words Alexa Wang
E-learning is becoming an increasingly popular option, whether for those seeking further education or for companies for staff training. With more mobile learning providers emerging, there’s more demand for new technology to make e-learning easier.
Image – free for commercial use
1/ Augmented reality. Augmented reality offers an interactive experience of a real-world environment. For students, augmented reality is attention catching, helping to ensure engagement and interaction during lessons. The student is seeing and experiencing what they are learning, without having to be physically present. It can also be very useful to help students learn complex concepts, as the augmented reality can help them to visually see something rather than having to imagine it.
2/ Artificial intelligence. AI has become something of a buzz topic in education. With AI, learning can be personalised to the student. This means you can find the course material best suited to you, your interests and your way of learning. Any well-informed e-learning developer will explain how this is the wave of the future. Performance can be monitored by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a learner, giving real time improvement suggestions.
3/ Data privacy and security. Data security is one of the main concerns with e-learning. It’s important that student data be kept safe and secure. Online learning portals can be hacked to mine student data, so it’s essential that portals are secure, with host and network security and malware prevention.
4/ Internet of things. The internet of things (or IOT) means connecting everyday objects like light bulbs, your car or even your fridge to the internet. IOT creates a global network between educators and their pupils, helping e-learners to interact with other e-learners and tutors around the world.
5/ Learning management systems. Learning management software is used to deliver courses or training programs. It will help you to manage the courses efficiently, and allow to create, change and assign courses to students or staff. With a system like this, you can deliver a personalised course to every student. You can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your students, and create a course to help them to concentrate on their areas of weakness.
6/ School management systems. This software helps schools manage their daily academic and administrative activities. A management system saves time and money by helping them to avoid manual paperwork.
7/ Mobile learning. Also known as M-learning, this means learning through your personal mobile device like a smartphone, tablet or laptop.Study materials can be downloaded directly to the device or accessed online. Learning like this is popular as it allows very flexible learning, where students can access education anywhere at any time.
8/ Virtual and remote laboratories. Virtual laboratories are web applications that emulate a real lab. They can be accessed anywhere, allowing students to practice in a safe environment before conducting real experiments.
9/ 3-D printing. With 3-D printing, students can print out prototypes. They can use 3-D printouts of structures that would otherwise be hard for them to visualise, aiding understanding. This can be ideal for structures of molecules, cells, viruses, organs, topography or population maps, for students of chemistry, biology or geography.
