4 New Trends in Educational Technology

The digital transformation trends have also heavily impacted the education industry. They have affected how the teachers teach and students learn in classrooms. Further, their use has been accelerated by the pandemic. Many schools and teachers turned to technology to help the students continue their learning. Schools, colleges, and universities are changing their traditional methods of teaching with new trends in education technology. Technology-enabled learning and smart boards are slowly replacing the traditional blackboards, chalks, and textbooks.

New trends in education technology can make learning effortless and captivating. They can help to provide a rich learning experience to the students and learners. The learning occurs in real-time with interactive games, AR/VR experiences, high-impact graphics, and feature-rich animations.

Here are four new trends in education technology that instructors are using to make learning effective and engaging.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

AR enhances real-life experiences by using images, videos, or interactive data. You can experience AR with portable devices like mobile phones or smart glasses. VR creates an immersive 3D experience, which is completely artificial. It makes users feel that the virtual world is real. Users experience natural sounds and rich visuals in a digital world. For a virtual reality experience, you need to use VR headsets.

Students can benefit from VR’s ability to make theoretical concepts into actual experiences. For example, with VR gadgets, biology students can travel inside the human body. Such an immersive learning experience can provide the students with a deeper understanding of how the heart functions or how the circulatory system works in our body. In another example, trainee healthcare professionals can learn how laparoscopy surgery is performed, using VR gadgets.

Gamification

Gamification is one of the most innovative trends in educational technology. It has become an increasingly essential part of education in the last few years. The gamification approach uses different strategies, varied activities, badges, and rewards to promote student or learner engagement.

The approach makes use of the various gamification elements and characteristics of gaming culture in designing the courses. It helps the students to become active and motivated learners. Learners play educational games to learn various academic skills and earn points or rewards for completing the assigned tasks. They compete with peers towards specific objectives or goals. The challenges and rewards help the learners to remain motivated in the process of learning. The game-based approach helps to make the content more fun and interesting for learners. Earning badges, coins, rewards, etc., makes the learners pay more attention to what is being taught to them.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has transformed the quality of content delivery. AI is also booming as one of the new trends in education technology. AI can provide great insights into student’s learning and performance. AI can help the teachers to automate some activities in education, like assessment and grading. With AI, it has become easy for teachers to give grading to the students based on their performance in the assessment questions.

There are a few AI systems that monitor student’s progress and alert teachers when there might be an issue with student’s performance. Thus, AI-driven programs could benefit both learners and educators by providing helpful feedback.

Virtual Learning (ILT Over Web)

Virtual Learning is a way of learning a subject or providing training with the use of web-conferencing tools. Virtual learning offers convenience and flexibility to learners. It allows for live online interaction between the instructor and learners, which is very similar to the traditional classroom experience. Thus, it offers a combination of online learning and in-person instruction. The live online teaching or training can be supplemented by self-paced online learning tools and additional study materials. It provides learners with a more comprehensive understanding of course content.

This approach helps you to create more effective, flexible, and learner-centered teaching. Learner engagement will be more, and learners can gain more while participating in online assignments. The virtual learning approach helps the instructors to think about the best way to teach learners and then use the appropriate technology to achieve their goals. Virtual learning is one of the cost-effective ways of delivering content or training. This model is widely used by schools and colleges, universities, vocational training institutes, corporate training, etc.

Conclusion

Accessibility and access to learning opportunities continue to improve from a geographic perspective, thanks to new trends in education technology. New learning opportunities allow students to learn from anywhere and help students secure the best possible education and training.

At Tesseract Learning, our learning and visual architects are constantly innovating and reinventing their approaches to design, develop, and deliver effective digital learning solutions. They will work with you to bring your ideas to life.

To learn more about how we can help you transform your learning programs and help you achieve your learning and training goals in 2021, contact us or write to me at <suresh@tesseractlearning.com>.