Be it to fall for the virtue of it or be swayed by its beauty, imagination ranks highly among human intellects being responsible for the advancement of society. An older brother to creativity, imagination booms in periods of crisis and chaos. 2020 presented a crisis never before felt by the modern world. And the modern world had an answer that’d been slowly building itself for the past 2 decades. Call it online communication or long-distance networking, modern society’s biggest advantage is its hyper-connectivity. From distanced-out project completion to fluid workflows, the pandemic crisis has shown that the wheel keeps chugging along even with limited resources and non-physical interactions.
Online teaching and learning have paced up dramatically and with digital infrastructures getting optimized on a daily basis, the education industry is surely looking up to a new horizon. Throughout the year we’ve seen a lot of new options pop up, claiming to optimize connectivity and increase productivity through innovative learning mechanisms. These apps host numerous video lectures and innovative online assessments that provide the students with positive opportunities in learning through effective visualization of concepts and real-time feedback.
Quite a lot of start-ups and named firms have ventured into this form of online education, but not all have tested it successfully. And given the state of income demography in the subcontinent, many if not all of these platforms have focused richly on their mobile offerings through apps and mobile-friendly web pages. Online teaching apps are redefining education and it is definitely a move in the right direction.
Let’s look at some of the positives that online education brings to the table. Here are the 10 most desirable outcomes of online education:
1. Connectivity: With online learning, students and teachers are more connected and instantly available for doubt clearance and assignment works. Now there is no denying that classroom education is more ethical and time-efficient, but online learning brings about an equal opportunity for students who in a typical classroom setting would generally shy away from asking questions.
2. Monitoring: Since each student is directly connecting to their teachers, the teachers can give personal attention to the progress of individual students thereby improving the students learning efficiency. This gets reflected on the overall personality development of the student and is healthy from a grading perspective.
3. Time: It’s generally agreed upon that online education and even work-from-home eats up more time than required due to its complex setup. And although this problem is commonplace, the fact remains that once the process gets smoother, most if not all the participants can quickly and efficiently complete their respective tasks.
4. Revision: Many schools are opting for pre-recorded video models that the students can revisit anytime during the entire academic year. Even live classes are recorded and uploaded for the same purpose. This option is also very helpful for students who may have missed the original class itself.
5. Assessment: Since everything related to the course is online, the tests and assessment process gets simple for teachers who can more efficiently check and manage these online on a singular platform. And given the fact that functions such as ‘Google Forms’ allow for a much easier test setup, online teaching is a boon for tests and gradation.
6. Assignments: An extension of active monitoring, online learning brings about a time-bound and efficient approach to daily assignment and homework submissions. It is easy and effective, and at the end of the day, no student can get out by saying “copy toh Ghar pe chor Aaye”.(left the copy at home)
7. Discipline: With online learning, since almost everyone is attending the classes (disguised as meetings) from the comfort of their homes, there should not be any late entries, at least theoretically. And although there are a few outliers, this kind of discipline is generally maintained.
8. Decorum: Everyone is sitting miles apart in their homes and this setup creates an atmosphere where students cannot break the decorum of the class through unnecessary gossips which more so often is the case with classroom learning.
9. Engagement: Students sitting at the end of the class often miss out on essential dictations by their teachers, who more often than not, don’t carry megaphones or amplifiers to the classes. This problem is easily mitigated through online learning.
10. Resources: With online learning, the operational and maintenance cost of running a school is saved hugely, thus reducing the overall cost of education. This is supplemented by almost zero transportation costs leading to a smaller carbon footprint.
