What Is Online Learning & How Does It Work?

by Zubair Rashid Digital Markter

Online learning has dramatically changed the way of learning or education, especially in the past decade. No doubt that online learning is getting trending due to its flexibility and accessibility throughout the world.

What is Online Learning?

In online learning, learners interact with instructors or with other peers digitally (i.e. Laptop/ PC/ Mobile phone and the internet). According to a New MIT Study, “Online education is considered as effective as traditional education.”

There are two main kinds of online learning i.e. online degree programs and online courses. Despite online degree programs, you can also learn SEO course in Lahore, social media marketing, copywriting, and learning a new language or any relevant online skill courses in your field. Here we’ll mainly focus on online degree programs, however, we’ll also briefly discuss online educational courses.

Mode Of Delivery In Online Learning
In online learning, the resources or assessments are provided through the online learning platforms. As an online student, you have to access the learning materials from your digital gadgets connected with the internet. It might seem a bit tricky to you at first, but over time you would get used to it and start feeling comfortable with it.

Online learning enables you to make your own schedule. You can easily plan your study time while doing part-time or full-time jobs side by side as such learning offers you more flexibility.

Online Learning Resources

Learning resources slightly varies from institution to institution but generally, online degree programs offer you resources like:

· Recorded Lectures

The major benefit that you get in online learning is to take classes/ lectures while sitting in your home without dragging yourself to the classroom.

The same goes for online courses, for instance, if you’re going to join a web development course in Lahore, you can learn about web designing by taking lectures, doing it practically, and getting command over that skill.

· Journals or Ebooks

Ebooks/ textbooks, journals, etc. are the most fundamental resources of online programs/ courses. Usually, students are guided by instructors about how to research and understand the given topic in a much better way by using these materials.

· Quizzes

To get a better sense of your understanding, the best resource is to analyze yourself by taking relevant quizzes on the topic.

· Discussion forums

Unlike traditional education, online learning doesn't have face-to-face interaction. So the alternative of this is to use online forums for discussion which can allow you to interact and share your thoughts with other students and ask about your queries from an instructor if any.

· Live Q&A Sessions/ Interviews

In live question and answer sessions, instructors used to ask different simple or conceptual-based questions from students to analyze each student’s performance.

Online Learning Prepares You For The Real World

Online learning might seem like an uncommon approach to you but the truth is, it’s not. According to the report from NCES, “In 2019, 2.4 million undergraduate students enrolled themselves in multiple online educational courses whilst, 6 million took at least one online course.” Undeniably, online learners put their dedication to their passion, know about time management and have a better idea of how to handle real-world problems.

Final Thoughts

Online learning is no doubt the future of education as it is much more convenient and far more effective than traditional education. Nevertheless, such learning is often perceived as ‘easier learning’ in the sense that during virtual exams, students can take help or copy from online material or buy assignments from someone else; that's not true. This is because online educational institutes have now started using advanced plagiarism software to prevent any form of cheating.