5 Advantages Of Online Learning: Education Without Leaving Home

    Although online education has its limitations, there are several advantages of online learning that explain why e-Learning may be the greatest revolution in today’s education. Here are 5 of them.

 

Traditional Education And Advantages Of Online Learning

    There are several problems with the traditional system of education. First of all, you need to pay thousands of dollars per term to attend a prestigious school. With all those budget cuts, busy classrooms, and course shortages, you won’t always get the chance to study exactly what you want.

    It’s no wonder why millions of students from all around the world opt for online degree programs or take at least one college course through an online platform. Online learning has to be the greatest revolution in contemporary education. It made a huge change in the system and opened great opportunities for everyone who wants to learn something.

    Nevertheless, online education is still related to stereotypes. People often think that online students are not smart enough for a traditional college or university, they are lazy, and they don’t get “real” degrees. These claims discourage many people from taking online courses, so they get stuck in the traditional educational system that consumes a huge deal of money, nerves, and years of their lives.

    Allow us to explain why online learning is more awesome than you think. We have 5 advantages of online learning that will make you reconsider your attitude towards this type of education.

Advantages Of Online Learning

1. You can learn whatever you want!

    You can pick the program of your dreams in traditional education, too, but that would involve traveling away from home, living in a completely unknown city, and struggling in an extremely competitive learning environment. With online education, you can take any program or course present in traditional four-year universities.

    For example, let’s say you’re mostly interested in neuroscience. All it takes is a Google search for such online course, and you’ll easily find the online programs offered by some of the most prestigious universities from all around the world. You can take such a course even if you have no aspirations to apply that knowledge in your future profession, but you’re simply curious to discover new interests and understand how the human brain works. The great variety of online programs and courses is a huge advantage of this type of education. It doesn’t matter where you live and what you want to study – you can always find a suitable course or even a degree program that you can follow from home.

2. Comfort

    Forget about attending classes for hours, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, and suffering from back pain by the end of the day. You will not be bound to physical class session when you opt for online education. All lectures and needed materials are provided via online platforms, so you’ll easily access them from the comfort of your home. You will not take public transport to get to campus, you won’t have to spend money on gas for your car, you won’t have to get up early to get dressed for class… the list of conveniences goes on and on.

    Comfort is a strong advantage, but it can go both ways. You mustn’t allow yourself to get too comfortable when studying from home, so it would be best to abandon the couch for few hours a day and set up an inspirational studying environment in your home. All you need is a large desk and a nice, comfortable chair.

3. Online courses look great on a resume

    It doesn’t matter where your career stands at this moment; an online program will always look good on your resume. It will show potential employers that you’re committed to learning and you’re eager to obtain more knowledge and new skills. Hiring managers don’t see online degrees as inferior to traditional ones. A degree is a degree. If you obtain an online degree from a prestigious university, you’ll boost your career with the speed of light. You will certainly become a better candidate for a job promotion, and your resume will look much better when you apply for new positions.

4. Self-paced learning

    When you start browsing through interesting online courses and programs, you’ll notice the Self-Paced label on most of them. What does this mean? Self-paced learning means that the students can start completing the targets at any time, and he can arrange a learning schedule that meets his individual needs.

    When you enroll in a traditional college program, you’ll have to forget about work, hobbies, and even family. In such setting, studying has to be a priority. That’s why many single parents and people who work decide to forget all about their dreams to get a higher degree.

    A self-paced system enables them to make progress with rhythm that suits them. This type of system does not require attending live sessions; you can access the materials at any time that works for you. If you have to work or take care of your home and children during the day, you can study at night. That’s an advantage the traditional educational system cannot beat.

5. Lower costs

    The fact that online programs are cheaper when compared to the ones held in a traditional campus setting is enough to convince you to consider them. The average tuition for online courses depends on multiple factors, so it varies from one program to another. If, for example, you want to enroll in the Big Data Specialization program provided by University California, San Diego through Coursera, you’ll pay $399. You also have an option to pay $49 per course. Financial Aid is available for learners who cannot afford this fee, so that’s something you should always keep in mind.

    We saved the best part for last: many online courses are completely free of charge. MIT, for example, offers all course materials online without any charges. Free courses don’t usually come with certificate of completion, but they are still more than useful for anyone who wants to learn from prestigious educators.

Online Education Is Totally Worth The Effort

    Online courses and degree programs are more convenient and cheaper than their counterparts in traditional education. Those are the two main advantages of online learning that lead many students to opt for online platforms when they want to earn a degree or certificate.

The best thing about online learning is that you can learn in a relaxed manner even if you don’t want to get certified. You only need passion for learning and a quick online search that will take you to the right course. From that point on, you will be the master of your own education.

Is Online learning important in education?

When it comes to online learning in education, the model has been pretty straightforward - up until the early 2000s education was in a classroom of students with a teacher who led the process. Physical presence was a no-brainer, and any other type of learning was questionable at best. Then the internet happened, and the rest is history. Online learning is a rapidly growing industry, the effects of which we can trace back to the 1980s and even well before that (in the form of distance learning and televised courses) – these will be discussed later in this eBook.

Now that affordable online learning solutions exist for both computers and internet, it only takes a good online learning tool for education to be facilitated from virtually anywhere. Technology has advanced so much that the geographical gap is bridged with the use of tools that make you feel as if you are inside the classroom. online learning offers the ability to share material in all kinds of formats such as videos, slideshows, word documents and PDFs. Conducting webinars (live online classes) and communicating with professors via chat and message forums is also an option available to users.

There is a plethora of different online learning systems (otherwise known as Learning Management Systems, or LMSs for short) and methods, which allow for courses to be delivered. With the right tool various processes can be automated such as a course with set materials and automatically marked tests. Online learning is an affordable (and often free) solution which provides the learners with the ability to fit learning around their lifestyles, effectively allowing even the busiest person to further a career and gain new qualifications.

Some of the most important developments in education have happened since the launch of the internet. These days learners are well versed in the use of smartphones, text messaging and using the internet so participating in and running an online course has become a simple affair. Message boards, social media and various other means of online communication allow learners to keep in touch and discuss course related matters, whilst providing for a sense of community.

In the fast-paced world of online learning the available technologies to make a course new and exciting are always changing, and course content can and should be updated quickly to give students the very latest information. This is especially important if the online learning training is being given to employees in a sector where keeping up-to-date on industry developments is of the utmost importance. This is one of the reasons why many businesses are now offering training via online learning - other reasons includes low costs and the ability for employees to study in their own time and place.

Overall, traditional learning is expensive, takes a long time and the results can vary. The importance of learning is now a given fact and it can offer an alternative that is much faster, cheaper and potentially better.

Mobile learning: How Students Watch Video Lectures

Mobile learning in education is a hot topic. What really is mobile learning? In the context of our college’s online program, ‘mobile learning’ means offering our prerecorded lecture videos to students in a mobile friendly format. Though I hesitate to call this mobile learning, I see this format as a way to allow our students to learn ‘anytime and anywhere’.

This week we are analyzing student feedback through the anonymous course surveys we collect at the end of each undergraduate [for credit] course within our online program. One area of focus for this sessions feedback is the prerecorded lecture videos. How do students watch the lectures, i.e. via a mobile device or streaming video? How effective are the lecture videos in delivering content?

Our plan for gathering this data was to determine how students watch the prerecorded video lectures we have for each of our general education classes, and how effective the videos are in delivering the course content (from the student’s perspective).

Benefits and Limitations of Mobile Learning

According to Ericsson’s forecast, 80% of the world’s population (6.4 billion people) will be Smartphone users by 2021. Another report states that more than four out of five workers now access their work related documents on the move.

This paradigm shift calls for a need to adopt m-learning to train the current Gen workforce. Lots of efforts are already being made to convert huge legacy courses to a mobile-friendly HTML5 format. But is it all just good about m Learning? How much do you know about the limitations of m Learning? This blog aims to show the two sides of the m Learning dime, highlighting its features while at the same time, pointing out its limitations to be an effective learning strategy.

Let’s start with the good things first. Listed here are the USPs of M learning as a learning support tool
 

1. Provides Easy access: Mobile learning provides easy access to learning anyplace, anytime, making it more convenient to learners. Learners have the advantage of spending their time spent on traveling, between meetings or during weekends focusing on the subject they want to learn.
 

2. Facilitates Collaborative Learning: M Learning encourages collaborative learning, allowing learners at different locations to get in touch with their peers or others teams to discuss and learn. Social learning is a happening trend which creates a sense of competition and cooperation, which will lock the learners’ attention towards the course.
 

3. Boosts Learner engagement: Training at the workplace mostly consists of verbal and desktop communication, but adapting mobile learning can bring several opportunities to engage the learner on a digital and social level outside of the work. This new dimension will erase the sense of boredom in learners’ mind about the course.
 

4. Encourages Self-paced Learning: No two learners are the same. Each one has his or her own way of understanding the content to learn. With mobile learning, learners are now able to learn in their own style, at their own pace. In a classroom scenario, occasionally, there will be a few learners who wouldn’t have understood the concepts clearly but hesitate to ask for a re-explanation. In mobile learning, nobody knows or cares how many times you revisit the course, which gives you the freedom to do it until you have understood it all.
 

5. Address all learning styles: Mobile learning can fit different learning styles as it allows learners to do the following:

•   Reading
•   Learning through videos
•   Listening to podcasts (Audio)
•   Research on the Internet

Mobile learning standouts as a great resource to facilitate better learning, as long as you pledge to keep its limitations in mind while designing one. Mobile technology helped us by bringing a lot of distant things up-close and has the potential to do the same with our learning programs. With the future of more and more mobile workforce, m Learning could be a savior for many. What do you think?

The Top Benefits of Mobile Learning

Mobile learning is the new era of training or learning that seems to have many takers for its ease of use and portability options. In simple terms, portability and connectivity to information sources are the cornerstones of M Learning. And this feature of it has caught the eye of many organizations to train their employees.

The primary mobile devices used to facilitate mobile learning include the following:

•     Smartphones
•     iPads and other tablet devices
•     PDAs

An essential characteristic of mobile learning includes anytime and anywhere access to content. It has the ability to deliver just-in-time knowledge at the point of need. This feature reduces learner’s dependency on a fixed learning location.