“Worldwide there are currently more than 1.2 billion children in 186 countries affected by school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic”
The sudden spread of Coronavirus pandemic across the globe has brought many sectors and industries to a drastic standstill. Educational sector has been affected by far and students in the count of billions are being restricted at home, unable to attend regular classes. This scenario developed the need of online teaching platform to be accepted by teachers and learners across the globe.
If we analyze the current state of academic continuity then is quite evident that many schools, institutes and coaching centers have already integrated online teaching and learning platform in their daily curriculum. With this the question arises, if online learning will be embraced the same way even after the pandemic is over?
Long before this situation of COVID-19, online learning market was already witnessing a potential growth, with the “global edtech investments reaching US$18.66 billion in 2019”. Hence, we cannot undermine the fact that online learning was, is, and will be a trending topic in the academic world.
Now let’s discuss the features of online teaching platforms and how they are benefitting education sectors during this crisis state of COVID-19.
Flexible and customizable
Online learning tools are integrated with features that provide flexibility and ease to its users irrespective of they are learners or educators. The platform enables the users to customize its features according to their requirements.
The educators can change the look of the platform, its themes and font styles also, they can add their own brand name and image to the platform. The online learning platform is often adaptive in nature and integrates well with the existing instruction providing structure created by the educator.
Inspires self-paced learning
Asynchronous learning is the best way to construct an engaging learning process. Asynchronous means the ability to cover up the syllabus or coursework at one’s own pace. The major parts of self-paced learning are courses provided by subject experts or experienced mentors and study material uploaded on the platform in form of – PDFs, recorded videos, videos and documents. This is the reason why online learning platforms are integrated with cloud technology so as to store large amount of data.
Games and Gamification
Gamification feature has become a new trend in the world of online learning. It has proven to be an effective method of motivating goal based learning amongst learners of all age groups.
Social learning
The concept of social learning platform is one of its kind and uniquely innovative. It is a combination of social network and online learning, creating a blend of learning tools that is both academic and engaging in nature. Here the educators can connect with learners and share their educational material, skills, courses, quizzes, etc. on a mutual platform.
Mobile learning
The current generation of students is the highest users of mobile phones and other sorts of technology. Social learning and teaching platforms can be integrated with all sorts of gadgets such as laptops, computers and even mobile phones. The mobile phone interface of these online learning platforms is highly adaptable and the content on the platform is regularly synced for better user-experience.
A learning application for both Android and iOS devices that enables learners access course content and attend live classes directly from their smartphones and tablets is very helpful. It aids students in learning instantly without investing in laptops and computers.
User-friendly interface
When it comes to online teaching it is important to note that many users are first time experiencing it and even the learners are from variety of age groups. For the overall comfort of users the online learning tools have smooth user-friendly interface through which the users can navigate smoothly. The interface is also intuitive and blends well with the daily requirements and necessities of online learning.
Conclusion
COVID-19 is undoubtedly an unfortunate event that has brought the whole world into grave crisis by disrupting all the sectors and industries. But if we see from the perspective of educational sector then it has not witnessed a downfall but an impending growth.
The wide acceptance of online teaching platforms by the entire educational industry has made it evolved on the next level. With so many benefits and possibilities that it has in store to serve, online learning was indeed the much awaited change that the educators required and now they have finally embraced it.
