Digitalization has grown over the past decade. Even more since the outbreak of covid-19. In this era, digital learning has also increased significantly over the past few years. The stats show that online learning is not going to stop. According to a report, around 75% of schools have planned to operate online completely.
Moreover, almost 98% of universities have moved from physical to online classes with Scholarships for students. A lot of institutes are offering online classes nowadays. You can pretty much learn any new skill now from the comfort of your home. As long as the course you’re interested in has good reviews, it is definitely worth taking.
Speaking of which, the Internet of learning provides course reviews related to a variety of subjects you may be searching for. It is a great place to figure out if the course you’re interested in is worth purchasing or not.
With that being said, let’s check out the top ways online education sites can improve their accessibility.
Enhance Digital Technology Infrastructure
There are a lot of online courses learning sites that have now gone completely remote. They’ve made their e-learning infrastructure seamless and user-friendly.
The type of digital technology used by online institutions matters a lot. Digital learning technology used should be easy to use and always accessible. Online learning systems should have features such as keyboard shortcuts, enlarged cursors, alternative texts, high contrast themes, text-to-speech capabilities, and high-contrast themes.
Online course sites like Teacherly and Graduway are now partnering with universities to assist students to enhance their academic careers as well as to improve their way of learning in smart ways via new types of syllabus in specific areas. For example, coding, science, and others.
Affordable Tuition Fees
Online education learning does not only require a separate space at home but also needs access to multiple technologies such as PC or laptop, software, eBooks, and other course material. This specific requirement would be a burden on students, especially for those who are coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Keeping this in mind, online courses should be made affordable and accessible to students belonging to diverse backgrounds. Online institutions should offer all-inclusive scholarships to deserving students. Additional aid during covid-19 would be of great help for students too.
Adopt Think-Pair-Share Strategies
Ryan Tahmaseb, the director of library sciences says that students learn more in project-based activities. This approach helps in creating a more open and versatile discussion environment. Project-based learning helps students explore their capabilities and learn new things by themselves about the subject. It is more beneficial for online classes and provides students the freedom to experiment, research and move forward in the subject content area.
In the think-pair-share strategy, students are divided into small groups and provided with a topic on which they have to discuss and record their answers. They are open to writing their views and opinions. Once everyone is done with the activity, one of the students from the group would volunteer and share the answers in the class with everyone. This creates a collaborative learning environment.
Ensure Video and Audio Solutions for Online Education
Students can better understand course content if it’s taught via video. It helps them understand lessons at their own pace. Online education institutions can create a series of short lessons with crisp audio quality and annotations.
When creating course content, make sure you acknowledge students with hearing impairment. Make sure to add sign language with clear hand gestures for students with disabilities.
Apart from that, accurate captioning is also important. Don’t rely on automatic tools as they sometimes don’t pick the speaker’s accent. Google’s Recorder App is one of the best tools that is considered to have the highest accuracy as far as text to speech is considered.
Enable Flexible Ways for Student Participation
Online learning is completely different from on-campus learning. But it should not be at the expense of students’ participation during lectures.
Lecture timing is also important. Students usually feel exhausted when they take 3 hour long classes consecutively. It gets, even tougher to concentrate when the class is attended online on a small laptop screen. So, coordinate lecture time with students via different platforms like Facebook groups or WhatsApp groups. Ask them what works best for them.
Conclusion
Online education can be made easier just by following the right strategies. By doing so, you can make your online institution more accessible to students. If the right strategies and applications are implemented in the online courses, students would actually enjoy their learning experience. Online course content can be truly made more effective via video and audio classes.
