Educate Back Better: A Perspective from Industry

Most people will agree, there are few corners of our lives COVID-19 hasn’t impacted. Education and industry are two domains still navigating how to meet the demands of this paradigm shift while maintaining some of the benefits brought on by remote education and work.

Education was already implementing e-learning before the pandemic; however, much of this online instruction was limited to flagship institutions. COVID-19 accelerated the learning model, and even showed that this is possible to be implemented at a much larger scale. Still, it exposed the inequities in technology-facilitated education in communities with less access to technology.

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Prior to the pandemic, many nations already had the tools and infrastructure to allow many companies to quickly shift to a work-from-home model, allowing for less disruption to industry. As for remote or sparsely populated regions, a lack of proper internet infrastructure furthered the divide in both education and employment opportunities. School educators have not been retained and curricula has not been fully adjusted for remote learning, which further compounds the situation. Our entire system is inadequate for managing the complexities and needs of the future education and workforce.

The “Build Back Better” strategy is a movement introduced to better prepare us for future disasters, pandemics, and dramatic changes to everyday life. COVID-19 not only exposed these problems, but emphasized them.

Continue reading about the “Build Back Better” strategy and the solutions required to solve an old but now magnified problem in the August 2021 edition of IEEE Computer Society's Computer Magazine.