This article is originally published on eLearning Industry. Lockdown conditions have caused digital learning in higher education to blossom. This dramatic change created new challenges for professors and students as they grapple to effectively deliver curriculums digitally.
Succeeding With Digital Learning In Higher Education
Online higher education was gaining strides long before the pandemic ushered in a new era of remote work and learning. In many aspects, academia was far ahead of other industries in terms of online learning, but that doesn’t mean last year’s massive transition was all smooth sailing. The dramatic shift to online learning has created new challenges across the spectrum; for students, professors, and administrators alike. Not only must curriculum be delivered over virtual lines, but new ways have needed to be found for other activities key to academic growth including study groups and office hours.
Can You Teach Old Tools New Tricks?
Education has been one of the pioneering industries when it comes to the adoption of virtual learning tools. However, in some ways, that’s also what’s holding it back now. In other words, higher education institutions were some of the first to adopt virtual tools. But many haven’t upgraded to the latest and greatest options. That means they’re still using the same tools from five to seven years ago, if not longer.
And for many, this means that they are using non-cloud based and outdated tools. That limits their availability and capability. These older solutions may not be keeping pace with the needs that today’s higher education students have. Many, if not most, are digital natives who have grown up with more advanced technology. They easily spot old-style interfaces and clunky systems and are less likely to engage with them.
Other institutions may use a lift-and-shift approach, similar to what happens largely in the K-12 sector. Schools and teachers have attempted to take their same in-classroom approach to teaching and simply transition it to virtual collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams or Google Classroom, which doesn’t work. You can’t just swap out a virtual classroom for a physical one without making many adjustments. Traditional teaching tools like handouts or physical models are replaced with virtual-friendly tools. And physical body language can’t always be properly conveyed through a screen, to name just a couple of differences.
Not All Online Learning Is Equal
There are a lot of tools out there for hosting virtual classrooms or otherwise conducting virtual teaching. So how do you decide what’s best? It’s not just about a collaboration platform. You need a tool that incorporates the ability to track things like user engagement and learning engagement.
User engagement is a significant challenge for any kind of education but especially online learning where, as an instructor, you don’t have the advantage of being physically in the same room as your students. Now, teachers have a harder time seeing if students are interested in the material because they’re looking at dozens of tiny faces on a screen rather than life-sized faces in a room.
One way that remote education is changing is the division of students into smaller virtual groups. The teacher still guides the class, but then students form smaller collaboration groups in virtual breakout rooms. Teachers need an online system that can facilitate this.
Digital Learning in Higher Education is Not Corporate Learning
It’s also important to remember that higher ed is not the same as corporate learning—the higher education sector has different needs. The delivery of a course in higher ed needs to be able to manage multiple different types of learning activities over time. If you’re teaching college-length classes, you’re going to have multiple assignments, multiple assessments, and multiple topics you need to teach about and track.
The measurement of learning is also very different. In a corporate environment, you’re going to measure the outcome of learning based on skills or competencies that learners have attained. It’s less about translating into job skills and more about translating learning into grades. You need a platform where you can have assignments graded and a workflow between you and the student.
That’s not typically necessary in the corporate environment, so it has to be taken into consideration when looking at virtual tools to help this sector succeed. These realities make it more important than ever to invest in a learning management system in addition to collaboration and communication platforms.
Securing your digital learning in higher education
Training has become a crucial component of any organization’s cybersecurity strategy. Statistics show that employees are behind a majority of data breaches, but poor or no training lies behind those numbers. Employers have the opportunity to greatly improve their security posture. How? By providing employees with training on new technologies and basic cyber hygiene. Using today’s learning delivery tools, they can create a culture of continuous learning. Specifically, one that benefits the company and its customers.