Since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses and services to close their physical doors to the public, there has been a surge in interest for virtual services powered by cloud computing. A good example of this is with education – the boom in demand for online courses and remote learning has been very significant.
The key to remote learning is in the cloud, which we were able to discuss with an IT support company London based education providers have in the past used to access cloud solutions. The company, TechQuarters, stated that there are a lot of advantages to using cloud solutions in the education sector; but at the same time, there are definitely some important considerations – and so we have compiled some of the top Pros and Cons for educators to consider.TechQuarters are a trusted and professional outsourced IT Support London provider, they have helped countless companies to enhance and utilise their Microsoft Cloud Solutions in the best possible ways.
Advantages of the Cloud for Educators
Cost Efficiency
On-premise infrastructures fall out of date in just a few years; whereas public cloud providers invest a lot of money to ensure their infrastructures are always cutting edge – and the customers that access this infrastructure get the benefit of that technology at a mere fraction of the cost. Educators can reduce the cost of data storage long-term, and even eliminate certain costs – including hardware maintenance and replacement.
Accessibility
One of the greatest advantages for educators adopting cloud services is that they can vastly increase the accessibility of their service. Cloud hosting makes it very easy to access resources from any platform – including web, desktop, and mobile – and the only requirement is an internet connection. This means that students can feasibly access their resources from anywhere.
Scalability
If an education provider relies on on-premise data centres and servers to deliver their resources, it would be much more expensive – not to mention time-consuming – to scale up their services. On the other hand, hosting your data and applications in the cloud makes them very easy to deploy, and very easy to scale up; in other words, you can easily increase the number of users your content is accessible to, thanks to the nature of the cloud.
Improved Collaboration
In education, collaboration is always encouraged. There are two main types of collaboration in education:
- Student-Teacher – Whereby students communicate with their teachers with regards to work and projects.
- Student Peer-to-Peer – Where students communicate with each other through specific channels (for collaborative projects or to share information).
- Faculty Peer-to-Peer – Where teachers communicate and collaborate with one another for various purposes.
There are cloud solutions that can be leveraged to make all of these different types of collaboration much easier. These solutions include cloud-based communication platforms (such as Microsoft Teams, or Slack); and cloud-based educational resource platforms (like Blackboard).
Modernized Education
The cloud is the gateway to modern education. From solutions like Desktop and Software as a Service, to custom portals for content delivery, there are lots of ways in which educators can modernize their operations. When we spoke with TechQuarters, they confirmed that, when they provide IT support for education organisations, a lot of the clients are looking for opportunities to transform their services (and as cloud solution providers, they are able to help them with that).
Opportunities for Innovation
TechQuarters confirmed that, like businesses from any sector, educational organisations are often looking for ways to innovate using Cloud technology. Owing to the fact that the cloud puts cutting edge technology in the hands of smaller businesses, it is a great way for organisations to test new products and services. Using the cloud, an educational organisation might be able to develop new learning resources and make them available to their users – such as video content, or even custom applications.