There are various teaching methods and each one of them has its advantages and disadvantages. Just like traditional teaching, online learning is also a teaching method used by teachers to ensure a smooth learning experience. When it is said that every method comes with its pros and cons, the online method always has some. Understanding and decoding them will help institutes to make better strategies to help students learn quickly and have a better learning journey.
Discover Everything About Online Learning
Due to the Covid-19 or coronavirus, the country was at a halt. To stop the increasing case, the government has imposed a lockdown which impacted the education sector at large. Students were not allowed to go to school/college for the study. The term that became quite famous is “New Normal”. So, everything having something new in their normal, what does the education sector have “new”? It was the increase in the use of online learning tools. The Covid-19 has forced the education sector to adapt to new learning methods. All around the world, educational institutions such as schools, colleges, institutes etc are looking for online learning platforms for educating students. Now the new normal is the transformed form of education; online learning at its core. This has made digital learning an even more important resource for students and schools across the globe. For some schools and students, this is an entirely new technique to adapt wherein they have only been exposed to the traditional way of learning and teaching. Online learning is not just for academic learning but it also helps students to actively participate in extracurricular activities. In recent months, we have seen that the demand for online and digital learning has risen significantly and with no doubt, it will continue to rise in the future too.
What are the Benefits of E-Learning?
- Efficiency
Online Learning comes with ample tools such as videos, PDFs, podcasts, short clips, etc. Teachers can use all this equipment as a part of their teachings. It is an efficient way to deliver lessons to the students. Beyond classroom teachings, this is the unique way of teaching students making teachers better educators.
- Accessibility of Time and Place
This is true that students get to choose from where they want to take a class from, students can be anywhere and still they can take a class. This is another advantage of online learning- accessibility of time and place. This helps teachers to extend their teachings to a large number of students and not being restricted by geographical boundaries. One another plus point of online learning is that the classes can be recorded, archived and saved for future references. This allows the students to have access to the videos whenever they want to.
- Affordability
When compared to normal teaching methods, it was seen that online learning was less expensive. So, another advantage of online learning is reduced financial costs. It is more affordable than the normal teaching methods. But why is online learning affordable? Although it does need internet connectivity, a smartphone etc. Online learning eliminates the cost of student’s transportation, students meals, and most importantly real estate. This is true that all the course materials are available online; paperless, this has a dual advantage: first, it creates a paperless learning environment and second, it is best suited for the environment.
- Improved Student Attendance
Students can take a class from anywhere they want, this is the reason that reduces the chance of missing classes. There are very few chances of students not attending the classes and missing out on the lessons.
- Suits A Variety of Learning Styles
Every student is different, they prefer different styles. Not every student will have the same learning journey, for example, some of them like a visual representation while some are audio learners.
What are the Cons of Online Learning?
As every coin has two sides, everything has two sides. Just as online learning has advantages it does come with disadvantages. Decoding and understanding them will help education institutions to work on that and improve the quality of teaching.
- Inability to Focus on Screens
With online learning, there is a greater chance that students will get distracted by social media. What if in the middle of the class they started using Instagram( the most popular app), Facebook, WhatsApp etc. How would the teacher know? For many students, the biggest challenge is to sit in front of the screen for a longer period. For this, teachers need to step in and should keep their online classes crisp, engaging and interactive for students to not get distracted.
- Technology Issues
The biggest challenge that students face is the problem of internet connectivity, while in the last few internet connections have grown in leaps but in smaller cities, it is still a problem that needs to be addressed. Without a proper internet connection, there can be a lack of continuity in learning and teaching. This can be detrimental to the education process.
- Sense of Isolation
This is true that the actual knowledge comes when you go outside and same with the students, they can learn a lot from being in the company of their peers. However, in online classes, there is almost no physical interaction between students and teachers. This may lead to a feeling of being isolated so it is always advisable that students, peers and teachers must have an informal meeting once a week to avoid any such problems. They can video conferencing, email, chats that will allow face to face interaction.
- Teacher Training
Online learning requires basic knowledge of digital learning. However, this is not the case, not every human being knows how to use digital platforms. For online learning, teachers must have a basic understanding of technology. It can be true that they might not have the resources to conduct online classes.
