The Tech Takeover

How a handful of technology companies are becoming central to imparting management education

- NIDHI SINGAL

WHEN MAHARASHTRA CLOSED EDUCATIONAL institutions from March 16 due to the coronavirus outbreak, Mumbai-based S.P.Jain Institute of Management & Research (Bhavan’s SPJIMR) went live with online classes the very next day. It could do so because of advance planning, but, more importantly, due to tie-up with technology enablers such as Zoom for meetings, TCS iON for enterprise resource planning (ERP), ExamSoft and eKOSH for online assessments and Padlet for collaboration among students.

SPJIMR is not alone. Technology providers are fast taking over B-school campuses with the promise of better student engagement and learning outcomes. The change has been happening for years, but the pandemic, and the need for technology to enable remote teaching, have encouraged them to press the pedal. “The pandemic made virtual examination platforms indispensable to education continuity for every institution and a lot of B-Schools started leveraging these,” says Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer | Mettl, remote proctoring and online examination partner of a number of leading B-schools.

The booming B-School segment that Mercer | Mettl is a part of has, apart from providers of specialised online courses such as Coursera, edEX and IIMBx, technology providers such as CoCubes that are using AI/ML to ensure students do not cheat during exams, and RemoteXs and McGraw Hill that are helping students access the best econtent globally with a few clicks.