As the modern face of education, e-learning continues to grow at an astounding pace. With more and more students and learners turning to affordable, convenient and quality education, the market in online and lifelong learning is projected to grow at an increasingly astounding rate. Here are a few of our predictions on where things might be going in 2014 and beyond.
Mobile Learning – The sale of traditional desk top PC’s has been slowing in growth for many years now. Though still strong in the commercial sector, home users are increasingly switching to using other devices to consume multimedia content, such as netbooks, smart phones and the ever increasing rise of the tablet. Inevitably, future courses and course materials will have to be developed with the needs of these different platforms given as much, if not more weight, than the traditional desktop computer.
MOOC’s – An abbreviation for Massively Open Online Course MOOC’s are courses open to an unlimited number of participants delivered electronically over the web. With the continued growth in the topics offered by MOOC’s and the increasing presence of high profile names in education, such as Oxford University becoming involved, we expect to see a huge upsurge in interest in online education across the board which we expect will translate into a great uptake in more focussed tutor supported courses by individuals.
HTML5 – The most recent evolution of the HTML markup language upon which so much of the World Wide Web is built, HTML5 offers immense new possibilities both to website builders and those who deliver services via the internet, such as online learning academies. With 2014 the target date for the 5.0 version of this language to become the recommended standard across the web we expect to see and to utilze the new opportunities it will provide to enhance the learning experience for our students.
Older and Wiser… – With the unprecedented flexibility online learning offers potential students we expect to see larger numbers of adults returning to education later in their life. With courses that are increasingly flexible around the demands of careers and families and a greater than ever pressure for self-improvement we expect to see students from ever wider walks of life enrolling onto distance learning courses.
… or younger and smarter – Meanwhile, with the cost of a traditional education rising to unprecedented levels we expect to see increasing numbers of younger people turning towards a more focussed and cost effective distance learning solution to get the skills, qualification and experience they need to get started in life.
Whatever the future brings and whatever challenges await us going forward the future is bright for distance learning. New technologies and innovations arrive day by day and the sum of human knowledge becomes more accessible to more people, helping thousands become more than they knew they could be and unlocking the true potential in every student.
Is 2014 your year to go further?
