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E – learning & Education : New possibilities for the future

10 Feb 2021

E – learning and Education : New possibilities for the future

The introduction of e-learning as one of the learning tools in the educational sector has had a lot of impacts on education. Researches that have been carried out in the past indicate that there are both positive and negative impacts of e-learning on education. Notably, the current technological resources that are available have both strengths and weaknesses. In this respect, these strengths and weaknesses are the ones that have contributed to the existence of both positive and negative impacts of e-learning on the state of education. Therefore, researches and studies that have been carried out in the past indicate that e-learning would be able to overcome some of the negative impacts that it has on education as further developments are made in the field of technology. In other words, the impact of e-learning on education depends heavily on the advancements that are made in the world of technology.

With this in mind, it would be appropriate to examine both positive and negative impacts of e-learning on education. More important is the fact that an understanding of these effects plays as a critical foundation for further research on how to improve or rather enhance the e-learning as an important tool in the educational sector. This involves the introduction of appropriate measures in the form of guidelines towards creating a state of the art of education. Similarly, deep foundational knowledge of e-learning and its impact on education would help in identification and utilization of the important aspects of technology in knowledge acquisition and sharing. Following this point, this paper will first examine the positive impacts and then embark on the negative impacts of e-learning on education.

Positive Impacts of E-learning on Education

The quality of education that is offered within a particular economy has been found to play a critical role in the overall development of such an economy. In essence, the quality of education in a particular country has been found to contribute positively towards economic growth. By considering this factor, it worthy to note that technological advancements have contributed greatly towards providing quality education. This is specifically so especially after the introduction of the internet as one of the learning channels.

To begin with, the accessibility to educational materials or rather data and information that can be utilized for educational purposes has been found to be one of the most important impact that e-learning has had on the educational system. Remarkably, the current internet structure has been found to create a direct avenue for researchers and scholars to access certain information and data that is required for educational purposes easily. In most cases, this data and information is credible and could be used extensively for educational purposes.

One of the factors that have contributed to the modification of e-learning to become a quality approach in the educational sector is its ability to share information and data in an easy way. It is important to note that the internet remains as one of the most important technological inventions that has made e-learning a success. In line with this, sharing of information and data has been in the recent times been enhanced in terms of speed and accuracy. In essence, one can be able to access certain learning materials from other parts of the world in just a few seconds. Therefore, learners were found to be in a position of accessing this data and information easily within the required time of their learning. On the other hand, most colleges and universities that offer e-learning have formulated policies that entails following up on online students by giving them numerous assignments to certify that the quality of their education is raised to the required standards.

Learning Resources

There are various challenges that the educational sector has continued to face over time. As mentioned earlier, whereas education was one of the most important areas in terms of economic development of a nation, the government support for education has been dwindling in the past few years with more money being channelled into the military and generally national security. As a result, educational facilities have continued to face a lot of challenges in regard to educational resources. This has been worsened by the fact that the rate of population growth is very high as compared to the rate of development of educational facilities. In consistent with this, there are a lot of proposals that have been made to deal with these challenges. However, one of the most appropriate solutions to this challenge is the introduction of e-learning with virtual classroom.

E-learning has contributed to a substantial reduction of costs that are involved in building classrooms and other resources that are needed for learning. For instance, researchers and scholars have observed that the past trends in the educational systems required a teacher and a student to face each other while teaching. In other words, it was very difficult to teach students who were far away from their instructor. This model of the education system demands a lot of resources among them the classrooms. However, e-learning does not require a lot of resources. As a result many students can be taught at a period of time using just a few resources.

In addition to classrooms and other tangible resources, e-learning has embraced digital teaching resources such as books, journals and magazines. The introduction of the digital library has enhanced the way students learn. Note that the search for learning materials has been made even easier as this is done using computers and the internet rather than searching manually for the data and information that one needs for his or her work. As a matter of fact, it is easier to update the learning resources that are available in an online library as compared to the normal libraries. In addition, it is far much cheaper to share these learning resources as compared to printed resources.

Therefore, one can argue that e-learning has impacted education in the sense that there is a substantial reduction in the overall costs that are involved in teaching. Notably, most of the costs that were incurred in the educational sector can now be substituted with cost effective online plans that can enable educational institutions to achieve their targets without necessarily having to incur some costs. Consequently, e-learning can enable academic institutions to be able to enrol a large number of students while at the same time incurring low operating or rather teaching costs.

Roles of Teachers and Academic Institutions

E-learning has been found to eliminate some of the roles that are played by teachers in academic institutions. In the conventional learning setup, teachers are required to act as instructors. With this in mind, these teachers need to be there throughout the teaching process to deliver their instructions to students. Particularly, teachers in this kind of a setup act as guardian and they have a big responsibility of ensuring that students are able to perform in the academic subjects that they have been enrolled to. Therefore, the success of a particular student will depend on an effort not only from the students but also from the teachers.

However, e-learning created new role for teachers while at the same time eliminating the former roles. The responsibility of teachers has shifted from teaching academic subjects to teaching social and interpersonal skills in an e-learning setup. It is further argued that teacher would no longer need to be experts in particular subject since they do not have interactive sessions with students. Instead, they need to develop skills of a social worker and guidance counsellors. With this in mind, the responsibility of the teacher would then encompass helping their students to go through their learning period by carrying out regular assessment of their progress as students.

Apart from teachers, academic institutions have also have acquired new roles. Whereas conventional learning has made academic institutions as centres of excellence where students come to acquire important knowledge and skills to develop their careers, the role of these institutions under e-learning setup has been found to shift from being academic centres to social centres. E-learning will transform schools to become more of a social and activity center where student learn social skills through participating in group activity. More important is the fact that the white board and the black board will be replaced by the TV and computer screens. Therefore, it can be said that there is a total change of the roles of teachers and schools as a result of introducing e-learning as model of learning in schools.

Surumi Salim
Assistant Professor
Department of English