Introduction
Technology has undergone tremendous evolution over the past couple of decades leading to several innovative developments and inventions. E-Learning is one of the most remarkable products of the technological development. Electronic learning or e-learning, in short, is the process of learning through electronic media with special reference to the internet. To say differently, any form of online learning is synonymous to e-learning (Dror, 2011). This paper sets out to analyze the growing trends relating to electronic learning in different settings such as K-2 schools, institutions of higher education, and businesses.
Significant Developments in E-Learning over the Past Decade
Past ten years have witnessed several developments in the domain of electronic learning. Some of the most potential considerations in this connection are summarized as follows:
Social Media
Social media has revolutionized the process of e-learning as it allows for grouping among learners belonging to any specific category for a common aim. They can exchange the ideas through group discussions and other options for sharing. This allows them to look at any particular picture from different angles to learn comprehensively. Furthermore, it also speeds up the process of learning (Agarwal, 2011).
Smart Phone Technology
Within past few years, the smartphone industry has seen several revolutionary developments. The invention of new technologies such as smartphone and tablets within the mobile phone industry has made the process of e-learning even more convenient. Now trainers can access learners more easily, as it is much easier to carry mobile phone devices as compared to desktop computers or laptops.
Flipped Class Rooms
Flipped classrooms can also be called virtual classrooms wherein teachers do not interact face-to-face with their students, but students view videos (available in DVDs or CDs) of lectures supposed to be delivered to them. Hence, it allows for remote learning (Wolff & Chan, 2016).
Virtual Offices
With the increasing shift of entrepreneurs from manufacturing to the service sector, the trends of a virtual office are at rise. A virtual office is one with no physical presences, and the members of the taskforce are connected via technology. The whole process of training is also conducted online in virtual offices (Dror, 2011).
Serious Games
One of the most recent developments in online learning is the integration of corporate learning with serious games. Serious games require learners to clear different levels to achieve badges, ranks, and prominent positions at the leader board. The purpose of this development is to make the learning process interesting in order to boost the learners’ engagement and motivation (Dror, 2011).
Benefits of E-Learning
Online learning has multiple advantages both from trainers’ and learners’ perspectives. Three of the most potential benefits of electronic learning are discussed below:
Time and Cost Efficiency
Online training does not require traditional setup or infrastructure. Trainers or teachers can access the trainees or students respectively from any distant place. There is no need to rent or own a physical space for this consideration. Hence, online training helps trainers save a lot of costs to be incurred otherwise. By the same token, it also saves time that trainers and trainees are required to spend in traveling to and from the place of training in the traditional mode of training.
Flexibility
Another of the core advantages of online learning is that it allows the students and trainees spare time for learning at their own convenience. It is beneficial, especially, for adults who want to continue their education, but their occupation does not allow them to align their schedule with traditional morning or evening timings of colleges or universities.
Alignment to Different Needs
There is huge diversity when it comes to the mood, temperament, and behaviors among learners. Each group of learners has its own particular behavioral needs, and ease in providing online material effectively addresses all those needs. Sometimes, behavior needs may also vary from learner to learner. A variety of programs and material are available for online students and learners from which each learner can choose ones that suit his behavior in the most appropriate ways (Folinsbee & College Sector Committee for Adult Upgrading, 2008). Hence, e-learning provides more mood-specific options of learning than its traditional counterpart.
Disadvantages of E-Learning
Despite all the advantages discussed above, e-learning has its own limitations making it less desirable for some K-12 schools or institutions of higher education as well as for businesses. Three of the most critical reasons for it not being preferable for trainers are discussed below:
Lack of Human Interaction
Undoubtedly, several developments have added to the potential of online learning, but none of the technologies makes it replaceable with human contact in the pure sense. In some settings (such as viewing video lectures), two-way communication is not possible. Hence, several questions and queries remained unanswered in the learners’ mind, which itself puts a question mark on the effectiveness of learning online (Dror, 2011).
Lack of Control
Need for Self-Discipline
One of the biggest responsibilities of teachers in K-12 schools and educational institutes is to maintain discipline. However, lack of control in online learning requires students to be self-disciplined, which makes online learning unviable in certain situations (Patnaik, 2010).
Recommendations and Conclusion
Based on the discussion made above, the writer concludes that e-learning is still in its premature stages and with the technological advancements, coming years may witness a great shift from traditional mode to an online mode of learning. However, it will still remain undesirable for people with conservative behavior and for those teachers and trainers who prefer to have control over their learners. Due to lack of control, it is also hard to apply this mode of learning to K-12 schools where adults need close attention and control to ensure discipline. Following recommendations are directed towards making the underlying technology more effective and preferable:
Future developments should be focused on making online learning more compatible to two-way communication. It should be made faster and more comfortable through technological development in this area.
There should be technology to evaluate the level of discipline based on certain matrices in the online learning environment to alleviate the issues stemming from the lack of control.
Video and voice quality for direct online training need to be improved, and rate of occurrence for technical issues should be brought down.
References
Agarwal, N. (2011). Collective Learning: An Integrated Use of Social Media in Learning Environment. Social Media Tools and Platforms in Learning Environments, 37-51. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-20392-3_3
Dror, I. E. (2011). Technology enhanced learning and cognition. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co.
Folinsbee, S., & College Sector Committee for Adult Upgrading. (2008). Online learning for adults: Factors that contribute to success: a literature review. Sudbury, Ont.: College Sector Committee for Adult Upgrading.
Patnaik, G. (2010). E Learning: Scopes and limitations. London: VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller Akt.ges.&Co.KG.
Wolff, L., & Chan, J. (2016). Defining Flipped Classrooms. SpringerBriefs in Law, 9-13. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0479-7_2
