With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic this year, e-learning is now highly encouraged for those who want to upskill. But as it’s still a relatively new way of gaining new knowledge, there are a couple of misconceptions for some who are new to it.
Fortunately, they are often easy to clear up. Here, we debunk five of the most common misconceptions about e-learning.
Many people think e-learning is all about hiding in your room and just reading or watching videos, but this simply isn’t the case. There are many companies out there that make it so that you can interact with many different people throughout the day.
This could include extensive back and forth through an email chain, for example. It could also include a full video chat with many different participants through one of the more popular platforms for that. It could also mean participating in forums, phone calls, and many other options.
This misconception is based on the idea that using the Internet to learn makes it easy to go around your teacher’s rules and just cheat your way through education. This isn’t the case. Obviously, students have more of a connection to the Internet and less direct visual supervision in some cases than they would otherwise, but there are many ways of preventing this that don’t necessarily exist in traditional classrooms.
For example, there are programs that can monitor students through their webcams to keep a close eye on what they are doing. There are also different mechanisms to prevent plagiarism if students are just copying sources for their answers from the Internet.
Some people believe that any class delivered online is going to lack any kind of differentiating characteristic. This idea is that the character from courses can only come from the professor themselves, delivering a lecture in person. This simply isn’t the case, however. Many online courses can use media much more heavily than the traditional variety, making the potential for difference even greater than it would be normally.
This may have been the case at some indeterminate time in the past, but it certainly isn’t any longer. Today, no one is going to look down on a degree or certificate from an Ivy League school just because it came from an e-learning approach.
There are a number of top colleges and other legitimate sources that actually provide e-learning options. For example, Janison is one-stop solution for training programs & assessment that provides engaging content.
There’s a tendency for some to associate online institutions and programs with the scams of the Internet. Again, many Ivy League schools do this, so there is no direct correlation here. Every organisation is different and needs to be evaluated with that in mind.
E-learning is quickly gaining its own field of academic study due to its popularity. There are reams of paper devoted to different options, such as problem-based e-learning.
Text: Anna V. Haotano/The New Savvy
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- e-learning