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The digital world has brought a lot of innovations to all businesses across the globe. Education is one of those business areas that the digital world has dramatically affected and continues to impact positively daily.
An article in Forbes notes that traditional educational institutions will struggle with the current curriculum and training programs in the coming years as roughly half of the subject knowledge acquired during the first year of a four-year technical degree will likely be outdated by the time students graduate.
This will not only create challenges for students to get jobs, but it also raises questions about whether the traditional 4-year degree programs will survive. More importantly, will degrees even matter?
Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, predicts that half of all traditional colleges won’t exist in 10 years because online education will undermine their business models to such a degree that many won’t survive.
The future of education, therefore, lies in all institutions at all levels of learning embracing online learning and online courses.
Please note that online education which is as a result of the digital world has brought a lot to the learning table for all levels of learning, beginning from preschool up to higher level institutions.
Here are six reasons why online education is the future of education and will be the preferred mode of education and may overtake traditional learning systems.
1. Online Learning Begins From Preschool to College
Online has replaced some homeschooling systems. Parents can now relax and let the screen teach their home-schooled children.
Not only that, if a child is slow at a certain subject, say maths or reading, there are a lot of online resources to help them catch up during their free time.
Therefore, there are a lot of online courses for all levels of education. Online supplementary learning materials have also been developed for all levels of education.
In this regard, you can get courses fitting your needs including online certificate programs, online college courses, and online degree programs.
2. Online Education Brings A Lot Of Flexibility To The Learning Table
Most students prefer screen to live learning. First, to enroll in any enroll school in the world, you do not need to go through the rigorous process of acquiring visas and other travel documents.
Indeed, when you start lessons, you can learn from wherever you are. As such, regardless of your family commitments, you are still eligible for learning. It simply involves scheduling lessons around your free time.
As such, the system works well for working students or committed mums who have to juggle parenting and school or work and school.
In a live class, you have to sit through the whole lesson until the teacher is through with the class. With ecourses, working people can work at their own pace and at their own convenient time taking breaks, as is fitting.
3. Some Online Systems Have a Live Teacher
Worth noting is that some online systems have a live teacher, and therefore, students can still learn difficult subjects and be guided by the teacher. There are a lot of online language courses involving a teacher and students who are both online.
The good thing is that both the teacher and student can operate from any location of the world that has good internet connection.
The teacher is also able to provide lessons to students who are located all over the globe without requiring a visa and other travel arrangements to do so.
4. Online Education is Cheaper
The overall cost of online education is much cheaper than live classroom teaching. First, some lessons are automated eliminating the need for live instruction, secondly, visa and travel arrangements are eliminated from the equation.
You can even do a large number of free online courses. That way, you can find out if you have an aptitude for a subject before actually spending any money on learning it.
5. An Unlimited Number of Students Can Be Enrolled
Many more students can be enrolled in an online class than in a live class. Though the teacher may still have to incorporate live online lessons as part of the curriculum requirements to their students who may be spread across the globe, most of the lessons are automated allowing the students to self-learn using a screen.
The work of the teacher is therefore reduced to preparing the lesson plans and placing them online and marking and checking the progress of the students.
6. There Are A Lot of Learning Resources Online
As a student is undertaking their online lesson, they can get a lot of help from many other resources available online on the same subject.
Some of the resources are free, and some are paid resources. Therefore, the student has a vast knowledge available to them during screen time learning as compared to live classroom learning.
Conclusion
Automated or robotic systems are yet to be invented that can mark students work. And it’s worth noting that some departments of learning will still require a live classroom set-up, even if it is only a part of the course.
This is in areas like medicine where practical lessons of dealing with live patients, taking their temperature, checking their blood tests, for example, are still an essential part of the curriculum.
Courses like mechanical engineering and piloting still require the live experience of operating machinery and may not be entirely online; only a part of the system can be made online.
The impact of online college courses on the education system will be a shift from live teaching to the teacher developing online content for students.
Therefore, the role of a teacher or educator will always exist and can never be replaced, whether it is an online tutoring session or a live classroom. Furthermore, all the lesson plans are still prepared by a live teacher and downloaded online.
In fact, registering on the best online tutoring websites is a great way to get a work-from-home job and could well turn out to be one of the best jobs for work-from-home parents in the future.
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