Online learning is certainly a more effective option for students, but it is also better for the environment. This certainly makes online learning and multi-media content a more effective method of education overall.
Promoting and engaging in this kind of learning can help both individuals and organizations to do their bit for the environment and sticks to their own personal environmental goals. The specter of COVID-19 constrained the whole human societies across the world to go to seclusion at homes in order to avoid epidemic infection of coronavirus and social distances.
Government of India including all State Governments of India declared lockdown for the safety of the public to combat corona but a mammoth loss is being bear both public and governments, however, governments of each State are helpful to cater to the daily needs of all sections of Indian citizens.
Viewing this coronavirus deadly infection, all institutions, official working, transportation, and commuting of public stopped but some educational higher institutions are carrying on continue working as they had pre-established online software for online working from homes for providing study materials to their students even they conducted online examinations and practical.
Many institutions could not manage such online pedagogy to impart their learners across India at their respective homes. Other different governmental institutions have the same tale of failure in the age of information communication and technologies (ICT). Most of the institutions genuflected before escalating formidable enemy COVID-19.
However, the University Grants Commission instructed all universities of India to manage online study pedagogy to cover the loss of study. Print media also switched on online publication amid CORONA-19’s dystopian knock in India. Online is enunciated because of its teaching methodology.
Traditional and Online Education: A Perspective
In the traditional mode of pass on education, the emphasis is given on interaction, where the learners and teachers are both present physically and can interact in real-time. But in online learning, the presence of learners is not imperative except in practical based programs and ultimately communication takes place in on way leading to dropouts in a number of classes.
Today’s online technology is so fast that we are able to take practical assignments and online examinations of the learners. Information technology has affected every facet of human activity and has a budding role to play in the field of education and training, especially in online learning. The meticulous and right information is necessary for effective teaching and learning and information technology is a set of tools that can help provide the right people with the right information at the right time.
Information opulent societies are now managing information throughout the world. Information encircles and relies on the use of different channels of communication, called ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and assimilates better pedagogical methods.
Students learn not only from teachers but also learn along with the teachers and by interacting with their peer groups. Information technology is any computer-based tool that people use to work with information and support the information and information processing needs of an organization.
Online learning is as a way of providing learning opportunities that are constituted by the separation of teacher and learner in time, or place or both time and place; learning that is ascertained in some way by an institution or agency; the use of a variety of media including print and electronic; two-way communication that allows learners and tutors, teachers to interact; the possibility of occasional face-to-face meetings; and an esoteric division of labor in the production and delivery of courses.
In online learning, teaching is done with a variety of mediating processes used to transmit content, lectures, and audio-video practical slides to provide tuition and to conduct assessment or measure outcomes and evaluation of the achievement done by the learners.
Online Learning Via Virtual Classroom
Through online learning technology, we can make teaching-learning more interactive through the use of technology like managing the virtual classroom with the use of the interact, development of web-based hypermedia, learning through computer-aided interaction, use of interactive teleconferencing and YouTube, online software counseling, etc.
In the virtual classroom the learners and the teachers meet in cyberspace, a question-and-answer session follows and house tests. The learners are necessitated to go through the self-instructional materials provided by the online class software. This method not only helps the students to learn more but it also facilitates more interaction between the learners and the teacher.
Other Communication Technologies
These include wireless communication, the information air highway, and digital communication or asynchronous mode, integrated services digital networks, multimedia applications, personal digital assistants, artificial intelligence and implied reality. Asynchronous is a method of transmission synchronization wherein asynchronous transmissions are synchronized by special signals along with the transmission medium.
The web-based study helps the learners and teachers to access the information at their own choice of time and amenity. It is necessary for learners to educate the habit of inquiring and also to handle the information properly. The web-based hypermedia is generally a module, which contains teaching materials aimed at achieving a specific outcome.
These communication technologies will make the online and distance education more interactive and interesting. With the use of these abeyant technologies, we will not only be able to fill the gap of the traditional model of education i.e. two-way interaction in real timeframe but also be able to reach a relatively large panorama of learners.
Online Learning For Distance Education
This technology will also help in meeting the challenges of both online learning and distance education. Today, information technology can boost the opportunities of restricting the teaching-learning process and transform it by offering alternatives to the teacher in providing information, access to virtually unlimited resources, and opportunities for real-world communication, alliance, and competition.
Traditional study methods or lectures, lessons and demonstrations can become web-based multi-media learning experiences for both online and distance learners. We can enrich the learning resources and help institutions refocus from teaching to learning, from teacher to learners. Online learning can create a learning environment throughout the world by networked learning communities.
Networks may create educative environments enfolded in the democratic philosophy of instruction and helping learners learn. Not only information communication technologies are a potentially powerful tool for extending educational opportunities but both formal and non-formal because it also facilitates access to experts, resource persons, and peers all over the world.
One thing is very important on the part of developing countries is that information communication technologies are very crucial for increasing access to it and improving the relevant education and quality of education. The use of modern information technology has administered new pedagogical strategies in distance learning as well as giving more autonomy to both online and distance and open learning students.
This technology can be used at least five levels of technology use in education as presentation, demonstration, drill, practice, collaboration, and interaction, and each of the different information communication technologies-print, audio/video recordings, YouTube channels, computers or internet may be used for presentation and demonstration, the most basic of the five levels.
In both online and distance & open learning education different types of technologies and media are used to transfer education to the students/learners. There are five important media in education such as direct human contact on phone, text, audio-video, social media/YouTube, TV-radio and computing/Internet/online technologies.
But the potential of each technology differs according to how it is used. No doubt, rapid advances in information communication technologies pose new opportunities as well as challenges for every mass society but in the education sector, it has enormous potential to help organizations address issues of access to learning, quality of the teaching-learning process and management of education systems.
In order to certify the quality of education, both online and distance & open learning education institutions must be careful about the use of proper technologies and multi-media. Now uses of media and technology combined time has come in regard to adoption and acceptability in the society as well as on the ability of the institutions offering the program not only it is focused on educational institutions but it is for all other institutions. It must be mandatory for all to learn from different media technology for the advancement of India in each sphere of social, education, economic.
For More Such Articles, News Update, Events, and Many More Click Here
Pyar Singh Thakur
Assistant Professor, School of Media and Mass Communication, APG Shimla University, Himachal Pradesh
Has written articles and research papers which are featured in national and international journals
