The Covid-19 pandemic has affected every industry and aspect of our lives. Education is no exception and schools are not the only place of learning to suffer from the disruption of lockdown measures and other responses to the virus. In this article, we explain how the pandemic has affected learning and training for students and professionals alike – and why Covid-19 is driving a greater need for eLearning translation.
Covid-19 pushing the shift towards eLearning
Digital adoption has been driving the transition towards eLearning for many years but the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this shift. Reports show the digital education market is set to grow with a 33.28% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for 2020-2026, driven by the disruption and demands of a global pandemic.
“COVID-19 accelerated the market acceptance, inviting new players and enhancing market penetration. [Covid-19] has forced students to rely on online mediums for attending lectures, which in turn is positively moving international digital education market remuneration.” – Digital Education Market by Learning Type (Self-paced and Instructor-led Online Education), Course Type, End-user (Individual Learners and Academic Institutions, Enterprise and Government Organizations), and Geography (North America, Europe, APAC and RoW)-Forecast up to 2026.
Students are not the only ones affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures. Companies were also forced to close and most are still operating under some kind of Covid measures, which inevitably affect productivity and output.
As McKinsey explains, though: “businesses can’t afford to put capability building on hold.”
“Whether the effort is reskilling at the business-unit level or a company-wide aspirational transformation, companies can’t simply push the pause button on critical workplace learning, even as they move rapidly to put employee safety first.” – Adapting workplace learning in the time of coronavirus, McKinsey.
Online learning provides a safe, consistent environment for people to train, learn and develop new skills. In fact, the digital learning experience is proving to be a more effective channel for engagement and retention.
According to the World Economic Forum, “online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, and take less time, meaning the changes coronavirus have caused might be here to stay.”
eLearning translation opens global opportunities
One of the most distressing impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic is how disproportionately it affects people, hurting the most vulnerable more than anyone. In the classroom (whether physical or digital), non-native speakers are the most disadvantaged, but eLearning translation creates an environment where everyone can benefit from learning in their native language.
This will be increasingly important as more companies shift towards digital training and the share of international students and workers grow.
For companies operating internationally, eLearning translation provides a centralised system for creating consistent training material – that meets the required standards and regulations of each territory – while providing every member of staff the skills your business needs to drive further growth.
Meanwhile, a growing list of countries are introducing remote working visas in response to travel restrictions and the big working from home (WFH) experiment, which could remove the geographical limitations of hiring talent while placing an even greater emphasis on quality multilingual training.