Online learning is a great way to self-reflect, move at your own pace toward your assignments, and construct healthy workflows.
E-learning is a great and modern way to get the same stuff done while in the comfy confines of your home. At the surface level, e-learning may have just one big benefit which is staying at home but when you dive more into it, it is so much more.
While there are advantages and disadvantages of online learning, its pros in the current knowledge economy outweigh the cons.
We’ve compiled some of the best advantages this mode offers with it and we’re going to have a great time listing them down below for you. In the hopes that your perspective on this gets revamped or completely flipped too.
Self-Paced
One of those who lag behind the class in learning the daily class materials? Have a habit of being late to class?
All that is completely fine when it comes to e-learning because it doesn’t require you to keep up with the pace.
All class notes are stored online for the most part on a website such as Moodle. Students who miss out on lectures or crucial notes can always rewind back to them by accessing the lectures online and making a conscious effort to learn at their own pace.
This leads to increased satisfaction due to the fact that you can grasp the material and not be hasty with jotting important points down. It also leads to better mental health as you’re not stressed all the time to get going and complete something within the hour.
Cost Effective
One of the most substantial benefits of e-learning is how cost-effective it is.
You don’t have to drive to a particular institute just to absorb information or interact with people and come back. Everything is available online. All you need is a good internet connection like that of CenturyLink internet, and you’re set for the semester!
When it comes to buying books for the semester, you make major savings in that regard too. Where you’d probably be spending upwards of 200 dollars buying books and then stationary etc., you could just download the pdf versions of each required syllabus book.
The pdf is a fraction of the cost of the actual book and in most cases; the professors provide access to the e-book themselves.
All you need to worry about is opening it up using a pdf reader, which is readily available by itself. On the administration side, booking physical halls and operating classrooms along with equipment such as computers, projectors, and document cameras is quite costly.
Institutions save themselves lots of money by shifting everything online. Including the medium of instruction, professors, and students.
Individual Learning Patterns
Not all students have the mainstream way of learning. Some may require a change of pace. Or a change of scenery.
There’s a lot to take into consideration. Many students have issues dealing with various subjects when sitting in a classroom environment.
E-learning helps deal with this by letting them choose their space and their timings so they can work when they feel like it and where they feel like it.
Classrooms aren’t always the most productive space and that is completely fine. Educating professors on this is very important along with having know-how of their student’s psyche to realize they can have their own patterns and paradigms of learning. This is where adaptive e-learning comes into play too.
If implemented correctly, it can recognize each individual’s limits, knowledge, and skills to help them become the best version of themselves in the best possible time and expertise available.
Customizable Learning Environments
In a study recently conducted, employees, working in locations devoid of photos, plants, mementoes, and other objects that could alter their concentration span were shown to be 15% less productive than those working with such “distractions.”
This is also true in the educational context: pupils who do not have a conducive learning environment will suffer in terms of learning performance and mental health.
This is where the issue arises: in traditional classrooms, educational institutions predetermine the learning settings based on their preferences. In other words, students seldom have a say in the design of their learning environment.
In the case of e-learning, the student gets to choose their own environment and customize it according to their needs and how they think it’ll be the most productive. This leads to a big boost in productivity since the pupil knows what they want to be looking at or where they want to be seated when working on their assignments.
Environment Friendly
This may a sub-branch but driving to and from school is all done in vehicles that generate countless amounts of exhaust that have carbon in them. There’s a reason why carbon emissions are so frowned upon in today’s world. They are the biggest culprit to global warming and if most of the education sector stays at home and gets their work done in the same capacity or even more then this should be seriously thought upon.
Loads of vehicle traffic occur due to the need of transporting children to schools and the like. Roads would be much clearer and the air much fresher ifs students were given an easier, eco-friendly alternative.
A study suggested that Distance learning courses, on average, use 90% less energy and produce 85% less CO2 than typical university courses. Furthermore, because E-Learning is a paperless learning approach, it avoids many of the environmental difficulties connected with paper production.
Conclusion
E-learning should be considered the best alternative to learning especially in this digital age. With e-learning not only do you expand your options to learn much more efficiently but you also save a lot more. Perhaps in the future years, there will be more integration of this medium and readily available on many more platforms.
