The landscape of learning has revolutionized ever since the pandemic hit us. The way we live, work, or learn has drastically changed. We are now more cautious towards our health and safety has become our priority. The crisis that has surrounded us this year has raised our concerns about how things work and how we adapt to the needs of the current situation.
eLearning trends above all have observed some major reforms. Sitting altogether in educational institutes now worries everyone. Even with precautions, panic, and tension in the air remain. Hypothetically, if we manage to get out of this epidemic, as we are making some serious progress, we still need an innovative approach towards things if we want to be prepared for future crises.
From Learning to eLearning Trends
Learning like any other industry has gone digital to avoid any personal interactions among people. Educational learners along with teachers across the globe found a way to make things simpler and safer for everyone. Apart from the convenience eLearning is providing, it is also a relief on the pocket. Professional courses, degrees are now available online at a cheaper cost than what you had to pay at academic institutions.
People have directed their focus more on how online learning environments can be made better and over the past few years, even before the pandemic, people have brought some great innovations in it. Leveraging the fact that everyone now is fond of smartphones and computers, the learning industry has developed an online interface tailored to learner’s needs.
Read more: How does a learning management system work?
Top 5 Current eLearning Trends
Since everything has streamlined and people now have established the importance of eLearning, they are following the latest techniques and trends to make it more virtually interactive and engaging.
Adjusting with the new normal, we have realized that online learning can be exhausting if no human interaction is involved. Thus, collaborative learning took place to make learning more fun and interactive.
The Learning Management System (LMS) is rapidly evolving as the current requirements of distant learners increase. Online institutions and academies are updating their interfaces to provide a dynamic learning environment while enabling students to learn at their comfort. Students and learners across the globe can now collaborate on learning platforms to expand their knowledge about the cultures and norms of different students from around a country or different countries.
Augmented Reality Learning
The implementation of augmented reality in education has gained some serious growth in learning. Adding virtual features to reality can increase engagement in learning even if it is online. For a wider and better future, educators are now leveraging AR learning to enhance problem-solving and leadership skills among students.
Unlike Virtual Reality, AR saves the student from tech hurdles. The time they spend figuring out how a device works, they spend on learning with AR. Real-life scenarios can be best presented with AR for students to teach them how to deal with them. This will generate leaders and not just learners.
Virtual Reality Learning
Back in school and college days where teachers loaded their student minds with only words and numbers, students were deprived of character development that could lead to a problem-solving attitude. They never learned how to deal with practical life scenarios. If everything could be taught through books, experience would have accounted for nothing in professional life.
Virtual reality learning has made educators’ lives much simpler. Instead of waiting to grow old and step into professional life to learn how to deal with different circumstances, VR learning can teach all this beforehand. It has the potential to enhance learning on a different level. The conventional ways of delivering lectures and lessons have said their goodbyes ever since VR learning is invented.
Learning online can lead to boredom considering it has minimum human interaction involved. Online learning sessions and video-based lectures are still not enough to engage learners in virtual lectures. Gen Z and even millennials are generations that demand innovation in everything. They want rapid development in the learning system to progress.
This gave rise to a new learning method that incorporates gaming in education to maximize efficient learning. Gamified learning is a current trend that teaches learners through gaming. It develops the necessary social skills among students and makes their decision making power strong.
Experiential learning or learning through reflection on doing was a much-needed learning system that people are projecting these days. This learning system requires individuals to learn from their own experiences. Learners take their own decisions, make wrong choices, and come up with a better strategic plan to overcome their flaws to increase accuracy rate.
This type of learning is more prominent in a professional field where everyone is required to learn from their own experiences. Workplaces along with educational institutes incorporate experiential learning to enhance employee’s working skills. This develops a better strategic mind that can think outside the box and brings revolution from their potential.
eLearning Trends: Advantages and Disadvantages
Benefits of eLearning
We are already aware of how much eLearning is contributing towards the growth of education but here are some major benefits:
a. Lesser Budget
We know how much education can cost our banks. Higher education, in particular, is an unbearable pain form which the majority is suffering, unfortunately. The struggle to get educated is real even though it should have been easier from the start. eLearning has made education comparatively cheaper yet as effective. Those who envy the international education system can now be a part of it from their homelands by having much less to pay.
b. More Availability
The Internet is a huge network with infinite space for educational institutes to set up their online presence. In-house education is limited to resources and physical space. In a country or a city, educational institutes can only provide education in certain areas that limit their reach.
Online learning makes education more available for students. Thousands of online academies are providing LMS features to students to make education accessible at any point.
c. Promotes Mobility
Some people are keen to learn in almost every part of the country. People are living in remote areas where education is not available. eLearning has made those learner’s life easy. Students learning from remote areas can easily obtain their desired skills through online learning.
Drawbacks of eLearning
There are two sides to everything and eLearning too has a few downsides.
a. Tech Dependency
Although we are fond of technology and we are surrounded by it everywhere, not everyone has direct access to it. Different parts of the world are deprived of electricity, to begin with. There is no stable internet connection nor they have updated tech devices to aid them with education. Thus, eLearning leaves out a certain group who have lesser reach to technology.
b. Leads to Isolation
Electrical devices can entertain us to a point but the end goal is never entertainment. Education through web and software and no human interaction can create introverts, as it does not allow you to work on your social skills completely. Students can be entertained with augmented or virtual reality but it will still fail to provide a personal social human experience.
c. Lesser Motivation
eLearning fails to deliver motivation among learners. Many students have grown fond of direct learning and do not feel the same way about eLearning. The lesser involvement of teachers in online learning can make students dull and less competent to meet deadlines for assignments.
The Future of eLearning
ELearning trends, without a doubt, are here to stay. It has recently debunked the conventional ways of learning and the coming era will get a tighter grip around it. But what more could be done to it? We tend to think we have accomplished perfection in online learning, considering how much we have revolutionized it and made it better compared to the previous learning system.
However, innovation has no limits. As long as brilliant minds are working 24/7 for the betterment of humanity, we will keep on evolving and learning the system with us. Automatic learning might take place in the future but that is just a theory for now. If that happens, we might be able to learn and adopt other’s learning skills through programming. It may seem impossible to many but what we have achieved so far was thought to be impossible a few years back. That concludes that eLearning is the present and ultimate future of education.