The coronavirus pandemic has had a great effect on all ways of life across the world in 2020. This includes education as schoolhttps://uteach.io/articles/the-best-features-of-uteach-how-to-teach-onlines, parents and students have all been forced to adapt to the situation. The good news is that this has spurred a great deal of innovation in the online learning sector.
Now more than ever before, there is a growing movement for online learning. This includes virtual classrooms. Students and teachers are easily able to collaborate with one another from anywhere as long as they both have an internet connection. These virtual classrooms often have audio and video conferencing built in, a whiteboard to display thoughts and ideas, and an easily accessible library to store materials relevant to the day’s lesson plan. There’s even built in polls, quizzes, tests, and many of the things that would be found in your normal school.
There are other great things about these kinds of classrooms besides just the added safety precautions. There is much less waste in using virtual classrooms, since there’s no paper with everything being in a digital format. Secondly, this generation of students has already grown up with a great level of technology and the shift towards virtual learning was already starting to happen anyway. The emphasis now has certainly accelerated that and there is no doubt that there will be some level of online learning done even without a pandemic from here on out. Simply put, this is not your father’s classroom.
In addition to the more standard schools leaning towards teaching in virtual classrooms for the time being, the ability to learn a specific tool, skillset or trade is now easier than ever before in an online setting where you can even get an MBA in Marketing. The online tutoring business has boomed since the start of the virus and it uses the technology available in virtual classrooms to offer a specific service to those who want to learn.
This might mean learning Spanish one on one with a tutor, training to become a mortgage advisor, or taking the British Citizenship test. There is literally something for everyone, and places like Learning Cloud seek to make finding these skills easy and affordable. As this industry continues to grow, the ability to receive recognized certificates, awards, and credits that can be used should rise as well.
It remains to be seen what exactly will happen with the people who are seeking an education following the pandemic. Online universities have been growing in popularity for quite some time, and many students may actually opt for cheaper, more efficient online learning scenarios in the future as they grow more comfortable with the concept.
There’s also a lot of great ways to teach others in this space about topics not normally taught in schools. There’s unlikely to be a college course about how to play Texas Hold’em, but you may be able to learn how to do so in a virtual classroom with a real expert. As this industry grows, the choices should too and that is a great way to make the best of a bad situation.
