The Internet has ushered in an era of prosperity that is unmatched in modern human history. There has never been a time when the common man has been endowed with so much power to change the world through hard work and imagination.
The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we do things. This is especially true in the field of education. The traditional brick and mortar classrooms are slowing becoming extinct as digital structures take its place.
This transformation is still in its embryonic stage but is rapidly becoming the norm. More and more people are ready for changes in the way they learn and acquire knowledge.
There are lasting trends that are emerging as fundamental truths in the e-learning arena for the foreseeable future.
Online Learning Is Becoming More Social
We all learned as grade school students that humans are social creatures that thrive on social interaction.
We want to learn from each other’s experiences and gain perspective through other people’s points of view. This is the essence of learning in its most basic form. The fact that this natural function of human behavior has migrated to the digital world isn’t surprising.
What is surprising is that educators are finally catching on to this fact. E-learning courses that allow students to discover knowledge and insights and share it with their contemporaries have more successful students.
Fostering enhanced collaboration between educator and student is a trend that will continue to evolve.
Learning Isn’t Linear and Never Has Been
Conventional wisdom tells us the A+B=C and is so just because this is the way that it has always been taught. Rote learning techniques for thousands of years has been used as an efficient tool to educate millions of people around the world with great success.
While this is a testament to the enduring spirit of man to streamline the transmission of knowledge, the truth is learning has never been linear. Throughout human history knowledge has been gained and re-discovered in a non-linear fashion. This pattern holds true today in our hyper-connected world.
E-learners today spend time jumping from website to website looking for keywords, scanning articles and not even finishing a paragraph. In fact the average attention span of the average Internet user in 2014 was around 8 seconds!
E-learning courses that are data rich and easy digestible are becoming the norm in today e-learning environments. Incorporating content that is short and interesting is imperative to keeping students actively engaged in the course material.
Visuals Are On The Rise
Infographics, charts, photos and videos are quickly replacing text-based instructions. Visual presentation of information is easy to understand and is more appealing to students. Science lends credence to our predisposition towards visual information. Here are a few interesting facts about visual learning:
- 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual
- Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text
- Our eyes can register 36,000 visual messages per hour
Click here for more information on visual learning.
The Internet, learning and how we mesh the two together will continue to shift as student learning styles and preferences change. The one constant is that the people will never stop wanting to learn.
If you have any questions about these trends or need help with incorporating some of these trends into your courses, contact Avidity Medical Design Consultants, LLC today. We look forward to hearing from you.
When people think of Instagram in the classroom they typically think of problems students have goofing off on social media and sharing pictures and video when they should be paying attention to what the teacher is talking about. When it comes to online learning and the digital classroom though, Instagram might be a useful tool instead of a useless distraction.
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