Learning is all about acquiring real world skills and empowers learners to succeed, not just in academics, but also in professional life. The introduction of ILOCs or Instructor-Led Online Courses that mimic the offline course experience online and bring the best of both formats on one single platform will help students and working professionals to migrate from the proven offline classroom learning experience to online classes. The technology-assisted live instructor-led online courses will change the way people learn in the 21st century. There has always been a palpable need for interactive platforms in the growing e-learning space. Learners are looking for someone who can solve the problems in a real time environment rather than taking references from pre-recorded classes. The ILOCs platforms have industry experts instead of professors to train learners online through live sessions. On these platforms, all classes are conducted through Live Video Streaming where any learner can interact with the instructor by speaking, chatting and sharing their screen instead of just viewing pre-recorded instructional sessions. Instructors can now teach through his/her screen and by using various technology tools.
There are various reasons why instructor-led online live sessions are outdoing pre-recorded instructional videos and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in the e-education space. Most prominent among these reasons is that in Instructor-led online classes, learners are able to ask questions and can learn from the feedback given by the instructor. They can practice what they have learned and therefore have little chance of repeating mistakes repeatedly. Unfortunately, in-depth feedback simply is not possible in most MOOCs/pre-recorded videos. In case of ILOCs, real time assessments are possible with the instructor evaluating the learner's improvement on the spot and personalizing the feedback for each learner. In most cases, MOOCs/pre-recorded video-based learning courses provide automatic feedback in the form of quizzes.
Less than 10 percent of the enrolled learners complete MOOCs till the end. When enrollment is nothing more than a few mouse clicks, getting a class of 1,000 learners can be simple. People find out about a course through social media, blog posts, or internet surfing and enroll in just a couple of minutes. Soon, they fall behind or forget to login to the course from the very onset and never complete it at all. ILOCs foster serious learning, as they demand greater commitment from learners. Most learners thrive in a more structured environment with set deadlines and in-person motivation. MOOCs are failing to attract large time commitment from users, thus recording low completion rates. ILOCs currently are commanding over 85 percent completion rates.
ILOCs have a clear need for highly passionate and experienced industry professionals with hands-on, real world knowledge to offer timely solutions to these problems. These professionals should be chosen carefully and one should further train them so that they can offer the most superlative, unique and practical learning. To this end, an 'Instructor Excellence Team' which continuously researches on the best teaching methodologies and trains the instructors very frequently to deliver unique and highly enriching learning experiences to the learners.
Students and working professionals can experience real learning through assignments and assessment modules along with project work and case studies. Real learning is not a mass customer activity. Learning needs to be personalized. Each individual comes with different absorbing skills. To cater to individual needs, the size of the online classroom should be limited to a maximum of 15. This helps achieve optimal levels of knowledge acquisition and allows us to personalize the learning for every user. At every level there has to be a tool to measure the learner's progress through continuous assessments and to give appropriate feedback to them. The learners' propensity to take up courses is also higher if reputed industry experts design the modules as they feel they will be industry-ready after finishing the course. One can truly master skills with hands-on experience and real life application. Hence, 'learning while doing' is the core philosophy this segment. Learners get to handle projects or case studies to develop relevant industry skills.
The courses provided on these e-learning platforms are easily accessible anytime and anywhere. Users need to have an internet connectivity to experience a highly interactive and engaging learning experience. This makes the ILOCs platforms ideal to create an enjoyable process for knowledge and skill acquisition, which is enriching and interactive while simultaneously promoting critical thinking. With greater community interaction and engagement, combined with excellent course delivery methods, ILOCs will redefine online learning experiences across the globe.
Raju Vanapala
He is a first generation entrepreneur who is zealous about web and mobile revolution. Driven by his passion he founded LearnSocial.com adding another feather to his entrepreneurial cap. Raju Vanapala started 'Way2Online Interactive India Pvt Ltd' that runs country's largest consumer messaging portal way2sms.com. It has crossed over 40 million users; making it one of India's most successful internet-mobile start-up of all time.
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