Education Technology
Navigating Online Learning: Tips For Students and Teachers
By eLearning Inside
November 18, 2022
Online learning resources are incredibly important in the modern era, and using them optimally is therefore a must, whether you’re studying or teaching in this context.
There are some strategies for harnessing online learning platforms which make a difference in their effectiveness, so let’s go over a few of them to bring teachers and students up to speed.
Tips for Students
In terms of getting more out of online learning platforms, students have plenty of options, including:
Managing your time effectively
When it comes to remote learning, it helps to balance your responsibilities proactively by setting up a schedule for your studying, rather than just going with the flow.
Divide your day logically between the different aspects of studying, whether that’s reading reports, writing essays, working with others or leaving feedback.
Setting targets
This feeds into good time management because unless you’ve got goals to achieve each day, it’s easy to meander and procrastinate.
It’s better for students to set goals themselves, so don’t just wait for your teacher to push you into this if you know your motivation depends on it.
Finding the right space to study
Unless you’re in an environment that’s conducive to learning, the best online platforms in the world won’t help you achieve your aims.
You need a space that’s quiet, free from distractions, light and airy, and equipped with what you need. This applies whether you’re planning on building a successful brokerage with a real estate qualification, or saving the planet as an environmental scientist.
Using all available resources
We all have different learning styles, which means you have to explore all that a platform has to offer in terms of the educational resources available.
Whether that’s watching videos, reading articles, participating in seminars or attending virtual lectures, all of these in combination will help you retain knowledge, rather than it washing over you without soaking in.
Tips for Teachers
When it comes to teaching via online learning platforms, there are ways to make more of an impact, such as:
Getting to grips with the platform itself
As an educator, it’s your responsibility to know the ins and outs of the tools at your disposal. Just because you’re more familiar with doing things a certain way, that doesn’t mean you should steer clear of the features of the online learning platform that your institution has invested in.
Tailoring content to the format
You’ll be creating a lot of the content which is used by students, so you need to appreciate that certain approaches are better suited to online platforms than would be the case in a traditional classroom.
Brevity is best, for example. So sticking to shorter pieces of content, and even hosting shorter remote lessons, will aid those who are logging on to get involved. This segmented approach helps accommodate some of the unexpected interruptions which are part and parcel of learning online.
Encouraging teamwork
If students are only working solo using online platforms, it can be an isolating experience. Instead, get them to team up with others wherever possible, whether that means working in pairs or forming larger groups.
This will help create a sense of camaraderie, and will also reinforce the teaching they receive while developing other useful skills as well.
Catering to individuals
When teaching via online platforms, be aware that students have different needs which it’s your duty to meet and work around.
Some will thrive in this situation, while others will struggle, and you have to portion out support and guidance accordingly.
Featured image: ake1150sb, iStock.
“As bots enter the classroom, both teachers and learners will have to reflect on their uses and outcomes. They will need to adopt an awareness of AI’s presence. Teachers must recognize AI’s short comings, such as inherently developing biases and its inability to process human emotions.”
This statement is correct as it relates to AI, generally; however, it assumes that AI exists as THE entity that students directly interact with. There are many potential expressions of AI, including a human-in-the-loop approach, in which it is configured in such as way as to facilitate dialogs and interactions between people, either studentteacher or studentstudent.
For example, we’re building an L2 language speaking practice app (Language Hero Smart Chat). We use AI to enable beginning students, who speak different languages, to have natural, real life conversations in each other’s language from Day 1. They speak directly to each other, interacting with the system only to select from multiple content choices suggested by it, designed to facilitate a real free-ranging dialog resulting in real bonding, to the extent it’s possible, rather than to practice a particular lexical structure (they can also text or go off the grid to have pure video chat).
Teachers can use this system as well for group chat. They can upload their own curriculum as well (the Smart Chat system configures it as multiple vector (branching script) chat or merges it with the system curriculum (focused on real life useful topics like travel, food, shopping, social chat, expressing ideas, etc.). Everything they say is comprehensible to their students, and so are all student responses.
When such a system is implemented in a manner that pays particular attention to the affective components that make human interaction so effective for creating the desire to learn (and corresponding openness to processing L2 content, in this case), we think it can be a more effective tool than bot chat.