Solve online education challenges with remote access and document security software
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions are facing serious difficulties. According to the World Economic Forum and UNESCO, by the end of April 2020, more than 1.2 billion children in 186 countries have been affected by school closures.
Given the safety of students and staff, many institutions have taken or are considering online classes through e-learning and distance learning. While this ensures continuity in business and student education, there is still some uncertainty about the impact of distance learning. Parents want to be reassured that the quality of education will not be adversely affected and will continue to justify tuition fees. As a result, schools, universities and other education providers are under pressure to ensure a seamless transition to distance learning.
4 The challenge of online education
As an education provider, you need to ensure that distance learning effectively replicates the face-to-face learning experience. To do this, you will need to overcome some key challenges.
Make campus computer resources available to students and teachers at home
An important part of delivering an effective distance learning program and justifying student costs is enabling students to access on-site computer resources as they would in a classroom study.
Students need access to software applications, such as software applications for programming, 3D design, video editing, and more for their courses. It is not feasible for colleges to provide students with separate software licenses, and not all students have powerful computers at home to run desktop applications such as Adobe and Autodesk.
Not only students, but also faculty and staff need to work from home. As a result, they will need to remotely log on to school computers, set up lab computers, share course files, examine and interact with assignments submitted by students.
Although VPN may seem like a simple and secure option at first, their setup, maintenance, and expansion costs can be high and can cause latency issues.
Take into account the complexity of the increase, enabling IT teams to support and troubleshoot
Even in face-to-face learning, maintaining student engagement and focus is a challenge. This situation can be exacerbated in remote environments where there are technical problems. Video streaming problems, software crashes on lab computers, file transfer issues, training, etc. may interfere with the smooth running of the course. Troubleshooting these issues will require your IT team to remotely access a wide range of student and faculty equipment as well as school computers.
Protect proprietary learning materials
When you distribute courses online, there is also a risk that these materials will leak out to unauthorized users. For example, answers to handouts, exercises, and tutorial questions shared with students can be downloaded or forwarded to non-paid users. To make matters worse, they can be leaked to competitors, who can use it for their own courses. When you spend thousands of hours developing these materials, this leak erodes your revenue and damages your reputation and competitive position.
Track student engagement and monitor online exams
In face-to-face learning, it is easier to know which students are involved in and interact with the material. However, when everyone logs on to the course remotely, it can be difficult for teachers to keep students interested and check that they are concerned about the content of the course. You won’t know if the student actually read your handout or watched your video. And when you rate their tutorials or exams, you lose valuable time to motivate them, and their confidence can take a hit.
Today, even monitoring exams can be a challenge, as students today find more and more clever ways to cheat online exams. It is your responsibility to verify their identity, ensure that everyone has the same allocation of time to complete the exam, and prevent the disclosure of confidential exam questions. Inaction to take any of these measures will reduce the quality of the curriculum and the reputation of the institution.
Distance learning resources address the challenges of online education
Although there are many free distance learning resources available for distributing lectures, such as video conferencing and hosting tools, these resources alone are not enough. You also need a way to allow teachers to remotely perform other learning modes, including hands-on use of lab and related licensing software.
Anirveda is used for remote access to educational institutions
Anirveda provides educational institutions with secure remote access and remote support solutions to address these challenges. Students can access Windows and Mac lab PCs from any device, from anywhere. They can use laptops, Chromebooks, and any device at home, and remotely control lab computers to access resource-intensive software applications with high-performance capabilities, just like sitting in front of a lab computer. Teachers can also access the school’s computers at home, transfer files, view multiple monitors, and start chatting with students.
Contact us today to set up your remote computer lab.
Anirveda also addresses remote support challenges, support and troubleshooting for your IT team with its secure remote support solutions. These enable IT administrators to immediately resolve technical issues on students and teachers’ computers and mobile devices so that they can continue with classes immediately.
Try Anirveda SOS for free.
Digify document security protects proprietary learning materials
At the same time, educational institutions can use Digify to protect their course content and confidential exam questions from leaks. Digify provides document security and protection for your course materials by restricting access to paying students only. At the end of the course and exam, you can also set access to these materials to expire. This prevents non-paid students from accessing content, or competitors from using your intellectual property to use it for their own gain. RTD Learning can help you monetize your content more effectively when they find that they use Digify to protect their course materials from unauthorized sharing.
Digify also provides an effective way to track student program participation. Through its document security and data room solutions, Digify helps faculty track student access to materials, read what, time and duration, and adjust teaching resource application strategies and individual support appropriately. It is also a cost-effective online proctoring tool, especially suitable for online exams combined with e-mail and web photography monitoring.
Educational institutions adapted to distance learning challenges are bound to face financial and technical challenges. However, with remote access solutions such as Anirveda and document security solutions such as Digify, you can not only survive, but also adapt and grow your business.
Grow your education institution now. Start an Anirveda Solution.