Collaborative learning is a learning methodology that’s fast gaining populace around the globe. One of the key apparatus to further encourage collaborative learning is E-learning. E-learning allows sharing of information among students from diverse nationalities, cultures to exchange information through chat rooms or communities. Moreover, as students get to learn from the comfort of their home, E-learning often leads to better concentration levels as distracting school friends are not there beside them. As globalization is creeping in all around the globe, to have knowledge of every single place on the world map is essential & what better than internet learning to provide that.
The major scopes that E-learning offers & other methodologies lack can be enlisted as below:
- Maintaining a proper time management scheme as separate time frames for studies & other essential tasks can be pre-scheduled.
- Students get to choose from the courses available at E-learning sites & thus refrain from matters that don’t interest them
- Travelling & other associated costs are nullified
- Learners become aware of different learning methodologies which wouldn’t have been possible hands on in schools like learning mathematics through counting number of balls
- Often websites offering E-learning allow the flexibility of allowing learners go at their own space without bounding them by particular time duration for example of a school period.
- Websites offer bulletin boards where individual students can raise their areas of discomfort in learning explicitly to the faculty.
- E-learning offers international level course materials at moderate prices which could have been a gigantic sum if it had to be purchased everywhere locally.
But as can very well be guessed from the limitations of E-learning, it should always be kept as a means of collaborative learning only. We shouldn’t expect thoroughly trained professionals to come out of E-learning curriculums. Rather, E-learning should be used as a catalyst to collaborative learning.