What is online education and its characteristics
Contents
Today we will tell you about some of the most important things you should learn about what is online education and its characteristics.
Online education is here to stay and to revolutionize the way we study and learn many of the things that can help us become better professionals.
What is online education?
The first thing you should know is the answer to the question What is online education? and we bring you this answer below:
Online education is a methodology that makes use of some of the most important technological advances in recent years (computers, mobile phones, the Internet, among other things) to allow students, teachers, universities, school entities, parents, homeschoolers, and the general public, access to an environment in which learning takes place.
Online education is not only one in which students and teachers interact directly, it is also possible that teachers previously upload their content to some platforms and that students in their own time review such content and only send it to teachers or tutors their doubts and problems with the content.
This is one of the most important characteristics of online education, that is, it can be easily adapted to different forms of learning, resources, opportunities and possibilities that both students and teachers have.
That is why the question What is online education like? You can have a very, very broad answer, and that is that depending on the university, faculty or whoever provides the course, the learning process may vary.
Advantages and disadvantages of online education
There are many characteristics and different possibilities that this form of education has to offer us, but let’s learn a little more about the advantages and disadvantages of online education.
It is very flexible
One of the great advantages of online education, and perhaps the most important, is the possibility it offers both teachers and students to learn and teach from anywhere and at any time.
For example, a professional who works during the day could hardly complement her work with a conventional university and its inflexible schedules.
This does not usually happen with online education, since one of its characteristics is to be able to access the content at any time and from any place.
You do not need a specific physical space to be an educator
Teachers only need to have a good internet connection and a smartphone or a computer to be able to provide their services as educators.
That is also advantageous as a company since the investment in physical space is much smaller, therefore, they can invest much more in improving the content and the payment of their educators.
Many more options available
Another of the great benefits of online education is that the options that we can access are much more varied and that traditional education only allows us to offer a number of courses limited by the physical space and the possible number of students and teachers.
On the other hand, in online education you can access courses at universities around the world and that offers them a much greater range of options in terms of knowledge.
Greater capacity for specialization
You may be surprised at the variety of online education courses you can get and also how specialized these courses can be.
For example, if they need to improve only one aspect of their knowledge to grow in their professional life, they are much more likely to be able to do so with online distance education than with traditional education (where much more knowledge usually has to be covered to get what we need).
A little history of online education
Online education is a concept that has been part of society for more than 40 years, but it has clearly taken on much greater importance in recent years due to the great technological advances that have been achieved.
The history of online education begins with the advent of email when information began to be sent using this good tool.
Clearly, it was not until a few years ago that we had the necessary technology to develop the characteristics of this form of education at its best, but it is not a bad thing to know that the origin of online education is much older than we thought.
What are the differences between online and face-to-face education?
Surely you have already begun to know some of the differences between online and face-to-face education, in the same way, here are some differences that you may not have noticed:
The role of the instructor, teacher or tutor changes
In face-to-face education, the instructor must be in charge of sending all the information to the student in the time he has available, the exchange of information is more direct.
On the other hand, in online education, the teacher motivates the student to improve and helps him with doubts.
It also changes the role of the student! It is very common to see students who only listen in the traditional learning process, but are not part of the exchange of ideas.
That does not happen in online education where it is the student who must take the course in their own way and have greater participation in the process.
From difficult hours to flexible hours
The flexibility of schedules (as we mentioned before) is one of the great differences between both forms of education, in the case of online education the schedules are highly flexible and are better adapted to the student.
From little material available to a lot of material available
The material available in traditional education is usually limited, this does not happen with online education when they have so much material available that they can even review several times (recorded classes, videos, multimedia content, and many other things).
Online and distance education is here to stay and as you can see, the advantages and differences between one form of learning and the other are very great and suggest that online education has everything to become the most widely used learning tool in the world.
And you, as the parent educator of your children, can take advantage of all the options available on the internet to get free and paid courses to offer your children a different experience.
If you have not read our home education articles, we suggest you do so and clear many doubts for the educational process at home with your children.