Online learning trends: how technology changes the users’ behavior

These days, online learning trends still on top across regions. It is not the temporary effect of the COVID19 outbreak, but the future of the education industry.

When students suppose that they could escape from learning online, the new outbreak of COVID19 deters them from coming to school. Beyond any prediction, the pandemic has occurred for over 2 years. Of which business uncertainties are reducing the effort of defeating it. In fact, the outbreak reshaped the world movement, putting many countries into the new order. 

In 2020, it was the first time in the last 50 years that many countries have seen a mass closure of schools and universities. As the fear of virus injection raising, some regions even delayed all crucial exams, including exit examination, high school graduation, and more. Although online learning is not a new concept, thanks to the evolution of the education software development industry, it reached its peak these days due to the pandemic threat.

Related article: How coronavirus outbreak changes food industry globally

Accordingly, many experts, the new order in favor of adopting online learning across countries would continue in the post-pandemic outbreak. In this article, we would show the evidence to prove that comment. Also, we defined 5 significant pillars forming online education trends from 2021 and beyond.

Driving factors of online education trends  

Not only students and teachers, online learning trends currently influence the movement from every corner of the education industry, including education services providers or related businesses. As an outsourcing software development company, we recognized online education creating new business models and opportunities in the market. By leveraging education technology solutions, many companies were born and gained success in providing education services.

FedEx and Coursera as two successful examples of online learning platforms benefiting from the rising demand for distance learning. So, what are the driving factors leading to online learning dominating the modern business ecosystem?

Trends in eLearning by number

Before jumping to the vital details of online learning trends, we indicate some statistics of this industry to draw you a comprehensive picture regarding the future of eLearning.

According to Newswire, the global online learning industry worth over US$ 144 billion in 2019. That estimation was made before the COVID19 outbreak, indicating the lucrative context of the industry even when students were not forced to study at home as the influence of social distancing methods. The rapid domination of eLearning was driven by the evolution of software development solutions, the smart devices market, internet penetrations, and the advancement in the recruitment market.

Related article: Impact of smartphone on education

Living and working in a hustle and bustle world, not only students, workers demand reskilling and upskilling to meet working requirements. Accordingly, online training courses focusing on people of working age were one of the most attractive digital resources. Today, online learning hit a robust movement as serious effects coming from the pandemic. From an optimistic perspective, the market for online education expectedly reaches over US$370 billion in the next five years.

A survey from BestColleges covering 1500 participants indicated that over 70% of respondents planned to enroll in at least one online learning course. Also, demand for online education did not have any sign to pause. Evidently, 90% of online course providers reported the growth in the demand for their services, which promote them to invest more on budget.

Although digital learning cannot replace on-campus education, it would gradually build its own empire.

The role of Education software development for online learning trends 2021

Instead of online education activities, educational software solutions are also applied in traditional or on-campus learning as well. One of the obvious examples regarding the influence of software solutions in teaching is automated attendance checks. Thanks to innovation in face recognition technology, instructors could receive attendant reports automatically with only one click.

In addition to software development directly transforming the teaching process, learning analytics was born to disrupt the root of the education industry. Big data and machine learning has pushed the learning outcome into another level of effectiveness. Today, many schools and education providers adopt a school information management system, which comes up with data-driven features in measuring each learner’s performance. By analyze and grading based on specific metrics, the system would design a custom education path fitting to student strengths and weaknesses.

Turn back to eLearning, education software development used to solve challenges in implementing online learning widely:

• Mass content challenge: technology help with creating content by leveraging AI and ML.
• Communication challenges: instant messaging, video conferencing, and related solution could fill the gap of parents, teachers, and students
• Data consolidation challenge: as mention above Learning management system combines data from various sources, providing clear and comprehensive insight

Factors shaping the future of online learning trends

Data proving the trend of online education at present and future, let’s figure out what made it alive:

1. Demand for distance college courses: Apply online education, schools are taking advantage of current infrastructure capacity. With on-campus training, the number of students in a class is limited to guarantee education quality. However, with online learning courses, schools could widely offer their services to a large number of students without difficulties. 
2. Demand for convenience and flexibility in education: Students and learners today extremely concerns regarding time flexibility. In which they could handily adjust their pathway based on special needs.    
3. Quality and success rate of online learning: Some people afraid of entering online learning would come up with less quality due to the distraction of learners. However, data proved another side. Accordingly, the success rate of online classrooms reached 50%, which has steady growth, compared with roundly 70% of the success rate in traditional courses.  

Related article: Classroom software

Online learning trends 2021

Obviously, online learning is an absolute advantage that even traditional education businesses should be ready for it. Trends in eLearning are expected to orientate the learner and teacher behaviors.  

Online learning trends in higher education  

Despite a slight decrease in demand for eLearning in 2019, higher education online courses got great concern in the year after due to their time flexibility. According to the Learning House survey, roundly 65% of respondents believed in the work-life balance benefits of participating in online courses.

Besides, the survey also pointed out that even having chances to study on-campus, parts of students also prefer online learning. Expressly, 70% of students choosing online education options from a college lived within 80 km of the school. In these cases, local universities should prepare a new strategy in offering online learning courses in 2021.   

Custom learning pathways with AI and ML  

In the future, the demand for services personalization would drive the market preference, that the education industry is no exception. In many universities and colleges, the initial application of AI in driving enrollment. In fact, the great benefit of AI relates to the capacity of instant custom learning paths for students.

Accordingly, AI enables an automated learning recommendation process by auto analyzing student profiles, background, online behavior to suggest fitting education resources. In fact, roundly 60% of students confess that they were more likely to pay attention to personalized and interesting learning contents. AI and machine learning are expected to add a higher level of engagement to students.   

Gamification with mobile app development

Instead of delivering common lectures, game-based activities would boost student engagement for better education outcomes. Higher education tends to be the leading sector, which leverages gamification in-class activities. Badges and leaderboards are currently the common rewards to attract students to enjoy school activities. Also, soft skill training tends to be the subject successfully leverage gamification as a simulation teaching method to help students forming their professional behavior.

According to research done by Chandross and DeCounrcy, serious gamification in online learning enhances cognitive ability among learners. Also, it leads to elicit a positive mood during the learning process, which reduces the boring of traditional lectures. Serious game-based learning could simulate the interaction during the learning process.

Take Qizzizz and Kahoot as an example that the role of mobile app development has a profound impact on Gamification learning. For instructors who have less background knowledge in technology, those apps help with instant host a game with little steps. Additionally, the Minecraft education edition is also a market leader in uplifting the excitement level in online classes.

The dominance of mobile learning and microlearning

Students today expect to have control over their learning path that on-demand learning courses are highly preferred to the rigid curriculum. Mobile learning could still dominate the learning methodology by 2021 due to its benefits of portability and accessibility to both learners and course providers.

As part of mobile learning, microlearning would also be a centered strategy for schools and education providers. Accordingly, learners have been raising concerns regarding short or narrow courses, concentrating on the on-demand requirements of learners. Schools or course providers should divide education programs into a small units based on specific criteria.

Digital learning platform

As demand for online learning is on the rise, the role of digital learning platforms for online education trends has become more significant. When school and university temporarily closed their on-campus program, they have to move parts of their resource online. In this case, the digital learning platform and its extreme benefit is the most suitable option for that digital transformation for the school.

In the post-pandemic, when several schools move their activities to online facilities, digital learning platforms will become the essential resources for students. Due to a massive storage database, those platforms are not only benefiting schools, but also be a lucrative business. As the platform connecting students and instructors, it has several ways to make money from its services.