5 New Trends in Educational Technology The digital transformation trends have also heavily impacted the education industry. They have affected how the teachers teach and students learn in classrooms. Further, their use has been accelerated by the pandemic. Many schools and teachers turn to technology to help the students continue their learning.
Schools, colleges, and universities are changing their traditional methods of teaching with new trends in education technology. Technology-enabled learning and smart boards are slowly replacing the traditional blackboards, chalks, and textbooks. The last few years have witnessed a dramatic change in the learning model. The way students are being taught today is very different from the teaching methods that were adopted a few decades back. Technology has brought about various changes in the way education is delivered and received.
From self-learning to flipped classroom approach, we have seen technology make a considerable impact on the learning and teaching methodologies. Here are the top 5 educational technology trends that we are going to see in 2021 and so on. 1. Learning outside the classroom environment. Mobile-based devices have taken learning outside of the classroom. With mLearning and eLearning growing in popularity, students can learn at their own pace and time.
This trend is expected to keep up as it is a convenient method of delivering as well as receiving the education. Designing mobile-first responsive content helps students to go through their courses anytime and anywhere. Internet connection is no longer an issue with offline reading capabilities. E-books can be embedded with many features to enhance the learning experience. Complete with annotation tools, bookmarks, hyperlinks, dictionary, search feature, and ebook makes learning more flexible.
Most of the educational institutes today have adopted mobile learning into their learning ecosystems, benefiting students and teachers alike. 2. Gamification. Gamification is one of the most innovative trends in educational technology. It has become an increasingly essential part of education in the last few years.
The gamification approach uses different strategies, varied activities, badges, and rewards to promote student or learner engagement. The approach makes use of the various gamification elements and characteristics of gaming culture in designing the courses. It helps the students to become active and motivated learners.
Learners play educational games to learn various academic skills and earn points or rewards for completing the assigned tasks. They compete with peers towards specific objectives or goals. The challenges and rewards help the learners to remain motivated in the process of learning. The game-based approach helps to make the content more fun and interesting for learners. Earning badges, coins, rewards, and so more, makes the learners pay more attention to what is being taught to them.
In a classroom learning model, teachers encourage collaboration by assigning group activities and tasks. When students team up together to work on a project or solve a problem, it builds their collaborative skills. Working together improves their understanding and increases engagement.
Although e-learning is quite popular, it includes collaboration with features to share and discuss. In a traditional teaching model, a teacher enters a classroom, speaks for about 30 minutes, and leaves when the bell rings. But today, technology has bridged the gap between teachers and students. You would find teachers and students interacting with each other more often. Teachers are far more accessible now, and act as mentors to help students in their overall development.
This collaborative learning approach helps students to interact with their peers and build their interpersonal skills. 4. Immersive learning with augmented reality and virtual reality. With the introduction of augmented reality and virtual reality into the education system, the classroom learning experience has undergone a tremendous change. Learning has become much more immersive than traditional methods.
Unlike plain images and hands-on experiments in the lab, students can now view enhanced versions of the image and objects on their mobile devices. The augmented and virtual reality trends in education technology are making learning a compelling experience. While augmented reality provides an enhanced view of a real image, virtual reality gives a false perception of reality around them.
Both these techniques have taken digital learning to new dimensions. Augmented reality and virtual reality are increasingly being used to explain complex concepts. From atoms to planets and from Egypt to the Colosseum, students can explore and learn so much more.
According to Ed Week's Market Brief, by 2021, over 15% of schools in the United States will have a set of virtual reality classroom kits. Worldwide, over 70 million students will experience immersive learning through virtual reality. Students benefit greatly from VR's ability to make theoretical information into an actual experience.
For instance, virtual reality kits allow biology students to travel inside the human body. This gives students a deeper, richer understanding of, for instance, how the circulatory system works, or how the human body fights off disease. 5. Virtual Learning Virtual learning is a way of learning a subject or providing training with the use of web conferencing tools. Virtual learning offers convenience and flexibility to learners. It allows for live online interaction between the instructor and learners, which is very similar to the traditional classroom experience.
Thus, it offers a combination of online learning and in-person instruction. The live online teaching or training can be supplemented by self-paced online learning tools and additional study materials. It provides learners with a more comprehensive understanding of course content. This approach helps you to create more effective, flexible, and learner-centered teaching. Learner engagement will be more and learners can gain more while participating in online assignments.
The virtual learning approach helps the instructors to think about the best way to teach learners. and then use the appropriate technology to achieve their goals. Virtual learning is one of the cost-effective ways of delivering content or training.
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