E-learning has revolutionized the way people access education and acquire knowledge. With the increasing popularity of online learning, it’s no surprise that the e-learning industry is rapidly growing and constantly evolving.
2020-2021 proved the importance of e-learning, and 2022 will undoubtedly be the year it takes off and is fully consolidated. So let’s try to offer our forecasts and trends in e-Learning for 2022. Many of my projections have to do with what happened in 2020-2021, a year in which we continued our education thanks to e-learning and its different forms and uses.
Business trends that will transform 2020-2021
This momentum has given wings to the “ed-tech” sector. Many SaaS systems for educational institutions have been overwhelmed by the exponential demand or the increase in individuals’ consumption. For example, online webinars have multiplied, and the use of platforms such as ZOOM has grown in the market, even coining the term Zoomania.
Another trend that we will see reflected in 2022 is the decentralization of knowledge and the rise of info product training. The ease of creating a course and marketing it thanks to online platforms will make many people unemployed by the pandemic seek self-employment by offering their knowledge directly through these platforms, without going through intermediaries. Also, the e-learning trend is increasing the popularity of the paper writer service.
Trends in e-Learning for 2022
It has taken a pandemic to show that e-Learning and, of course, online training- is an excellent solution to many of our problems. Even so, we have to recognize that the private initiatives have emphasized offering solutions to the issues we have had and innovating with the change of paradigm.
E-Learning itself is already a trend. In recent years it has been gaining more and more momentum to become the most innovative and flexible field of education to adapt to new technologies. It is therefore not surprising that so many trends in e-Learning will emerge by 2022.
Trend: free e-Learning
The MOOC business model is becoming more and more relevant and is presented as a format that the best schools in the world are using. We have gone from MOOCs of all kinds to quality MOOCs where it is worth investing a few euros more to get a degree from Stanford, Wharton, or MIT.
And we should not forget either, although we have already mentioned it before, the free, informative YouTube channels.
Trend: Live training and webinars
Studying in a virtual classroom does not mean that you cannot learn live. Real-time collaboration tools are ideal for imparting knowledge in an agile way and with the option of resolving doubts on the spot. For this reason, this format is becoming increasingly popular and one of the most accessible e-Learning trends to implement, regardless of your budget. Fortunately, you don’t need to invest large amounts of money in technology to broadcast a live video.
Trend: Virtual assistants in online training
Imagine a voice assistant capable of understanding a learner’s central questions, for example:
- Check my notes
- Schedule me a tutorial with the teacher
- Find me the best definition of e-Learning
- I need to research e-Learning
A whole world of possibilities is opening up before us to make a learner’s learning experience more satisfying, and we are working on it.
Trend: Personalized training in e-Learning
Personalization is in vogue in all fields, including education. That is why it is one of the main trends in e-Learning for 2020-2021. The collection of data known as Big Data, and its interpretation through analysis to obtain valuable information, makes it possible to offer much more personalized learning.
The shift to virtual and remote learning has led to an increased interest in adaptive learning, which is a form of e-learning that uses technology to personalize each learner’s learning experience. The system adjusts the content and delivery method based on the learner’s abilities, preferences, and pace of learning. This approach provides a customized and personalized learning path for each student, helping them retain and apply the information they have learned.
The method uses various technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and data analytics to gather data and information about the learner and decide what content to present and how to present it. The ultimate goal is to increase learning efficiency and effectiveness by ensuring that each learner receives the correct information at the right time and in the right way.
Trend: Tokenization and Blockchain
Blockchain is already being applied in education and should be used at the highest level. We are always the first not only in private education but also in public and official education.
Trend: Experience Learning
We will see if we evolve from e-Learning to x-Learning. We still have a lot of 20th-century e-Learning. That is e-learning. And we have to develop and bring about a change where the industry stops manufacturing content to produce unique and relevant learning experiences.
Learning has to be relevant, and the learner has to be passionate about education and understand how to apply what they learn. It is another trend in e-Learning for this year.
Technology, of course, will continue to be a commodity that would facilitate the creation of increasingly relevant and intuitive hands-on learning experiences.
Trend: Engagement is the king
We are moving from the content era to the engagement era. Now the most important thing of all is interactions with users. In this case, the students.
We must excite our students so that they are eager to know the next challenge they are going to face. Good gamification can be beneficial, and I don’t mean giving prizes for things that have nothing to do with the narrative or story you are telling in that course.
The more involvement you get from the learners, the more fluid the communication with them will be. This automatically results in much more enriching interactions on both sides. Learners feel cared for, and you have a clearer idea of how to meet their needs. That’s why engagement is one of the e-Learning trends you won’t be able to ignore next year.
Trend: Mobile Learning
Cell phones are part of our daily lives. We could almost say that they have become an extension of our body since we don’t go anywhere without them.
When we talk about m-Learning, we are referring to mobile learning. Over time, numerous apps have emerged that allow us to learn languages, mathematics, science, etc., from anywhere and at any time.
Today, we see an increased use of learning management systems (LMSs). LMS is being used to deliver and manage virtual and remote learning programs, providing a centralized platform for students to access course content and resources.
The combination of these two technologies together with e-Learning is ideal to guarantee good training.
Trend: Gamification and social learning
To teach means to excite. That is why gamification or gamification is one of the most effective mechanisms to motivate students and help them learn. It is not about trivializing educational content but making the student feel the need to go further through little motivation (additional challenges, exclusive content, rankings, academic recognition).
In our case, we have combined gamification of the classroom with social learning outside the classroom. It has allowed us to transfer additional challenges to advanced students. In this way, gamification enables the achievement of higher recognition with remarkable success.
The gamification strategy that has worked best for us so far has undeniably been the Skype groups. Some of the networking problems we had have been solved in one fell swoop, and the effectiveness of teacher-student communication when instant feedback is needed has been translated as well.
Trend: More informal and less formal training
I never tire of saying that the world is going one way and the system is going the other, and they don’t seem to understand each other. And the same thing happens in education in general. That is precisely why I spoke of the need for schools committed to training people invaluable things that reflect the market’s reality. At the same time, universities continue to train the unemployed.
Trend: Machine Learning
Thanks to Big Data, it will be possible to identify behavioral patterns in learning styles and provide greater adaptability and personalization to the process by including those elements that most motivate us. It will also make it possible to adapt the level of the itineraries according to the capabilities and motivations of each student.
And all this automatically and with continuous learning of the system thanks to the application of Machine Learning, which will make the models evolve according to the users’ actual behavior.
It also occurs to me that, as we said before, if I can know your history and compare it with the evolution of other users who have had a similar history to yours, I will be able to generate learning itineraries perfectly adapted to your path automatically. This particular case would be much more suitable for training capsules than for long-term programs such as masters and postgraduate programs.
For example, if you compare the development of your students with the climate, can you find correlations? It is obvious, but there are indeed correlations, and this allows us to design itineraries that improve the student’s experience.
Another application of Machine Learning is facial recognition. Combining this technology with Blockchain will allow us to accredit specific processes that need to be regulated in training.
Trend: Adaptive Learning
Adaptive learning is one of the significant challenges facing education in the future. Adapting the pace, objectives, and content according to the students’ multiple intelligences, abilities, and motivations must be one of the significant challenges for this industry in the coming years.
Multidisciplinary groups are also important. Each student can develop their talents according to their abilities and motivations and contribute to the development of the group.
In the traditional industrial model – a student with great creative and musical ability was unable to keep up with the pace of a math class and therefore failed miserably in the system. However, suppose we identify his skills and set him a lower target in that same math class, increasing his challenges in other courses where he progresses faster than others. In that case, we get him to reach a minimum level in math where he had previously failed. Therefore, he will not feel incredible frustration in the standardized model and will develop extensively in those skills where he finds excellent motivation.
Trend: Learning Analytics
Learning Analytics provides us with data. Therefore, clues about what is happening in the virtual classroom may go unnoticed at first. Training can be correctly oriented thanks to a good data model that analyzes a large volume of information.
We will also be able to learn which are the learners’ paths through the content from observation. Do they follow the steps we thought they would? Where do they get stuck? Those who are used to web analytics will have it more accessible. Even in our case, we have posed several challenges to the experts of usability and analytics oriented in this case to education.
Trend: IoT and Wearables
When we talk about connectivity, we usually mean people, but now there are new trends in e-learning in this regard. The Internet of Things (IoT) is all about connectivity between objects and how to control these interconnected objects remotely.
It is time to take advantage of devices capable of serving some pedagogical purpose. An easy-to-understand example is Google Glasses, which can be used for Serious Games if combined with augmented reality and virtual reality. In this way, we can learn to handle objects thanks to simulations.
Trend: Flipped Classroom or Inverted Classroom
It is one of the trends in e-learning that is gaining momentum. This model starts with a problem as the focus of learning and provides the student with the necessary resources to solve it with the help of a tutor. However, the method is improving by choosing an experiential learning model in which usability, design, and, in short, the learning experience in which the student lives.
Trend: Chatbots for training
A question and answer (QA) system is designed to answer questions formulated in natural language. Some systems extract information from a source, such as text or an image, to answer a specific question. These “source” systems can be divided into two main subcategories: open domain, where questions can be virtually anything (Dialogflow) but do not focus on a specific material, and closed domain, where questions have specific constraints (Chatfuel), as they relate to some predefined source (e.g., a provided context or a particular field, such as medicine).
Bio:
Elissa Smart is an omnipotent demiurge behind PaperHelp’s blog. Driven by seething creativity, not only she helps students with particular research and writing requests, but also finds the energy to share her extensive expertise via blog posts.