by
Imed Bouchrika, Phd
While face-to-face classes still have their place, more and more courses and learning are taking place online. This can be cheaper and simpler to handle for academic organizations. Additionally, eLearning also allows educators to reach learners without the limitations of location. And, with 73% of students looking to continue taking online classes even after the pandemic (McKenzie, 2021), eLearning is set to become the future of education. And at the root of these innovations in education are the best digital learning platforms.
This is not to argue that conventional methods of education are on the verge of extinction, but academic institutions and corporations have realized that they are capable of doing a great deal more with technology, such as smartphones and other internet-connected gadgets that make it possible to study from any place. In this article, we will explore the best digital platforms currently utilized by academic organizations (and even business institutions) to bring remote learning to the forefront.
Even before the pandemic, there was already substantial development and acceptance in education technology. With worldwide EdTech expenditures reaching $269.87 billion in 2021 and the overall rise of online education up to $585.48 billion by 2027, there has already been a lot of progress made in this field (Research and Markets, 2022). Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, there has been a considerable increase in the use of digital learning platforms and supporting technologies, such as video conferencing tools, virtual tutoring, online PowerPoint viewers, and language learning applications.
The pandemic was devastating to many different industries, but it opened the doors for expansion in the worldwide education technology sector. However, as things return to normal and schools and colleges slowly open their doors, the more pressing issue is how the sector will shape out and what business models that exist inside EdTech will thrive. Leaders in the education industry feel that the change in the perception of educators and students is comparable to the acceptance of digital payments during the period of demonetization and that this change in behavior will not be reversed now that they perceive so much value and ease in it.
During the pandemic, institutions across the education sector, even those with low online enrollment rates, expanded their technological infrastructure expenditures. The following economic crisis also promoted the mainstream acceptance of certain EdTech tools more than others, which was consistent with the spending priorities established for crises. By the end of 2021, up to 87% of learners were using video conferencing, recording, and distribution and accessibility technologies (Garrett et al., 2021).
The technologies that were seen as fundamental to the short-term management of the pandemic were the ones that saw the strongest gains in total widespread adoption. These innovations included the best digital learning platforms (i.e., learning management systems), video conferencing and supporting video infrastructure, assessment solutions, and virtual labs. Other areas of education technology, such as student assistance, open educational resources (OER), and textbooks and supplies, had greater net adoption percentages in 2021. These may signal a change in the way that institutions think as the emphasis moves away from crisis management and toward longer-term operations.
Source: Quality Matters, 2021
Without the technological innovations of the last few decades and the rapid adoption of solutions, such as eLearning platforms, the pandemic would have had a more severe impact on education. Fortunately, digital learning platforms for K-12 and colleges created a new strategy and have forged a new path for the future of education.
The vast majority of educational technology is developed with the goal of making the job of teachers easier. Technology can help with almost every element of managing a classroom, from making it simple to get access to ready-made materials to offering organizational software that makes it more efficient for instructors to monitor students’ academic progress, assignments, and attendance.
On top of accessibility and efficiency, the benefits above have permanently changed the perception of faculty members when it comes to online learning as a whole. Up to 58% of teachers say that they are more optimistic about eLearning and the tools that come with it (McKenzie, 2021).
Source: Inside Higher Ed, 2021
A similar trend can be seen among students, with 57% reported that they have a more optimistic outlook on online education than they had before the outbreak. Nearly half of learners (47%) said that their perspective of online test proctoring, which has been the subject of significant debate owing to privacy issues, has also evolved positively as well (McKenzie, 2021).
As a result of the rapid adoption and changing behavior towards online learning, the best digital learning platforms for schools are evolving to meet the increasingly more complex needs of educators and students. While each solution differs in some aspects from each other, most modern eLearning platforms should have the following features:
Ed Discussion is a platform for online threaded discussions that enable students and teachers to engage in asynchronous conversation through the posting of text comments and questions, files, and other media to discussion boards. It offers user-defined filters and categories for threads, anonymous posting, LaTex, picture annotation, teacher endorsements, user-defined notification settings, data analytics, and code snippets that may be performed. Its purpose is to cut down on the number of emails and recurring inquiries that are sent to the teaching team and instructors. Students are provided with a variety of avenues to convey their thoughts via the use of equations, executable code, annotations, and more through the app.
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Canvas LMS is an excellent open-source training platform for institutions looking to develop a dependable and adaptable training program. It is also a great learning solution for schools with significant class requirements since it is cloud-based and packed with sophisticated capabilities. Plus, considering mobile vs. desktop use statistics show a preference for smartphone usage, it helps that the platform is also mobile-ready. Canvas LMS connects with other major applications, including Instructure works with AWS, Google, and Microsoft. It aims to serve as a centralized and personalized platform for K-12 and beyond.
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Nearpod is a web and app-based digital platform that simplifies the teaching process for instructors. They can build interactive lessons based on slides, which they can then utilize to teach their students and engage with them. Additionally, it may be used with pre-existing tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and even YouTube. The software comes with a ton of pre-made materials, each of which is designed to make teaching much simpler and more efficient. Because it is also interactive, Nearpod helps educators to turn the learning experiences into games and communicate with students without leaving the app.
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Lumio by SMART is a digital learning platform that makes it simple to turn classes into active, collaborative learning experiences that can engage students on their own devices, regardless of where they are. PDFs, Google Slides, PowerPoint, and Notebook files can simply be converted into lessons that include built-in interactive exercises, games, group workspaces, and evaluations. Lumio is a versatile and time-saving application that comes with tools for creativity as well as collaboration. These tools enable students to learn with and from one another, both within and outside of the classroom.
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Khan Academy is a non-profit organization with the goal of providing free education of a world-class standard to anybody, wherever in the world. Learners are given the ability to study at their own pace both inside and outside the classroom, thanks to the platform’s provision of practice tasks, instructional videos, and a customized learning dashboard. In addition to K-14 and test preparation material (SAT, Praxis, and LSAT), the learning site covers subjects such as mathematics, physics, computers, history, art history, and economics, among other topics. The emphasis placed on skill mastery at Khan Academy is intended to assist students in laying the solid groundwork and maximizing their future educational opportunities.
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An online course builder and management software, Graphy lets users develop high-converting, white-labeled websites and mobile applications that enable them to sell online courses and digital items. Within the platform’s framework, users can create their own courses, no-code websites, and mobile apps. They can provide live instruction, publish chapters of information on a predetermined timetable, and much more. Using the built-in tools, instructors may sell their courses and incorporate payment methods.
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Discovery Education Inc. has established its position as the industry’s leading producer of digital content, digital curriculum materials, and professional development opportunities for K-12 schools. Lesson plans, instructional methodologies, and a variety of other types of information are included in the additional resources. Learners have access to every potential source of material, including primary source papers, books, recordings, audio files, films, podcasts, interviews, photographs, and more. The platform integrates seamlessly with other digital learning platforms such as Canvas, Google, Schoology, Brightspace, and more.
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McGraw-Hill Connect is a digital teaching and learning system designed for higher education faculty and students. It is a comprehensive and versatile toolset, saving instructors and students time while helping them enhance their learning results. It provides teachers with a collection of materials compiled by academics and subject-matter experts to aid in the creation of lesson plans. Additionally, they can access data and insights to help them better understand their pupils’ progress. They can use the tools to distribute course information and homework with their colleagues.
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Blackboard Ally is a digital learning tool that easily connects with learning management systems and makes digital course content more accessible to students. It helps educational institutions develop a more inclusive learning environment and enhance the student experience by taking clear control of the content of their courses with an emphasis on usability, accessibility, and quality. The platform helps enhance the entire student experience by providing them with different formats that give them the choice they need, along with the additional flexibility that comes with a more individualized approach.
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Newsela is an educational portal that offers k-12 pupils graded cross-curricular reading content. Its informative material is standards-aligned and designed to enhance students’ learning and inspire them to read. Educators can use it to improve the quality of the lessons they provide and to develop more interesting and interactive learning opportunities both inside and outside the classroom. Newsela offers a vast assortment of nonfiction books, along with a few works of fiction, all of which are researched and compiled from more than one hundred authoritative sources within the publishing industry.
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Learning with Cerego is more efficient and effective than any other platform because of its unique mix of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. As a result, students who use Cerego learn 4-5 times faster and graduate with greater skill sets. The platform’s cognitive science can be used in any field, whether it’s for onboarding and training new staff or preparing for the dentistry boards, for example. Cerego’s Knowledge Bank provides students with an up-to-the-minute snapshot of their understanding of every idea they’ve studied, including any topics that need more attention. It not only keeps track of how well a student understands each idea but it also shows how fast a pupil picks up a new one. Unlike any other learning platform, this provides a glimpse into how students will study and perform in the future.
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Blackbaud K-12 is a school management system that is hosted in the cloud and designed to assist educational institutions in recording and keeping track of the information, grades, and medical data of its students. It provides an online attendance monitoring system, which makes it possible for students and staff members to keep class-specific information and rapidly check attendance history. The program has a grade book that enables instructors to evaluate students according to a set of predetermined criteria and assign either numerical or letter marks to the participants. Blackbaud K-12 gives stakeholders the ability to establish community sites on which they may publish announcements, information about events, and the most recent news.
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Schoology Learning streamlines the process of producing and disseminating academic content. It makes the conventional LMS more effective by providing a collaborative and integrated learning experience. The product provides a learning platform that can be customized and incorporates content management, which is designed with the learner in mind and is user-friendly. This facilitates improved collaboration, attracts learners, and enables users to exchange educational materials, best practices, and other information on a local as well as a worldwide scale. It simplifies the systematized procedures of creating and managing material, registering grades and attendance, and other administrative tasks, allowing teachers to devote less of their time to fulfilling administrative obligations.
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For students and teachers alike, Google Classroom (both the app and the website) is an online learning environment that uses the Google Suite of applications (Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, etc.) to produce and save work, share learning materials, and to facilitate student/teacher and student/student interaction. Because all of the applications in the Google Suite are fully compatible and can seamlessly connect with one another, it is much simpler for both the instructor and the students to organize and finish their work. For teachers who want to go beyond, there are plenty of things here to help them feel at home. For those who are just starting, educators can manage numerous courses at once, have students submit their work by taking a picture, and add new students with a simple link. Even a grade book is accessible to students to keep track of their progress.
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Quizizz is a gamification software that is designed to encourage faculty and student participation. Along with other interactive communication methods such as live stream, live chat, and picture sharing, the system includes polling and quizzing elements that may be seen in real-time. In addition, Quizizz comes with a variety of useful learning aids that may be allocated directly via the administration interface. These tools include flashcards, practice exams, and question tips.
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Students and teachers now have the opportunity to experience varied learning environments due to the profound shift that has taken place in the concept of education over the last few years. By using the internet in place of traditional classroom teaching methods, online learning has completely revolutionized the manner in which students acquire knowledge.
And as online learning continues to evolve, tools associated with new forms of education tools, such as digital learning platforms, classroom management solutions, video conferencing tools, and more, will continue to serve as critical bedrocks of both educator and student experiences. As we look into the future, these innovations will adapt to advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, behavioral analytics, and more. Teachers will be able to increase their productivity while students enjoy personalized learning paths. As these tools become more available, they may also provide a way to bridge the digital divide.
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by Imed Bouchrika, Phd
by Imed Bouchrika, Phd
