The consequences due to the COVID-19 pandemic have taken a toll on the life of students. When the lockdown started last year, more than 1 billion students experienced a sudden change in the methodology of learning. Closure of schools followed by entirely shifting to a new online learning environment frankly takes a lot of time to settle in. But, the impact of COVID-19 will stay with us for a longer duration than we have expected during the onset of the pandemic. So, the educational sector will experience some permanent changes, for example, a prolonged demand for better eLearning .

Due to a certain surge for better online education, demand for online learning platforms, video conferencing apps, virtual tutoring software, etc is increasing exponentially. And, the online learning apps like Byju which were already dominating the market witnessed a 200 percent increase in the number of students during the pandemic. So, let’s see where the eLearning market stands in this post-pandemic scenario, the advantages of online learning, and how to enhance the overall learning process remotely.

The online learning market

The online learning platform isn’t bound to just school students. There are several types of online learning platforms that help both the learners and the educators to their advantage. Moreover, nowadays many companies are also using online training software to train the freshers with the help of virtual reality. The biggest advantage of online learning platforms is that you can learn whatever you want, whenever you want, and from whoever you want. For example, a few years ago we couldn’t have thought that digital marketing, content creation, blogging, etc can dominate the entrepreneurial market. Learning those skills four to five years back may have seemed unimportant but currently, there are more than 500 million blogs over the internet and the value of the content marketing industry is approximately $400 billion. Can you imagine how quickly the market is growing?

So, the online learning platform gives us a chance to explore and learn skills that are trending so that we can evolve with time. Platforms like Skillshare provide such creative skills as photography, content creation, videography, etc and you can gain skills apart from your academic curriculum. eLearning websites like Udemy, Coursera, and Unacademy are also on top of the online learning list as they provide top-class academic content for both school and college students. Most of the courses are available for free so that anyone can access these materials and develop a new skill or advance their existing skills. Top universities like Harvard and Caltech are also democratic in their education by making their class lectures available to everyone with the help of the internet. The pandemic has given us a chance, irrespective of being an educator or a student, to explore new subjects and increase our skill set by staying indoors. So, there is a lot of room for the online learning market to grow in the near future.

Advantages of eLearning

Online learning platforms are evolving continuously with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence. They track the performance of an individual student by collecting massive amounts of data which helps the platform to give personalized feedback to the users. When using an online learning platform like Coursera or Byju, you can easily track your performance or what you have studied in the past week. Moreover, if you continuously fail to answer a specific question, they refer to that particular topic that you need to revise which in turn saves the time of user. There is also a discussion portal that helps one to interact with other learners from around the world and gain different insights.

Time is also a great advantage of eLearning as there is no specific time schedule like we have in the traditional educational system. Whenever you are free, you can always watch the pre-recorded videos and complete your assignments according to your convenience. This feature helps the learners to take up more than one course at the same time and schedule them accordingly. With the help of online learning, a perfect balance can be struck between learning both educational and creative skills which is very important for Gen Z students.

The high cost of traditional learning systems is also a shortcoming that can be overcome by online learning systems. In most online learning software, a specific set of content is always made free for the students and if they like it they can further sign up as prime members. But, the fees charged by these online learning platforms are very nominal to what we pay for the traditional learning classes. So, increasing the scope of affordability is a very huge advantage specifically for a developing country like India where most of the students can’t afford quality education due to monetary problems.

Current eLearning trends

There is a huge scope of growth for the e-learning industry in this post-pandemic world. So, if you are planning to develop software or start a business in this sector, you should be aware of the trending eLearning topics. Some of the topics that are currently trending in the eLearning sector are:

1. Microlearning: The long lectures make the process of learning very boring and monotonous. So, it is wise to make the videos short and crisp and not covering more than one topic in a lecture. This helps the learners to watch it anytime and easily memorize the concepts.

2. Adaptive learning: The students should be given the liberty to learn at their own pace. This way they can also track their performance in a week or a month, and improve their pace respectively.

3. Train the trainer module: This is the most trending topic of eLearning currently as the educators should also be prepared to get accustomed to the new learning environment.

4. Interactive content: Apart from the pre-recorded lectures, there should also be an option for live lectures that the students can join at a specific time. This helps in increasing engagement and there’s a scope for much better understanding and doubt clearing. For example, there are pre-recorded lectures for a given course but once a week there is a live interaction class taking place to clear any sorts of doubt regarding the module they learned in a week.

Conclusion

The online learning industry has brought us immense opportunities to learn in an innovative way and in our own way. But, after years of getting accustomed to the traditional learning system, it will take some time for everyone to get comfortable in the online learning environment. This is the main reason why institutions all over the world are focusing on the train-the-trainer module. As, if the educators get well accustomed to this environment, they can manage the students in a much better way. If you still face problems, get in touch with the team of Xornor Technologies and they will help you in e Learning website development.