What is digital education? Is it gaining a lot of attention? Do you need to start studying digital? Where can you study it? Does this mean you have to ditch your traditional studies?

If all these questions pop into your mind, you’re on the right track. It is absolutely necessary that you know all these things in today’s day and age and this blog will help you.

Digital Education

Digital education is all about learning the 4 main digital skills of today, which are, data science, designing, coding and digital marketing. To understand each of these skills, let’s take the example of Facebook.

Let’s say Facebook has decided to launch itself as a social media platform. Where do they begin? They need to first create a website and an app. This is where coding comes into play. Coding is basically communicating with your computer using a different language like CSS, HTML, JavaScript, etc.

Through a piece of code, you give instructions to your computer on what to do and how to behave. All applications, websites, etc are coded to work faster and efficiently.

Now with coding, Facebook’s base structure is ready. How can you make it more appealing? Graphics, images and animations. All this falls in the designing genre. All the visual content that you see is designed to catch your attention. Colour combinations, fonts, image resolutions are some of the important elements of designing.

Designer team sketching a logo in digital design studio on computer, creative graphic drawing skills for marketing and branding

Facebook is ready to use. But what next? Digital marketing is needed to churn out content that people are looking for, run advertisements on other digital platforms, generate traffic, increase clicks and engagement, and a lot more.

It is a vast pool of marketing activities that are done digitally on the Internet. Getting emails and SMSes from brands targeted specifically to you, seeing ads relevant to what you want to buy, getting answers to your questions on Google in the top few results itself, is all part of digital marketing.

After you have done some extensive marketing activities, you will get data on who came on your website or app, what did they do, where did they click, who saw your ads, how many took an action, how many ignored it and a lot more data.

All this data needs to be cleaned, analyzed, converted into reports and used to make a future projection for the company. Data Science is what enables all of this. This is an overall outlook on what digital education is about.

But, why is Digital Education important?

With everything going digital today and available at our fingertips, it’s a clear indication that digitalization is the future. All kinds of businesses will need a digital transformation, starting today.

All potential users are available on the Internet and to catch their attention, you need to be on the Internet as well. And even though it looks like an option today, it is going to be a necessity in the future because of the digital revolution. So to survive in the future with more lucrative career, business & entrepreneurship opportunities, digital education is the core.

Consumers are getting used to operating everything online, and companies need to prepare for consumer demands.

College students who start learning digital education right from the beginning will fit as better candidates for the top companies because businesses are in need of digital professionals.

And even if you plan to start your own venture, it is even more important for you to be well-versed with digitalization.

The most important reason why digital education is necessary is for you, as a college student, to stay updated with the latest digital marketing trends in the industry which opens even more opportunities and doors to your future.

The sooner you start, the better advantages of digital education you can reap. And your traditional education base is equally important so that it’s never a question about digital education vs traditional education. Your focus should be on traditional education plus digital education.

How can you get started?

As we previously mentioned, there are 4 main divisions when we talk about digital education. You will need to decide which one suits you the best. You can specialise in any one of the skills or consider choosing 2.

If you’re drawn towards analysing data and reporting, you can go for data science. The job scenario for data scientists has just started increasing and is expected to rise tremendously.

Similarly, if you’re interested in software development, then coding is the right field for you. Currently, there is a shortage in the supply of software developers and thus you can bridge this skill gap and become a useful resource in companies.

For all creative-minded individuals who want to churn out content, run advertisements, learn to bid, create email marketing campaigns, do SEO & more – Digital marketing is for you. Ever since the pandemic started, the need for digital marketing professionals has skyrocketed and the opportunities keep increasing.

Learn Digital Marketing with IIDE’s 3-month Online Digital Marketing Course that prepares you for all digital marketing skills in detail and also offers guaranteed placement assistance.

Graphic designing is a very good option if you have a knack for visualising designs and are creative.

On a parting note

As a college student, you should definitely have fun and enjoy your college years, but you must also start preparing yourself for life after graduation. Upskill yourself by taking up short term certification courses in digital marketing in as many skills as you are interested in.

It will definitely pay off. And what better than to learn digital skills which are the most in-demand. Hope this blog has been an insightful read.

Author Bio: Karan Shah is an ‘Edupreneur’ and the founder of IIDE – Indian Institute of Digital Education.