Last year, the global online education market was valued at USD 30.60 billion and between 2022 - 2030, the market is expected to grow at an impressive CAGR of 23.12 percent and reach USD 198.9 billion by the end of the forecast period. To no one’s surprise, the pandemic has played a crucial role in accelerating the popularity of online learning across the globe. The fact that the number of students enrolled in online courses increased from 37 percent in fall 2019 to 52 percent in 2020 further highlights the impact the pandemic had in online learning. With the growing acceptance of online learning, education is now accessible to more students and their learning is not limited to books or physical classrooms. Through online learning, students now have the opportunity to experience a new way of acquiring knowledge that is more flexible and learner-centric than traditional learning options. The rapid advancements made in technology are helping the growth of online education making it more effective and affordable for the learners. That said, educators and students still have concerns regarding the reliability of online education. In this article, we will analyze how online education can be made reliable.

Better Integration of AR and VR

One of the major criticisms online learning gets is regarding its inability to create an interactive and engaging learning atmosphere for the students. Even though online learning promotes collaborative and individualized learning, creating an engaging atmosphere for the students still remain a challenge in online education. The introduction of AR and VR can be a game changer for online education as it helps students to become more engaged in the learning process. By introducing animations and fun games, AR and VR will be able to offer an immersive learning atmosphere for the students. Going one step ahead, AR and VR can also help students to have  a 360 degree view of the virtual classroom they are attending, interact in real time with other students and the teacher while still sitting in the comforts of their rooms. This will not only enhance their learning experience but it will also help the students to experience learning like never before.  

Intel Tech Learning Lab is a frontrunner when it comes to incorporating the latest technologies into education. Through this initiative, Intel is aiming to come up with innovative teaching methods that can help educators improve the quality of education and help them nurture the leaders of tomorrow. The learning lab has lessons where the students learn about space and they pilot a spaceship virtually. The students will be able to know more about the Milky Way, comets, and black holes by learning about scientific components. The lab has also developed a virtual frog dissection which has the potential to revolutionize medical education as doing the dissection virtually is more humane, safer and cost-effective.  Online education programs need more innovative AR and VR activities like these to increase its reliability as it will make learning more hands-on and effective.   

Improving Web Accessibility

To make online education more reliable, it is imperative to increase web accessibility. Due to the rapid advancements in technology and digital transformation web accessibility is now more important than ever. As information, services, and products have become more accessible through online mediums, it is important that education also follow suit. According to a UNICEF report, there are almost 240 million students with disabilities across the globe and for online education to be more reliable to these students, it is important to increase its accessibility. Another data states that 90 percent of commercial and public websites cannot be fully accessed by individuals who need assistive technology to use the web. Increasing web accessibility will not only help students with disabilities to access more online programs but it will also improve student retention making it much more reliable for a wider student population.  

Result-oriented Assessments, the Need of the Hour

Outcome-based and learner-centric assessments are something that is lacking for many online learning programs and as there is limited physical interaction between the learner and the teacher, focusing on improving the assessments is crucial to make online education more reliable. In many online learning courses, if the student doesn’t score well in the exams, they have to repeat the course altogether. This is a taxing process which can adversely impact the morale of the students. While traditional assessments can help educators understand who is eligible to get the completion certificate of a program, having new and innovative result-oriented assessments will allow educators to analyze the areas in which the students have struggled and offer simple learning programs to help them improve. If used in online learning programs, result-oriented assessments can go a long way in not only enhancing its student-centricity but it can also help students to get certified without having to study the same curriculum all over again for a second time.    

With the rapid advancement and adoption of technology, the world we live in is constantly changing and these advancements should reflect in the online education sector as well. The afore-mentioned changes/up-gradations can help online learning programs to increase its reliability while at the same time accelerate its growth even more. Now, more and more business organizations have started to encourage their employees to take up online programs to enhance their skill set. This can also open up new alleyways of growth opportunities for online education going forward.