STRENGTHENING ONLINE COUNSELLING IN THE ERA OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

This paper seeks to draw the educational institutions and the International counsellors' association's attention to the changes and benefits that the Fourth Industrial Revolution have brought to the counselling profession. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is the fusion of digital, biological, and physical worlds. It is transforming institutions through new technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, the internet, robotics, 3D printing, and advanced wireless technologies. Counselling is a mature relationship in which a professionally trained counsellor meets with clients to help them solve problems that have to do with their mental, personal, social, educational, and development. It is performed in two ways, thus, face-to-face and online. Online counselling is a more modern-day approach in which counselling is done via the internet. Online counselling is one of the technological ways of delivering counselling to clients through technologies such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. This counselling path uses platforms such as Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, WhatsApp, Skype and zoom. The paper covers the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), online counselling, the benefits of online counselling and the limitations of online counselling. The paper further highlighted the suggestions for strengthening online counselling in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era.