Long live online learning?

In the current environment, with almost 25% of employees on furlough, many of those finding themselves with unexpected time on their hands during lockdown have focused on updating their professional skills and knowledge. As a result, there has been an explosion in the range of opportunities available online from providers such as Coursera and Udemy, both of whom offer bite sized learning on an amazing range of topics. Another source of learning has come from the professional bodies associated with a particular profession who have, in many cases, made more of their resources available to members and non-members alike. This, with a regular programme of webinars and online debates, has provided opportunity for learning to literally come straight to your home.

The surge in the range of technologies available including Zoom and MS Teams means, that it is likely that, the traditional stand up delivery in the classroom will, in the future, be blended with a range of engaging and interactive tools online which can only serve to benefit the learner of the future.

The key to creating a successful learning experience is engagement and activity. The mantra ‘learning by doing’ may well be very familiar and online learning in the virtual classroom provides the opportunity for learners to engage unconstrained by the limits of the formal workshop.

Synchronous learning, where all participants share a learning experience, such as on a webinar or a presentation via tools including Zoom and MS Teams, is often alive with questions and comment from the participants via the chatrooms running alongside the presentation. Pair this with polls and quizzes and participants leave a session with the sense of achievement having mastered a topic.

Asynchronous learning can be facilitated using tools such as Moodle, where virtual classrooms can be designed to host content, quizzes and discussion forums to enable learners to engage in their own time and space. Expert facilitation in the form of emoderation from an expert tutor provides the navigation for the learning helping participants to construct and collaborate in the learning process.

At arena4finance we are very much open for the business – check out our virtual classrooms which are sitting on the moodle platform and can be designed to suit the learning needs of your organisation. With many years of experience in education and training we are very well placed to help you with developing your online training for the future. Click on Online Resources and select Your Course to see a demonstration of the course set up.

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