Learning is an essential process for growth worldwide. However, the pandemic has made it impossible for us to do it in traditional ways. During the first few months of the pandemic, this disrupted how many people learned everywhere and at any age group. Children and teenagers suffered the most because of the lack of proper schools to accommodate them when the pandemic hit. Adults also had to suffer, especially those that have been in college for a couple of years. They had to delay their diploma and make drastic life decisions to ensure that they could stay in their dorms until everything went to normal.
Thankfully, technology helped many of these people return to learning a couple of months after the initial hit of the pandemic in the US. Through various technologies, we have improved the way we learn. Here are some ways technology has improved the way we learn during the pandemic.
Online Learning
Let’s start with the most predominant technology that has helped improve the way we learn today: the internet.
Many years ago, online learning was primarily dedicated to skills and languages. Some online learning sites offer academic subjects such as English and Math, but these are mostly tutoring services. What dominated the market before were online courses. But some of these courses weren’t certified, or if they were certified, the certifications weren’t recognized by the international organizations that govern the course. Because of this, online learning was made primarily for those people who wanted to learn a new skill or language. But that changed last year when the pandemic hit.
Now, online schools are the norm. Many governments are investing millions of dollars into online schools to accommodate more children and teenagers alike. Universities are also creating their own online learning platforms so that they can cater to their students. The internet has become crucial to learning today, which we didn’t think would happen anytime in the future.
Personalized Learning
Technology has also made it possible for us to conduct a unique learning environment for our students. Each curriculum no longer needs to be the same because, through machine learning and AI, we can analyze data unique to each student and create a unique curriculum to their needs. Traditional teaching methods can also accompany these customized approaches. A teacher can be more of a coach than a mentor, helping motivate the students to undergo such a course. Personalized learning has made it possible for schools to cater to the unique ways each student learns, and hopefully, it’s here to stay.
Learning Analytics
Much like we have stated earlier with personalized learning, machine learning has helped create customizable learning experiences for students. However, that’s not the only thing it can do. Big data has made it possible for us to predict students’ trajectories through their academic performance, learning skills, behavior, and activities. Interestingly enough, this particular tech can help determine a student’s success rate in the future based on their current performance. Teachers and tutors can then tweak various activities to increase this rate. It can also help them identify which subjects they should concentrate more on, moving onward.
Learning analytics has helped us develop programs tailored toward children’s needs. This can help foster various skills that a student inherently has while helping them develop other skills they lack but need in the future. This will make a difference once they reach the higher echelons of learning, where students are reward more for creative thinking than merely memorizing.
Virtual Reality
Learning has also affected various businesses when it comes to their training. Traditional training requires face-to-face contact with trainers for it to be effective. But through virtual reality, it’s almost like the training is happening in real life. Virtual reality in education and training has given us a chance to advance the way we do learning. Its simulations have brought a new level into experiential learning, and this has given us more flexible options for the way we teach people. It also has many applications outside the education industry, making it a worthwhile investment for many entrepreneurs out there. Although it is more costly than your average online course, the price is very much worth it for how much you can get out of it.
Here are a few ways technology has helped us improve the way we learn and teach today. Many schools and businesses are applying these technologies to their organizations with great results. Looking into it, it seems that our post-COVID future has these technologies functioning in every school, business, and organization out there.
