Believing that education is the biggest attribute for a human, Nelson Mandela once said that “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. The tremendous ways in which education is changing from traditional to online modes offering a wide range of advantages has definitely marked the beginning of the new side of education. The traditional way of teaching or the classroom teaching has been in existence from centuries. Over the years the number of institutions offering education has increased largely along with evolving in the way education is offered as well. The transition which is happening from classroom teaching to online education has made learning much easier.
Online education is the new revolution in the field of education over the last decade. Learning over the Internet is becoming more and more popular because of the extraordinary features it is offering for student development. Another main reason for online education to be so popular is the flexibility it provides to study anywhere and at any time. From providing lessons to evaluating student performance and counseling them, online education provides everything that a student requires to learn. One big advantage of online learning is that most popular courses offered by top most institutions across the globe can be learnt from any location. Certifications from those top institutions add more value to one’s resume in low cost. The growth of online education has led to many mesmerizing facts like:
- The 150% increase in the selection of online education by students as their regular course curriculum shows the impact of distance learning over the last two decades.
- 65% of full-time classroom teachers have enrolled to provide online courses.
- 91% of colleges offering 2-year courses provide online courses.
- Coming to the employment, 27 % people have been offered jobs who have pursued full-time online courses.
- 85% colleges across India provide the facility of online admission.
- Provided with both offline and online courses, 60 out of 100 opt for online courses.
- 25% of women have enrolled for online courses like tailoring, art & craft, etc.
EdX and CourseEra are the most popular online education sites in India. They provide courses spanning almost all disciplines. The contribution Internet offers to the field of Education is very immense. Apart from offering online lessons, there are websites which guide the students in choosing the right institutions with respect to location, quality, cost and eligibility. These educational websites are more like a data warehouse that houses almost all information about various colleges, exams, scholarships that is required by a student. They evolve with the changing conditions of the education system. Another stand aside feature of these websites is that they offer online counselling to students about their strengths and career. In India, the rapid growth of educational institutes and the need for finding the best educational resources in an easy way has given rise to these educational websites. GetMyUni, Collegedunia, Shiksha.com, are some of the websites that are providing legitimate and extremely useful information to the students.
Despite of having so many advantages, online education is still not able to acquire traditional education for various other value-added reasons. Apart from the flexibility and cost advantages, there are many aspects that leave traditional education preferred across the globe which are:
- Social Interaction: The amount of exposure to various kinds of people and knowledge is never attained in online education. A classroom learning is a mixture of a number of talents and immense knowledge sharing.
- Discipline and Motivation: The values and behavioural rules that are taught and learnt in traditional learning cannot be learnt individually in online education. It is only learnt through interaction and face-to-face teaching.
- Practical Exposure: The effect of learning is much greater when performed practically than learnt by seeing or listening. In online education, the amount of practical exposure received is much lesser compared to traditional learning.
- Extra-curricular Activities: Apart from the curriculum, an institution offers many other activities like sports, culture, personality development, etc. which is not possible to be learnt in online learning.
Online education is still evolving in various other ways to overcome most of its disadvantages and overtake the traditional education. It would not be wrong if stated that “Online Education is the future of Education”.
