Introduction
Automation can be defined as the process of removing the manual involvement of humans in a particular process either with the help of machines or by using software. Ever since the Industrial Revolution began, automating every industrial process became a common characteristic of modernization. This carried on through the First and Second Industrial Revolutions to what we call the Digital Revolution (or the Third Industrial Revolution) today, where all the technologies available are combined in meticulous ways to make the life of humankind much more manageable and efficient. For anyone living in the 21st century, the advantages of automation in the industrial process are almost obvious. However, in the interconnected age of today, more and more processes and technologies are being merged together to improve efficiency. This has reached the doorstep of education as well. Automation helps improve different aspects of different sectors, and the same goes for education as well. Here we will be covering why automation is required in the field of education and the advantages of automation in education.
The Need for Automation in Education
Just like any other field, the education sector also has evolved over the years. Along with its steady evolution, its dependence on technology has also increased. In the introductory paragraph, we established what is automation in the general sense. Automation in the context of education refers to the use of software technology to reduce the need for manual human labor in the education sector. This can be achieved through various means, first and foremost by shouldering the weight of organizing, conducting, and analyzing classes with software. There is an imminent need for every sector to adopt and evolve with the technology of the times and that time is now for the education sector. Let us see what the advantages of automation are with respect to education.
6 Advantages of Automation in Education
Given below are six of the major advantages of automation in the field of education:
Seamless Management
The biggest benefit of incorporating automation in schools, colleges, and education is the ease of management that it provides. However, there needs to be a distinction drawn between the management of the school and the management of the classroom, both of which are enabled by the process of automation.
Management Automation in School Administration
When it comes to the administration of schools, the process of automation can help out a lot by making the entire premise online and digital. Let us take the example of fee management. Traditionally, fee management involved tracking who has paid the fees, who hasn’t, how much each individual has paid, and constantly updating the same manually on a ledger, offline or online. However, with the use of a fee management system, the entire edifice of fee management can be automated, making the majority of the manual work related to fee collection and related grievance redressal practically vanish.
Management Automation in the Classroom
The classroom is the most fundamental engine driving a school forward intellectually, the students being the fuel and the teacher igniting the spark. This sacred connection needs to be molded and cultivated carefully, making the students feel comfortable and at home with themselves. This is made easier with classroom engagement tools such as the Live Polls & Hand Raise feature, or with classroom management tools like an attendance management system to keep track of each student’s attendance pattern individually.
Relieves Teachers of Managerial Duties
One of the biggest problems teachers face when it comes to their class is in-class time management. This is mainly because there are managerial duties that teachers have to do in addition to the duties of teaching, mentoring students, and maintaining decorum in the class. One of the most important of those is maintaining attendance through roll call. This takes up a significant portion of the time teachers have in class. With the help of automation in the form of an attendance management system, this process becomes automatic and seamless, completely eliminating the need for roll call at all.
Improves Efficiency
This is one of the advantages of automation that can be seen as analogous to the industrial process in the sense that the efficiency of the entire system becomes easier. Here, let us consider library management. New books come in, old books are thrown out, cataloging, assortment, tagging - all of these processes are quite labor-intensive and require a lot of concentration. Any errors that might occur during the process would lead to unaccounted books, which can lead to a loss for the library and other students in the school. With a proper library management system in place, the efficiency of all these processes can be greatly improved. Organization is extremely important in a library, and an automated system following an algorithm almost always outperforms human management skills when it comes to large amounts of data.
Suggested Read - The Benefits of Having a Library Management System
Reduces the Amount of Workforce Required
Because of the major amount of work being done by automation, the amount of manual labor involved is significantly reduced. Let us take the hectic and complicated process of admission management as an example. At the start of the school year, a lot of students apply for admission at the school, college, or university of their choice. The greater the popularity of the institution, the more will be the number of applications. The process of cherry-picking the right students on the basis of their talents is in itself a hectic task, especially when the strength is large, but what is even more tiring is the paperwork that goes behind it. Grievance redressal is another department that can get overwhelmed in the process. However, with a proper admission management system like the one offered by Teachmint, all of the operations mentioned above becomes streamlined manifold. Every process is automated, from the maintenance of records to the management of the follow-up process, hence reducing the number of people required for each task significantly.
Lower Operating Cost
The cost of a process increases with the amount of input put into its achievement. Generally, when the number of people involved in something increases, the number of labor increases, and consequently, so does the cost of the entire process. Since the software can do the function of several people at once, this significantly reduces the amount of money that needs to be spent on the process cumulatively.
Minimizes Errors
As English poet Alexander Pope famously said, to err is human. There are no processes involving people that will be perfect. Even the machines we use are ultimately human-made, requiring maintenance. The fraction of error multiplies exponentially with the number of people involved as well. However, with software, all kinds of humanly possible errors are practically wiped clean, enabling minimum error to get through the system. This is especially important in cases such as hostel management, where the security of students is at stake.
Conclusion
As you can see, the advantages of automation in the education sector are numerous and its potential applications are being tinkered with and expanded upon with every passing year. Teachmint offers an integrated school platform where the basic purpose is to incorporate the power of automation into every aspect of school management, essentially streamlining the process with the help of a learning management system, school ERP, digital content, and all the necessary tools for teachers, students, and administrators.
