What An Online School Can Do For Your Overall Development

With the evolution of technology, online learning has gained significant momentum among learners as well as professionals worldwide. As online school programs offer excellent flexibility and convenience, you can easily earn a postgraduate degree without making any severe changes to your personal or professional life. But can web-based learning help you in your overall development other than just providing a recognised degree? Yes, it can. Read on to find out..... 

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More Than Just A Degree 

 

I am sure you know how intensely competitive the job market has become. Nowadays recruiters want applicants to have something more than just a degree. So it is imperative that you gain some additional skills to get an edge over others. Careers Advisor Susan Hughes of the National Careers Service believes since the past few years more and more employers are searching for candidates who show emotional intelligence. 

Be Present Online

 

I think creating a noteworthy online presence is one of the simplest ways to do this, while developing sector knowledge. Social networks, online forums, websites and online Q&As with business experts can help you to communicate with prominent individuals in your preferred sector and expand your network. 

This is where the training from your online school comes in. During your study for an online postgraduate degree, you will have the opportunity to communicate with your fellow classmates and teachers through various online modes like chatrooms, forums, video chats, social media etc. This not only helps you to connect with your peers and seniors effectively, but you will also learn how to use social networking for expanding your network. Moreover you will also get the opportunity to meet new people from your industry who may open new doors for your career in the future. 

Start Blogging, It Helps

 

Apart from these, blogging is another excellent way to make new connections. Harriet Tuson, a graduate from the University of Bristol, managed to write articles for the academic website Experimentation, even though she worked part-time to support her master's degree in management, finance and economics. As she had a biochemistry undergraduate degree, she pursued her interests by writing about the latest trends in the sector. This became an advantage for her when she was employed in a pharmaceutical consultancy. 

Tuson says, “Some of the articles I'd written related to my job, which showed I hadn't just left uni and applied for anything I could think of but was really enthusiastic about the role.” 

Work Experience- A Must Have

 

In a similar way, your work experience also becomes a crucial factor when applying for a job. As online school programs are highly flexible, you can pursue your studies from your home. Moreover, as the learning material is available online, you can easily access it any time you want as per your convenience. This gives you the scope to get a full time job in your desired field and gain relevant work experience. You can easily work throughout the day and continue your studies at night or in the early morning. You can even choose to study from your office by accessing the content from your tab or smartphone. The biggest advantage is that you can instantly apply whatever you have learned into your work and increase your productivity. 

Don’t Be Sector Specific

 

Online education also gives you the scope to gain skills that are not exactly sector specific. For example, Olivia Keenan engaged herself with several teaching roles and outreach programmes to evade getting trapped in only one field, while she was pursuing her master's from the University of Southampton. 

She says, “I'm doing a PhD in astrophysics, which will be fantastic if I decide to stay in academia, but what if I decide I don't? And don't want to be an engineer or a programmer? Unfortunately a lot of companies still subscribe to certain subject stereotypes, which means if you study in a science or maths based field they may assume that you lack people skills.” 

Keenan believes all students pursuing a postgraduate degree should think about this factor as it will make them more knowledgeable about various fields and more confident. She adds “Try and think of the stereotypes your degree conjures up and do something which proves that you break the mould.” 

Thus if you want to garner varied skills and experience, your online postgraduate programme can provide you the opportunity to expand your knowledge and gain employability skills like management, teamwork, leadership and adaptability. 

What do you think? How else can your online programme help you in overall development? Share your views, opinions and concerns with us. We would love to hear from you.

Blended Learning and Its Major Trends

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Blended learning might be a term evoking a sense of much mystery for the uninitiated. It happens to be form of formal education where the student too is an active part of the learning process enjoying a amount of control over the time, place, path or pace of the learning procedure facilitated by the online delivery of content and instruction while still attending a physical school. Collection of related data and the ability to customize the instruction provided and the assessment of the learner are the two major benefits enabled by such a teaching methodology.

Blended learning has the promising prospect of being a wonder cure for many teachers for many of their teaching conundrums teaching in what could often be vastly different scenarios. Its range of applications can be as varied as 1:1 classrooms and schools, or BYOD classes filled with various types and quantum of technology blended learning can help nearly every teacher make learning more personalized and more interesting for their students.  Implementing a blended learning program in your classroom can be a great way to put the technology tools you have to use. In the lines below we will take look at six of the blended learning trends prevalent today.

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1. Soaring numbers of digital learners – the number of students participating in classroom-only education is shrinking (albeit slowly) while the number of students participating in some type of online learning is steadily growing (despite making up a much smaller percentage of students). 


2.  Building higher order thinking skills – students are required to look at information more critically rather than just trying to memorize what is presented to them in class. This moves upwards from remembering to creating with the middle processes of understanding, applying, analyzing and evaluating. 


3. A personalized learning approach – by a lean, blended and interactive approach. 


4. The mobile world is where learners live now however more so for personal than school use. The statistics show that in U.S. 41% of Grade 3 students have smartphones compared to 59% of grade 6 students, 75% of Grade 9 students, and 82% of grade 12 students. The figures stand at 44%, 53%, 48%, 40% respectively for tablets. In case of Laptops 61% of grade 3 students have laptops, 68% for grade 6, 69% for grade 9 and 73% of grade 12 students. 


5.  Students have personal access to mobile devices – smartphones, tablets, laptops and digital reading devices trump desktops. 18% of K-2 students have access to smartphones, 26% have access to tablets, 12% have access to digital readers and 41% have access to laptops while the figures stand at 40%, 41%, 30% and 54% for grade 3-5 students. 


6.  The need for more broadband – 72% of schools in the US lack the broadband access they need to support digital learning.
   

In the daily routine of learning in the virtual classroom, teaching at an online school, or parenting a student who attends an online school, we may be unaware of how our experiences are both shaping and being shaped by broader trends in education. The above paragraphs were intended to serve as pointers to give us an indication of where the digital revolution is heading towards as far as education especially blended education is concerned.