How IaaS and SaaS technologies change education
According to MarketsandMarkets, the cloud technology market in education will reach $ 25 billion by 2021. And according to a CDW survey , half of the polled university rectors plan to migrate the infrastructure of educational institutions to the cloud in the next few years. Therefore, in this article we will talk about how IaaS transforms the educational system.
/ Flickr / r. nial bradshaw / CC
Sugata Mitra, a professor from India, argues that the principles of modern education were formed 300 years ago in the British Empire. Children were cut with one comb, not taking into account their individual characteristics to knowledge. The empire fell, but this approach to learning is still used in schools and universities. Only he no longer works , since today an individual and adaptive approach to students is often needed.
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Therefore, Mitra offers an alternative way of education: School in the Cloud . The platform was launched at the TED conference in 2014. It helps teachers and parents organize their own SOLE (Self-Organized Learning Environment) learning spaces and contribute to the global experiment to reorganize the education system using cloud technologies.
Another approach to education that is becoming increasingly popular today is mass open distance courses (MOOC). Traditional study materials are provided to students in the form of video lectures and interactive tasks. Also, students and teachers can chat on the forum. According to Gartner experts, MOOC renewed their interest in learning and set new strategic goals in the field of education.
Famous MOOC providers include Coursera, edX, Udacity, FutureLearn, and others . The first in popularity and reach is Coursera: as of February 2017, 24 million users and more than 2 thousand courses were registered on the platform.
Separately, it is worth noting XuetangX - the first Chinese MOOC platform. It is built on the basis of Open edX with the addition of independent learning mode and content management system. The number of registered students of the platform is 6.2 million people.
According to the study , in 2025, 200 million students a year will receive higher education. Most students will be from developing countries. The growing burden on the education sector is encouraging governments and specialized agencies to use cloud technologies as a tool to scale the entire educational system. This is due to the fact that the use of clouds and IaaS infrastructure in education offers certain advantages. Here are some of them:
One of the applications of cloud technologies is the deployment of business applications that are related to the finance, enrollment and resettlement of students. Such solutions are offered by Jenzabar in partnership with IBM. The College of Texarkana saved a million dollars by introducing Jenzabar EX ERP.
Another option is to use IaaS infrastructure to simplify course development and manage the load on e-learning systems. Virtual machines provide the ability to add / remove computing resources to improve performance or save on power. And deployment automation allows universities and platforms to fill and improve course content, rather than infrastructure maintenance.
With the help of IaaS, North Carolina State University reduced IT spending and deployed virtual desktops for teachers and students.
Over the past 20 years, teachers have achieved significant success in combining distance and class lessons. There were so-called virtual classes that give students the opportunity to attend the lessons remotely.
Cloud storage and social networks are used to make traditional activities more fun. The "inverted class" technology encourages independent study of materials, which frees up time for discussion and problem solving. At the University of Northern Illinois, the Blackboard Learn cloud platform already brings together 98% of teachers, students and their parents.
At the same time, cloud technologies allow to conduct classes in one room at once with several study groups that need different software or operating systems. IaaS solutions make it possible to run virtual machines in the cloud, which are a more flexible tool than “iron” computers. In this case, this approach opens the way for students to learn through their personal devices: laptops, tablets.
The likelihood that MOOC will replace the traditional university is small . But cloud-based educational platforms provide an opportunity to learn from the experience of the best teachers in the world.
For example, the IBM SoftLayer IaaS platform contributed to the development of research projects at St. Thomas University and helped increase the number of students by 30%. And the KshareAcademy platform allows colleges and universities across India to create courses and monitor students' work and progress.
New learning models are being introduced not only by universities, but also by technology companies in order to improve the skills of employees.
An example is the Philippine refresher courses from the state organization TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority). With the help of this organization, the number of course participants increased from 5 thousand in 2002 to 1.5 million in 2016. At the same time, 60% of students who graduated from TESDA MOOC got a job. TESDA also managed to achieve impressive completion rates: 41% of students completed the course, up from 10–15% in the United States and Europe.
Another example: Cisco Networking Academy. Cisco 's SaaS platform helped train 7.8 million students from 170 countries. Of these, 92% achieved their goals: got a job, increase or additional knowledge.
And according to engineer Akshay Kulkarni (Akshay Kulkarni), MOOC helped him get a job as a developer at Microsoft. At the interview, he was asked: "What do you know about cloud computing?", And he replied that he was an assistant teacher in the MOOC-course on cloud computing at the University of California at Berkeley. This was the last question about cloud technology, which he then asked.
PS Other articles from our corporate blog:
/ Flickr / r. nial bradshaw / CC
Sugata Mitra, a professor from India, argues that the principles of modern education were formed 300 years ago in the British Empire. Children were cut with one comb, not taking into account their individual characteristics to knowledge. The empire fell, but this approach to learning is still used in schools and universities. Only he no longer works , since today an individual and adaptive approach to students is often needed.
')
Therefore, Mitra offers an alternative way of education: School in the Cloud . The platform was launched at the TED conference in 2014. It helps teachers and parents organize their own SOLE (Self-Organized Learning Environment) learning spaces and contribute to the global experiment to reorganize the education system using cloud technologies.
Another approach to education that is becoming increasingly popular today is mass open distance courses (MOOC). Traditional study materials are provided to students in the form of video lectures and interactive tasks. Also, students and teachers can chat on the forum. According to Gartner experts, MOOC renewed their interest in learning and set new strategic goals in the field of education.
Famous MOOC providers include Coursera, edX, Udacity, FutureLearn, and others . The first in popularity and reach is Coursera: as of February 2017, 24 million users and more than 2 thousand courses were registered on the platform.
Separately, it is worth noting XuetangX - the first Chinese MOOC platform. It is built on the basis of Open edX with the addition of independent learning mode and content management system. The number of registered students of the platform is 6.2 million people.
How IaaS and SaaS affect education
According to the study , in 2025, 200 million students a year will receive higher education. Most students will be from developing countries. The growing burden on the education sector is encouraging governments and specialized agencies to use cloud technologies as a tool to scale the entire educational system. This is due to the fact that the use of clouds and IaaS infrastructure in education offers certain advantages. Here are some of them:
Simplify operations
One of the applications of cloud technologies is the deployment of business applications that are related to the finance, enrollment and resettlement of students. Such solutions are offered by Jenzabar in partnership with IBM. The College of Texarkana saved a million dollars by introducing Jenzabar EX ERP.
Another option is to use IaaS infrastructure to simplify course development and manage the load on e-learning systems. Virtual machines provide the ability to add / remove computing resources to improve performance or save on power. And deployment automation allows universities and platforms to fill and improve course content, rather than infrastructure maintenance.
With the help of IaaS, North Carolina State University reduced IT spending and deployed virtual desktops for teachers and students.
Improve the quality of student collaboration
Over the past 20 years, teachers have achieved significant success in combining distance and class lessons. There were so-called virtual classes that give students the opportunity to attend the lessons remotely.
Cloud storage and social networks are used to make traditional activities more fun. The "inverted class" technology encourages independent study of materials, which frees up time for discussion and problem solving. At the University of Northern Illinois, the Blackboard Learn cloud platform already brings together 98% of teachers, students and their parents.
At the same time, cloud technologies allow to conduct classes in one room at once with several study groups that need different software or operating systems. IaaS solutions make it possible to run virtual machines in the cloud, which are a more flexible tool than “iron” computers. In this case, this approach opens the way for students to learn through their personal devices: laptops, tablets.
Make higher education affordable
The likelihood that MOOC will replace the traditional university is small . But cloud-based educational platforms provide an opportunity to learn from the experience of the best teachers in the world.
For example, the IBM SoftLayer IaaS platform contributed to the development of research projects at St. Thomas University and helped increase the number of students by 30%. And the KshareAcademy platform allows colleges and universities across India to create courses and monitor students' work and progress.
Helps to improve skills
New learning models are being introduced not only by universities, but also by technology companies in order to improve the skills of employees.
An example is the Philippine refresher courses from the state organization TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority). With the help of this organization, the number of course participants increased from 5 thousand in 2002 to 1.5 million in 2016. At the same time, 60% of students who graduated from TESDA MOOC got a job. TESDA also managed to achieve impressive completion rates: 41% of students completed the course, up from 10–15% in the United States and Europe.
Another example: Cisco Networking Academy. Cisco 's SaaS platform helped train 7.8 million students from 170 countries. Of these, 92% achieved their goals: got a job, increase or additional knowledge.
And according to engineer Akshay Kulkarni (Akshay Kulkarni), MOOC helped him get a job as a developer at Microsoft. At the interview, he was asked: "What do you know about cloud computing?", And he replied that he was an assistant teacher in the MOOC-course on cloud computing at the University of California at Berkeley. This was the last question about cloud technology, which he then asked.
PS Other articles from our corporate blog:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/343198/
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