Unforeseen disasters can sometimes unleash the unimaginable situations, albeit unwittingly in respect to E-Learning. Today businesses, economies, nations and human lives are reeling under Coronavirus impact. Globally, the education of 300 million students has been disrupted. Almost every hour there are reports of shutdowns of educational institutions and schools. But there’s a flip side to this dismal development: Online education businesses are registering a spike worldwide and carbon footprints have dipped significantly as people are working out of homes and corporate are offering free online courses for employee up skilling. It’s new-age-education in the time of Corona!
Despite living in a digital era and depending on the technology for each and everything in our day-to-day lives, we tend to be judgmental towards online learning. While most us believe that online learning is not as effective as the traditional classroom learning, we fail to notice the benefits of e-learning.
Is Online Education or E-Learning Effective?
Does it give you the skills you need to achieve your career goals? These are important questions every student wants to answer before undertaking the rigors and requirements it takes to earn an online degree. The answer to both questions is that yes, the online classroom is effective and should give you the same skills and knowledge you need to achieve professional success. Online learning gives you significant control over when you listen to your lectures, take your exams, and review course materials.
Myths about Effectiveness and Efficiency of E-Learning
Online learning is less stressful because of the natural flexibility built into the programs. This flexibility reduces stress which allows students to focus on the topic without having to worry about falling behind. The result is a better and more solid understanding of the material which improves the student’s ability to apply the concepts to their professional career. Employers no longer differentiate between the value of an online degree verses that of a traditional brick-and-mortar institution. For employers, the most important thing they want to know is whether you have the skills needed to perform the job at hand.
Benefits of Online learning to Teachers
E-learning has become an invaluable resource to educators and classroom teachers, harnessing a new model of knowledge sharing wherein students possess the tools to learn at their own pace. Online learning solutions provide much-needed effectiveness for teachers, allowing them to maximize the potential for individual learning curves and styles within the classroom. Online learning enables teachers to tap into this realm of constant learning by embracing the real-world application of theory through multimedia, video, chat, and interactivity. Educators can effectively harness the power of everyday technology to bring educational theories into the classroom. In elementary school settings, blended approaches to online learning allow both teachers and students to access a wide variety of modern teaching/learning tools and resources. Students can even revise their chapters if the teachers repeat them on Youtube.
Role of Teachers in a Virtual School
Online instructors promote creativity in much the same way as classroom teachers do, by offering their students different options when it comes to assignments and projects and bringing fresh ideas to the online environment. The teacher is responsible for following each student’s progress though the course. Teachers should continually be assessing students’ learning, diagnosing learning needs, and prescribing solutions. Fully online schools have the unique capacity to enable excellent teachers to reach more students, including students in hard-to-staff urban and rural schools, but evaluation systems do not capture the impact or potential of increased reach.
Will Online Education replace Classroom Learning?
E-learning tools provide educators and students with access to resources they couldn’t have had otherwise, no matter their status or location. But even though e-learning has become an education equalizer, it’s still not a replacement for the traditional classroom. Sure, the technology is advancing, but it’s not flawless. Just like any new, burgeoning innovation, e-learning faces its own challenges. In a traditional classroom, educators will tell you they need to be on their toes, trying to engage their students at every moment. One of the ways e-learning has tried to mimic the social aspects of a classroom is with tools like messaging boards, Facebook groups, and yes, sometimes chatbots. They give students the sense they aren’t just staring at an empty message board, but they are talking with real people about their homework.
Therefore, it’s the time to change perceptions and myths about online education. E-learning and the Traditional Classroom will one day form a union: compensating for one where the other lacks.
This article has been contributed by Bharti Kapoor. She started her teaching career in 1999 and left in 2013. Now she runs her company. She has penned down her thoughts amid Covid-19 crisis. Educators are upset and students are insecure. Lets see what future has for all of us but E-Learning is definitely not a full proof solution.
