications for education don’t demand many resources and can be operated seamlessly on tablets, desktops, or smartphones at utter convenience. With all this, learning has become much simpler and convenient because students can now purchase a low-cost subscription of an educational application (let’s say 10 dollars per month) to access the educational content of their classes on four computers/ smartphones instead of purchasing the license of Microsoft Office Suite whose actual cost is 249 dollars per month. Another real-life cloud-based application encouraging cost reduction is Google Drive. If a student or a faculty member uses it, the hardware storage offered is 15 Gigabytes (for free) and no additional software is required to run this for storing or modifying your educational content. In this way, cloud computing is emerging as the best option while matching the students’ convenience with ease-of-access and learning at their fingertips at reduced or no costs.
4. Cloud Computing is Engaged with Variety of Learning Styles
Learning styles used by the current educational institutions demand modernization, which is achievable by cloud computing solutions. You might be thinking about the variety of learning styles that can be adopted! Those styles are readily engaged by the cloud-based applications and available to the users in the form of video tutorials, interactive quizzes, discussion forums for students, and so on. All of them are supported well by the applications like VMWare cloud, Azure Virtual Cloud, Oracle Cloud, KVM. Through them, the educational institutions are able to augment various learning styles in reality so that the students can access higher standards of learning through many agile and innovative cloud solutions. Such an engagement with digital solutions is making the students tech-savvy and less dependent on the traditional educational curriculum, always demanding expensive books whose learning styles are primarily outdated.
5. Cloud Computing is Supporting Faster Students Collaboration
Faster collaboration means creating plenty of latest and innovative possibilities of collaboration. This sort of collaboration will be advantageous for both students and teachers because now, students and their teachers can resolve more problems related to subjects in a trustworthy and engaging manner. Even at times, students get stuck on some minor topics of their projects or assignments, teachers can use the power of collaborative learning of cloud-oriented platforms (for example Skype) and guide the students well so that all of them may stay on the same page. Thinking about the benefits collaboration is offering in real-times! The prime benefit is that those students sitting a thousand miles away from the institute’s location can now enhance their knowledge base well at lesser expenses without any infrastructure. In case some queries are still left unsolved, they can be answered through chats, online lectures, and virtual assessments, thereby eliminating the necessity of a physical classroom.
6. Cloud Computing is Assisting Edu. Institutes with Virtual Classrooms
Edu. i.e., educational institutes are nodding their heads towards the anytime, anywhere learning model in education. This is because the model supports time management and uncountable discussions so that the mentors and their students can interact with each other without adhering to the boundary of time. Such a model is depicted well with the environment of virtual classrooms (like Adobe Connect also supports the principle of virtual learning) where students can do live interaction with their mentors and show active participation in learning activities. Are you worried about data loss? You better not think much about it as cloud storage is storing and retrieving the course content whenever you require the same. Additionally, if you want your mentor to give more time to some of the topics at your convenience, this is possible with the one-O-one interaction option of your self-paced virtual classroom. Also, such classrooms help the institutions smartly establish their presence well in the areas far from their reach, which is opening endless possibilities for students to learn new skills and grow flexibly with such distance learning environments.
7. Cloud Computing is Serious Towards the Security of Learning Materials
Online learning materials are an inevitable part of this modern education. This is because those materials are attracting students of different mindsets in a fun-loving and adventurous manner. Through this, students have understood the power of learning opportunities availed online. But what if the security of such learning materials is compromised? No need to worry because cloud computing is serious towards that and with CSA i.e., Cloud Security Alliance (an organization supporting and defining best practices for security of data acquired by the educational institutions), the educational sector need not feel troublesome about the security of students’ assignments, projects, performance dashboards, and so on. This is because CSA is able to fill the gap between modern education and the traditional market with its audit standards. Regardless of what the institutions are taking security initiatives, CSA is educating potential resources of any of the institutions with its security standards and letting those resources showcase their expertise from thousands of miles away. Also, the use of VPN i.e., Virtual-Private-Network is strengthening the security pillars of cloud computing for educational institutions as students may now adopt cloud-technology applications for high-quality remote education with much flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Such seriousness shown by cloud computing towards the educational sector has made sure that the academic content is made readily available to the right people at the right time with less or no modification.
