What are the common tools students use in their studying process? Are these ballpoint pens smearing the ink all over the test sheet, dozen of books tearing a soft backpack with their weight or an endless amount of clips, tips and bookmarks?
Not anymore, as educational technology and online learning increase its popularity year by year. Many school districts see edtech as the way to improve education and help students to get to the point about their future occupations.
What’s Inside of an LMS?
Learning Management Systems have spreaded wide during the last few years. Educators all over the world find them compatible to their educational needs. They are also time-saving as well, as business owners prefer using them for employees to increase work productivity and company’s revenue as a result.
According to “Markets and Markets Research Private Ltd.”, LMS market will boost the income up to 15.72 Billion USD by the year of 2021 (let’s remember that it composed about 5.22 Billion USD in 2016). Sounds promising, as 80% of LMS users are located in the USA.
A huge software seeking resource “Capterra Inc.” completed a research to find out a criteria for choosing an LMS.
It occurred that company’s reputation and product popularity have almost no influence on customers’ choice. Quality of support is also left behind. Two main factors are the pricing (32%) and functionality (53%).
It is believed that education is the main sphere where Learning Management Systems can be found in the broadest use. But Capterra researchers found out that educators comprise twice less than a half of all users – about 21%.
Adherents of “old school” teaching may not agree with necessity of using LMSs, fearing it’s just a digital rush moving to its end. But again, according to the statistics, last year about 30% of LMS users switched to another leaning software in search for advanced features, which old LMS didn’t support. This means that educators and business owners are not going to give up on using LMSs, since they want more and more new features to be provided by software developers.
Would E-Learning and Nanodegrees really work?
E-Learning is a powerful instrument for education, widely used in USA and worldwide. It has already proven its utility having provided fascinating results for online learners.
Forbes journal published an interesting fact on the subject.
Retention rate of e-learning varies around 25% – 60%, while face-to-face instruction has just 10% (or even less). The fact seems shocking, but spending a while on overthinking the subject may shed some light on the reasons.
The truth is, classroom studying is not able to provide every learner with necessary attention. Students are different; some of them are fast in studying, some are slower. Personalities of different kinds absorb material through listening, reading, writing, discussing, drilling, etc. Elearning gives an opportunity to choose the best strategy and study in your own rhythm.
While doing e-learning, students always have access to the material and ability to revise it any time. They don’t have to sweat in a crowded classroom nervously waiting for a grade to be announced and for the public judgment of their achievements (or not) to fall on them.
“Learning House” shared a prediction that by 2020 number of online learners will comprise 25% of all students. This forcecast was made on a basis of their researches of e-learning community. About 17% of all college learners – that is 3.4 million people – preferred online education to a classroom in the year of 2014.
It is no wonder, since e-learning is a flexible system, and vendors have to compete intensely to prove their product on the international market.
In one of his interviews in 2016, President and Founder of Udacity (which provides nanodegrees programs) Sebastian Thrun claimed that nanodegrees are worth a shot since all students are supported after taking a course. According to his words, even basic nanodegree programme allows to get a prestigious job in IT. For this purpose Udacity invented “Talent Source Program”, holding a connection with employers all over the world. And if for some reason a Nanodegree student failed finding a job, all his payments are turned back.
Microsoft Software Development Engineer named Shobhit Mishra shared his ideas on value of nanodegrees programme certificate.
He thinks that a course is worth taking no matter if learners have money concerns or not. If money is not a problem, Shobhit recommends insistently to start nanodegrees, since their material base is huge and just awesome.
Shobhit definitely doesn’t recommend to start a course for those learners who overstate the role of a certificate itself. But if a student desires to get a job, than nanodegrees course is the best way to obtain it.
Mobile Learning: can micro studies bring new knowledge?
Mobile learning also gains speed these days. No need to say how important mobile devices are for modern people, but this new wave is fascinating.
About 67% of people worldwide start to use mobile devices to study. And the frequency is growing. Among possible mobile learning apps users may find language, music, math, etc.
Unfortunately, in the hectic pace of day-to-day life a working person simply has no free time to devote to learning. Working 40 hours a week and performing multiple home responsibilities leave no time for self-improvement.
Mobile learning helps to solve this problem, since a learner may spend 5 minutes a day submitting daily quests within tutoring mobiles games and apps just on the way to work or back home.
