When learning doesn’t feel like learning

Technology is changing the way we learn for the better. We believe there is always going to be a time and a place for a classroom and a teacher, but a lot of the traditional teaching and learning techniques are being rapidly replaced by their technological counterparts and learning is evolving.

It is now more interactive, engaging, flexible and even fun. For most of us, when we think of learning, we picture a stuffy classroom and mundane text books with seemingly never-ending facts, dates and text. The days of routinely pulling out your highlighter and proceeding to laboriously change the color of your entire text book are now over.

Thanks to the introduction of technology into learning, learning does not even feel like learning anymore. In this article, we look at some of the ways in which technology has revolutionized learning and made it more effective and more appealing. If you want to implement breakthrough learning technologies like mobile learning in your enterprise, check out edapp.com. Mobile learning can be used to train your staff without having to splurge on things like corporate conference rooms, expensive trainers, travel expenses and more.

So, without any further ado, here are some ways in which technology is changing how people learn

Learning as a group

Collaborative learning is the buzzword and it certainly justifies the hype around it. In the past, learning has always been about individuals taking courses and consuming material. However, thanks to technology learning today can involve two or more people that engage in meaningful discussions, exchange ideas and apply what they have learned together to solve real-world problems.

Tools such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, etc. are used widely in learning and training and these are primarily tools to facilitate collaboration. With mobile learning, members of a group can learn together in real-time even when they are physically separated.

Online learning, when in its infancy, was critiqued for lacking the human touch. However, today it allows for seamless interaction and collaboration with people from all over the world while you learn new ideas and concepts in an intuitive manner.

Shift from passive learning to active learning

One of the most beneficial impacts of tech in learning has been the transformation of learning into a student centric experience rather than a teacher centric experience. Learning does not imply receiving information from a teacher, but instead the learner is now in the driver’s seat as he or she can actually participate in the process and control the pace and order in which they go over the lessons or the course material.

Each student is different, some learn quicker than others and some learn better when they learn with multimedia or with some sort of hands-on experience. With learning technologies available today, students can learn the way that suits them best.

Teachers to benefit from this, teaching can now be more creative as teachers can focus on the best way to present a course and move on to the next course instead of having to work on repeatedly presenting the same learning material or courses to different batches of students.

Tracking progress and assessing your learning

Teachers no longer have to assess exams submitted by each student, the technology does this for you in seconds. So students know exactly where they stand, what their weak points are, how they can improve and even analyze how they have progressed over the course of time. Results can be published instantly, and students don’t have to be in the dark for weeks after they have completed an exam.

Distractions

It is not all good. There are some negative consequences of eLearning as well. One of the major disadvantages is the fact that students are on their devices while they study. There’s always the temptation to easily give in to at least one of the hundreds of notifications they get and navigate to social media for hours together while they should have actually been studying. This remains one of the biggest challenges eLearning faces, and there are some workarounds as of now, but no clear cut solutions as of yet.