Category
The posts in this category cover various subjects related to education that students of all ages might find informative and useful.
MOOCs created a storm in higher education , but they still didn’t prove themselves. SPOCs, on the other hand, are closer to the objectives of higher education institutions. They are not a replacement of teachers; SPOCs are teachers’ sidekicks. Also, they pave the way for future more successful MOOCs.
With so many distractions around, it’s easy for students to procrastinate and put their courses on the back burner. While the following tips to create engaging courses may not always win the war against procrastination, they can certainly win a battle or two for the teacher/instructional designer.
Working students have their hands full balancing work, school, and their personal lives. The last thing they need is to be held back by compulsory attendance and other inflexible rules some universities still apply. E-learning comes as a breath of fresh air, as it allows busy students to build their careers without neglecting their education. Find out how exactly e-learning can benefit working students.
While the concept of personalized learning is a rather old one — teachers have sought to craft instruction to meet individual student needs for generations — the explosion of “smart” technology has only recently begun to make its presence felt in classrooms. Technology and BYOD play an important role in the development of personalized learning. Thanks to all the technological advances, creating the environment for customized learning experiences doesn’t seem like an effort of gargantuan proportions (as it was in the past) but rather a manageable task.
Learning has evolved to a point where augmented reality (AR) is a possibility. It’s evolved to a point where the environment adapts to learners needs and as I like to say it the learning process is as interactive and as immersive as ever.
The internet can be addicting. People would do a quick search on an interesting topic, read on and find themselves reading more and more topics totally different from the topic which piqued their interest. It’s like playing a video game and most of us can relate to that. Once we start playing the first few stages of the game, we are progressing and finally finish the story of the game. It’s addictive. Now put that in the perspective of learning – reading and studying topics which get deeper and deeper, until it becomes addictive.
MOOCs have been considered for a very long time a great way of learning, because they are useful, diverse, surrounded by communities and mostly free. However, lately MOOCs have faced several challenges and criticisms such as its heavy reliance on user-generated content which creates a rather chaotic learning environment, and the mere fact that digital literacy is almost always a prerequisite if someone is going to take an open online course. But are they really dead? Let’s discuss the yes and the no.
Here we are in the e-learning age where students are becoming self-engaged learners and teachers are maximizing whatever digital resources there are for teaching. There are students however, who seem to have difficulty in school – whether it is difficulty managing school tasks, dealing with toxic deadlines, and other kinds of typical student blues. These students are very much eager to learn, but need a lot of proper guidance and monitoring to keep track of their progress.
We are in the realm of 21st century learning, where most students are digital natives and expect their teachers to be the same and deliver all class content online, through an interactive e-learning platform. But let’s flip the script. Suppose teachers are the digital natives, and students are the digital immigrants? I’ve seen students like this, students that question the use and existence of a learning management system, because they prefer seeing lessons in ink rather than on screens. Their teachers are the ones bugging these students to make the switch to e-learning.
It’s December, it’s almost the end of the year and it’s time to talk about the 2016 trends in e-learning. 2016 will be a big year in e-learning and ed tech. More schools will become cloud-oriented. There’ll be more collaboration between teachers and students. And the best part is we are part of change.
