What is Online Learning?
Online learning is education that makes use of electronic mobile devices as a means to teach, as well as interact with students regardless of distance. It breaks down barriers of access in hundreds of different ways, removing issues of geography, allowing for lectures to be recorded by the institutions and replayed by the students, and providing a safety net for everyone involved.
Online learning isn’t even new. The first-ever completely online course was offered in 1984 by the University of Toronto. In 1989 the University of Phoenix became the first educational institution in the world to launch a wholly online collegiate institution, offering both bachelor’s and master’s degrees through entirely digital courses. Although it has taken 30 years for it to become mainstream the virtues of this system are undeniable.
What is different about Online Learning?
On the one hand, absolutely nothing, you’re still getting the same education from qualified professionals in an educational institution. But on the other hand, absolutely everything.
- Standardised quality: Due to the content being available online and in recorded mediums, it can be evaluated and revised at any point in time. This helps maintain a reasonable standard of quality and guarantees that quality is in a way that in-person institutions cannot manage.
- Less expensive than traditional teaching methods: As the cost of teaching is low, the expenses borne by the students inevitably come down. This makes education far more widespread and economical.
- Flexibility: This can be in terms of time, money, and location. Online learning enables the student and the teacher to be present at opposite ends of the world, in different time zones, and yet have the knowledge imparted effectively. This means that the lecturer can commit more time to the students outside of class time, and the student can commit more time to their studies or daily lives as needed.
- Inherently Accommodating: The increased flexibility also accommodates issues of health, family or personal crisis – a major impact in the real lives of people does not need to have a major impact on their education. This also translates heavily into matters of disability access. Online education permits subtitles, volume control, and the ability to step out and come back later.
- A vast variety of available courses: These days, online courses on everything are available at the touch of a button – from religion to commerce, philosophy to fashion designing, programming to painting, photography to yoga – there is hardly any field that hasn’t been touched by e-learning.
- Study groups: There is a scope for engaging with like-minded students across the world, and sharing information and ideas.
- Much less infrastructure required: This is a huge incentive to the education providers, as the additional costs are largely minimised.
But that’s just the surface-level stuff. Consider this, the world is changing. Online is becoming a much more dominant part of our world and online engagement itself is part of that. Consider the example of study groups. Yes there’s value in being able to mix with a diverse range of students, but there’s also something to be said about learning how to work with and build teams in an online environment – it’s a different skill set and for many industries, it’s a skill that can be learned right now. The skills gained from online study aren’t just the skills printed in the text of the course but include a reshaping of how to think and engage with an evolving world. With more access to the internet than ever before, people are changing the very structures of how we organise and develop, and this is just the beginning.
