While online learning is becoming common practice in education at various levels, its impact on students is only now being studied closely. While teachers are solving issues like how to keep students engaged, students are facing a whole different set of challenges.
Online classes can be productive and fun. They allow students to learn at their own pace, save time travelling to a class and even ensure continuity in spite of outside factors like the weather, traffic or other emergencies that make it difficult to hold a class.
However, it is not such a rosy picture for everyone. Sitting alone in a corner of their room, trying to remember information or understand a theory by themselves is not very promising. Not everyone learns and processes information on their own. It is also difficult to stay motivated and turn up, class after class, if there are issues like connectivity or even if the student feels they are not getting enough from the online sessions.
One of the major issues facing learners on digital learning platforms is focus. With a number of distractions in the form of applications, games and social media, and with little accountability to attention, like in a traditional class, staying focused on a lesson is a big challenge. This leads to a loss of motivation if the focus has already been lost. There is simply no interest in moving on.
Without focus or motivation, it is clear that no meaningful learning is being done. This has many consequences on the student as they are possibly wasting time trying to learn but not succeeding.
It is clear that students are aware of these issues. In a survey done in the United States, 77 per cent of those surveyed said they preferred in-person classes to online ones. However, this is not the entire picture as 36 per cent of them also said that they preferred a hybrid system of online and physical classes.
There needs to be urgent solutions to these challenges, however, as online classes will soon be a reality across the board. There are already many institutions which have implemented hybrid classes and students will need to be able to cope with them.
The common suggestions given to maximise learning through a digital platform are to take notes during a class, participate as much as possible to stay connected and block any other applications during class time.
Students should also adopt some strategies like independent learning by accessing other related platforms to improve their knowledge and use interactive learning tools which are commonly available online. Parents and teachers could help students to know more about such tools. They usually consist of pop quizzes or short answer questions to check on knowledge learnt. These can be more fun and easy to complete, making it more motivational to continue with a lesson.
Online learning is an integral part of our present world and will only increase in the future. Students should be equipped with tools to cope with digital leaning whenever the need arises so that they can maximise their use of technology to achieve meaningful learning.
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