The e-learning media are virtual learning spaces that allow and facilitate the user or student experience of distance learning. These tools are available for educational centers and companies. They are also called Virtual Campuses or Learning Management Systems (LMS).
These systems can create ” virtual classrooms, “in which the interaction between teachers and students occurs and between the students themselves. This system also allows you to carry out evaluations, upload files and tasks, and create forums, chats, video conferences, and additional tools.
There are some terms that we can relate to e-learning, although they all refer to training, what varies is the way of learning and obtaining the resources, that is, the use made of technology. Among these terms that we mention, we can find:
- tele training
- Distance training
- virtual teaching
- online teaching
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How Does E-learning Help Companies?
As we have explained before, E-learning is a form of education carried out through the Internet. The Internet makes it possible for the student to interact with the material, search and find out.
Although e-learning training may indeed be more designed for a child or primary educational environment, companies are increasingly interested in it mainly due to the following reasons:
- It provides excellent simplicity when using it without requiring a great learning process.
- It allows you to use images, text, video, audio, and many more formats in the training.
- It is economical for the student and the companies.
- It is interactive and encourages interaction between teachers and students.
- Barriers between teacher-students are eliminated.
- It is accessible and intuitive.
Advantages of Using E-learning Platforms
We are going to summarize the 3 main advantages that stand out from e-learning, although there are many more:
- One of the first is its flexibility; since there are no closed calendars and being online, you enjoy connecting from anywhere.
- Immediacy is another excellent factor of this type of training since once you are online, you can communicate quickly and agilely between the students and between students and teachers.
- Reduction of costs, since the investment is initial, other expenses such as the cost of transfer, accommodation, or material are avoided. This is more important if we refer to large entities or companies.
As you can see, these are significant advantages for opting for e-learning, but we must not forget that it is also straightforward to use and saves time.
The E-learning Revolution In Education
Thanks to the e-learning revolution, student-teacher roles have been modified, and other professional profiles hitherto unknown in teaching have even been added.
With e-learning, the vision towards the student has changed, who is now at the center of the training process, since the teacher or tutor can focus the class on each student depending on their qualities and skills.
There has been a significant increase in self-training, and there is less and less dependence on the teacher, so many of the activities can be done without the tutor’s help.
And another of the most important things to highlight is that many companies currently value teamwork, and this is where this is put into practice since many of the proposed activities are collaborative dynamics.
But this does not end here, and it is that thanks to e-learning, new jobs have been developed and created, such as content designers, activities, and dynamics. A job that years ago was unthinkable to arrive, but that with the revolution and evolution of technologies has arrived.
But not only has this changed, but even how the contents are presented has changed. If we take a few steps back to when a subject was given, it took up dozens of pages, and now that is summarized in a video or an infographic.
How To Choose The Best E-learning Platform?
First, you have to explain how these platforms are offered since there are different ways. Thus, we can find venues with ASP (Application Service Provider) modality installed on our servers or on-site, that is, on client servers.
Currently, many e-learning platforms have great flexibility and many functionalities. To know which platform to choose, you must do an in-depth analysis and assess the available options.
To know how to choose the best e-learning platform, we must take into account a series of factors:
- Usability: we have to assess if the platform is intuitive and if user access is easy without complications or problems. We must think about the profile of the technology since not all users have the same level of computing or new technologies.
- Adaptability and flexibility are related to the above since a good e-learning platform has to allow us to adapt it to our project, study plans, pedagogical styles, etc. In addition, in this sense, we must ensure that the platform is responsive and adapts smoothly to all kinds of devices.
- If we refer to technical specifications, we must consider what kind of specifications we have: technical specifications, stability, capacity, infrastructure, databases, browsers, or security level.
- With linear learning, didactic resources will be the most fundamental part of our training. We must offer our students diverse and entertaining content as well as readable. The platform provides us with the tools to carry out the collaborative activities necessary for these pieces of training.
- Simplicity and intuitive operation to help trainers share their resources and elements.
- Thanks to the traceability that e-learning allows, we can do a more individualized follow-up of the student since it will enable us to obtain personalized statistics and reports.
- We must pay attention to the possibility of defining roles, that is, there are roles such as administrator, user, student, tutor, trainer… and apply the necessary privileges to each position to be able to carry out the training action correctly.
As we can see, many factors must be considered when choosing an e-learning platform, but the essential thing is to know the needs of the students and the type of content you want to use.
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