While electronic means of learning have existed for almost a hundred years, the credit for revolutionizing online learning goes to silicon and the internet.
It was in the year 2000 when businesses started using online learning to train their employees. That’s where it began and since then, the industry has never looked back.
No wonder, its growth over the past 18 years has been of 900%.
But then, what’s so special about it? What has really made online education so big? And more importantly, is it even good enough?
If one or all of these questions resulted in your visiting this blog, we got your back!
Here is everything you need to know about online education and the factors that make it big.
What makes online education worth a try?
1. It knows no geographical boundaries.
Talk of online education and we can’t ignore its ability to connect students and teachers across the globe.
Whether you are an educator or a student, your physical location can’t bind you. All you need to do is find what you need.
For example, if you want to acquire a new skill, there will be many online courses to help you learn. And if you are an educator wanting to expand your reach and have more students, you can create your very own online learning course for that.
This means that a teacher taking classes using an online whiteboard in Australia can train students in the USA too at the same time.
2. You can watch it again and again.
One of the major issues with conventional learning is that skipping a lecture means missing out on lessons.
We know one can always get notes from friends. But can it equate to the actual lecture? Certainly not! And then there are times when even after attending a lecture, some information might not be understood clearly. Good news: eLearning solves this problem.
Once you have paid for an online learning course, you can watch any lecture, at any hour and any number of times as long as you are subscribed.
Something that’d be of great help while learning a difficult topic.
3. No need to wait for next lessons.
Another characteristic that makes online learning great is the rate of delivery of lectures.
While traditional classrooms might seem cool to some, they have a few drawbacks. Availability of upcoming lectures is one of those.
Online learning provides you with an option to watch the next lectures whenever you want.
Most online learning courses are planned. This means that the curriculum of the entire course is scripted and prepared prior to its launch. As a result, students choosing online learning can access most or all of the lectures whenever they want.
This helps them revise previous lectures (just as described in the last point).
Also, this reduces the time taken in finishing up a course by 40%-60% when compared to traditional learning methods.
4. Cost-effective.
One of the reasons for which students pick online learning over traditional learning methods is its cost-effectiveness.
As students get to learn at their own place, a lot of their travelling expenses are saved. Also, this saves time elapsed in travelling. And then, there’s more to it.
As online learning consumes a lesser amount of time than traditional learning, it saves more money when compared to the latter.
Also, online learning provides complete value for money.
How?
It’s simple. You pay once and get full access to the entire course. This means that you can repeat the whole course whenever you want, wherever you want.
Final words.
As online education is taking over the traditional means of learning, ambiguities about its functionality and usefulness can always crop up.
With this article, we tried to rest some of those doubts.
We hope it helps you decide if online learning/education can help you. If you found it useful, share it further to encourage a friend.
