The Rise of E-Learning: Opportunities and Challenges in the Digital Age

Over the last decade, online learning has shown major development, as education and the internet combine to provide students with the opportunity to learn new skills. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, online learning has become more essential in the lives of people.

The covid-19 outbreak has forced colleges, schools, universities and organizations to remote work and this bangs the use of online learning. In context to this, before the outbreak of covid, the Research And Markets estimates the market of online education as $350 billion by the year 2025, so the figures might be updated after studying the growth impacts of the pandemic on the online market of learning.

About the Online Market

There are many online learning platforms available in the market such as Lynda, Udacity, Coursera, and Skillshare that provide their services to many people. These online platforms are getting shaped as well by various user verticals. While the online platform of Coursera is used for academics by providing access to the courses of the university, Skillshare is generally for creativity such as providing courses on photography, animation and lifestyle.

Apart from this, top universities are also democratizing education by making the courses available online. For instance, universities like Harvard and Stanford provide access to courses online under the categories of business, personal development, computer science, art, mathematics and engineering.

These all represent one thing, there is a big demand from individuals to study online. The reason behind this demand and the increasing development of the market with a range of online platform options for different groups of individuals may be the quick change of the world.

At the recent $50 million round of Udemy, president Darren Shimkus stated that “the main difficulty for the students is to find out the skills that are emerging, and what they can accomplish best in the international market. We are in a globe that’s modifying so quickly and the abilities that were valued just 3 or 4 years ago are no longer applicable. Individuals are confused as they don’t know what they should study or learn.” In this situation, online education is becoming a big catalyzer for companies and people to assist in the adoption of quick change in the world.

Role of Technology

Though online learning has been enhanced in the last year, attention to technology-based learning was rising exponentially before the covid outbreak. Now learning can occur anytime, anywhere- deleting the barriers such as time of learning, speed of training and location. Schools, universities and colleges can now take the benefit of digital sources which have taken many years to develop and support learning as they desire.

Though, many people still say that there is little to no interface with online learning- this couldn’t be further gone from the reality. Teaching is more than a Zoom call, or uploading many papers to a platform. Tutors are still required to respond to the questions, queries and provide support and feedback to students. This is where the mixed methods come in. It is essential to consider that the future generation also presumes online education in some form- for many people, the world has been digital from the time they were born.

Key Trends Driving The Growth of Online Learning

EdTech (Education Technology)

As stated above, digital technology is shaping the future of study by modifying how content is produced and distributed, how the educational results of learners are assessed and how they involve with the study material. With the rising reliance on tools of digital learning, tech adoption is quickly fast-tracking in higher education. With this, as per the research of Grand View Research by the year 2028, it is estimated that the global market of EdTech will be valued at 377.85 billion.

Learning Analytics

With the swell of big data, the space of e-learning will increasingly rely on analytics and machine learning to measure the performance of students and evaluate the next phases of their curriculum. Acknowledgments of hyper-personalized content given by organizations on-demand such as Amazon and Netflix, students, like customers, have come to anticipate a tailor-created experience of digital education. Learning analytics permits teachers to report and measure on learning of students to optimize their training and modify it to their specific requirements.

Hybrid Curriculums and Blended Learning

Blended learning pools face-to-face and online instruction- a self-paced hybrid curriculum that provides students more ownership over the process of learning. With access to sources of digital learning, virtual classrooms, and tools of collaboration, face-to-face communication between educators and learners is qualitatively concentrated on clarifying problems and discovering new ideas.

Online Education

Gamification

Enhancing the engagement of students is emerging as a main concern for teachers and one of the most efficient ways to inspire students to interrelate with the content of education is through gamification i.e. using elements of gaming in the context of non-entertainment to promote learning. It can help to create e-learning more accessible, enjoyable and immersive, with outcomes in higher endorsement and constant participation. Usually, as the game will progress students will be provided with new concepts. With this, they will use these concepts to progressively new situations and challenging problems.

Mobile Learning

Innovation in technology is fundamentally transforming learning, but those who don’t have an entrance to the essential tools face difficulty in taking part in digital learning. This gap of widening is specifically evident in the countries that have lower income and formerly deprived communities. According to UNICEF, in the mid of 2020, in 71 countries less than half population had the internet for remote learning.

In addition to this, as per the data of OECD, in Indonesia, only 34% of students had computers to do schoolwork in comparison to Australia, Switzerland and Norway which have 95%. For those students, their mobile phones are their only computing devices. In reference to this, in the US many universities and colleges have revolved to mobile technology to provide access to learning to students during covid.

Conclusive Statement

It’s a fact that the future of education is online learning and undoubtedly it will replace land-based education. With this, in the future, it will not be shocking to see more aspects in the structure of online learning such as AR/VR or more technologically advanced algorithms of machine learning to democratize learning more.

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