What Are the Challenges of Online Learning?
The global pandemic has catalyzed digitalization in almost all fields, especially education. Online learning, remote educational programs, and self-paced courses facilitate the students and professionals globally to learn and improve their skills. However, no matter how promising it may sound, we need to understand and address some challenges of online learning.
With technology as the primary backhaul, online learning is cost-effective but also scalable and flexible. The institutions and different organizations can roll out different material updates within no time to facilitate the students.
Conversely, there are also some cons of e-learning, such as difficulty in comprehending the online syllabus, inaccessibility to the Internet, inability to focus, isolation, and many others.
In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most common challenges faced by students and teachers in online learning environments. So, if you’re considering enrolling in an online course, or you’re a teacher who is new to online teaching, read on for helpful information!
Challenges of Online Learning
Distance learning has become a popular way to get an education. However, there are many challenges that come with it. We’ll now discuss some of the biggest challenges of online learning.
Lack of Interaction Makes the Students Feel Isolated
One of our fondest memories of school is our interaction with classmates and friends. Alternatively, e-learning is convenient as it saves the students from traveling to school, however, it can lead to isolation. Also, students spend more time in front of the screen, rendering them unproductive for the rest of the day.
Technical Issues
It’s one of the most significant challenges of online learning faced by different students. A stable internet connection and a higher bandwidth are the primary requirements to stream real-time online videos and upload assignments. Glitches, buffering, and latency makes it difficult for the students to follow the teachers in virtual classes when the video is blurred, or the sound quality is distorted.
Also, some students can’t understand the new management system and how to upload the assignments. To make things worse, many students don’t even own a computer or a laptop and use their parent’s or someone else’s machine.
Online Distraction
The students attending the online classes usually sit passively, listening to the teacher or reading the text on the presentation. Also, most students sit casually while the teacher is delivering the lecture. It’s not possible for the teacher to keep the students attentive. They lose interest and get distracted by online surfing, chatting, or social media browsing.
Time Management
It’s a severe issue as the students find it challenging to manage their time while learning online. In addition, E-learning requires more effort, intensive work, and attention to cope with the influx of information and knowledge.
Yes, online learning offers flexibility to the students compared to traditional classes, however, this flexibility makes the students non-serious. As a result, students don’t have enough time to revise the lectures or upload the assignments on time.
Dull Subjects Make Sessions Boring
Long boring lectures, dull topics, and manuals make it almost impossible for the students to concentrate. Nearly all the classes have one or two subjects that students find tedious. According to the theory of relativity, time seems to pass slowly, especially when you attend online classes on boring topics.
How to Overcome the Problems With Online Learning
Once you understand the challenges in online learning, it’s time to discuss how to resolve them for good.
Online Interaction
The teachers must be creative in developing different online activities to interact with the students. For instance, they can invite the students to present or participate in the online forums and question boards. Finally, the schools can arrange for online break-out rooms allowing the students to interact with classmates, seniors, and juniors.
Technical Resolution
The students and their parents should recognize the technical problem related to the laptop, the Internet, or the new LMS. Only then can the students resolve the technical issue.
For instance, the parents should ensure a high-speed Internet connection to stream online and real-time lectures. Also, students should know how to upload and download the lecture material, assignments, and other informative resources.
The good thing is that today’s students are tech savvy with basic computer literacy. Hence, they are familiar with Microsoft Word, notepad, and PowerPoint. However, educational institutions should provide all the relevant tutorials on the LMS to facilitate the students to adapt to the online learning environment.
Also, the schools should regularly update the LMS and enable alerts and other notifications for the students, so they don’t miss a class or a deadline.
Dynamic Learning Design
Online interactivity keeps the students engaged, while the standard lecture delivery is one-way communication. It is boring which often leads to students losing interest.
The advanced dynamic learning design allows the teachers to engage with the students. The goal is to offer the students different opportunities to interact on the screen. Also, the teachers can include various pop-up quizzes and informal tests to evaluate the student’s attention span.
Time Organization
The students need to self-organize themselves to manage their time. The first thing to do is to avoid all the online and offline distractions, especially while taking online classes. This way, the students can focus their time and effort on learning the subjects in online courses and not miss any vital information.
The next step is to create a to-do list to organize your day, homework, and other activities on weekdays and weekends. Also, you must set aside time for different breaks and physical activities. The primary goal of creating a to-do list is to create a routine and maintain it to ensure time management.
Next, you can also seek assistance and help siblings, friends, parents, and teachers to complete school tasks and other projects.
Finally, the last piece of advice is to avoid multitasking at any cost. Always pick one task at a time and complete it before proceeding to another subject.
Make Dull Subjects Interesting?
Lastly, let’s spend time making the dull subjects enjoyable with humor and amusement. The maths teacher needs to be creative to add humor and real-time examples to make the subject interesting for the students. Hence, the students learn the formula by associating a funny story with it.
The teachers can prepare a questionnaire to understand the level of expertise in a particular subject before commencing the classes. This way, they can customize the course material before the online lectures.
Adding relevance to the subject makes it interesting for the students. The teachers can design assignments, case studies, and personalized pathways, allowing the students to grasp the main concepts.
The teachers can create a connection to a subject concept by using facts, feelings, or any incident. The trainers need to master the art of storytelling to keep the students engaged online, allowing them to share their own experiences.
Final Thoughts
Technology has its pros and cons, however, we must focus on the pros and make efforts to mitigate the disadvantages. Online learning can help you improve your skillset along with the additional benefits of affordability and convenience. Online learning also allows students to set their own pace to complete the course work.
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The key takeaway of the above guide is to highlight students’ most common issues during online learning. Also, we presented the solution to these problems allowing the students to reap the maximum benefits of e-learning. You can overcome the challenges of online learning with time management, self-organization, and motivation.
