How Software Enabled Virtual Learning During COVID-19

Learning will never be the same again.

In early 2020, COVID-19 completely disrupted the interaction between students and teachers. As a result, virtual learning came into force in all kinds of educational institutions.

While most students were already adept at using the internet for their studies, this phenomenon brought changes that affected each student’s academic life. 

Technologies such as video conferencing, online classrooms, assessment portals, and cloud migration software provided teachers with many ways to keep students engaged and informed. Online classes – whether pre-recorded or live-streamed – are evidence that education can intricately implement technology into its practices.

With cloud migration enabling a smooth remote learning experience through information and data-driven systems, virtual classrooms are fast becoming a more preferred mode of education.

While there are mixed perspectives on how beneficial the availability of excessive information is for students, most agree that virtual learning can positively impact reforming current educational systems and building a more self-reliant student cohort. 

If there ever was a time for technology to integrate into students’ learning and development fundamentals truly, it is now. 

Virtual learning and its many facets

While all of us have spoken widely about virtual learning, let’s quickly understand what the term encapsulates and why it has become the need of the hour.

In addition to information and resource access across distances, virtual learning helps those involved gain an expanded perspective of the world around them with a lot more flexibility in time and comfort.

Since the learning process takes place on a virtual medium, there is also a sharp rise in the technical skill set of students and professors, not to mention a reduction in costs as well. With an immediate feedback system, online learning helps create a more sustainable feedback loop to enhance learning as a whole.

How is virtual learning used?

Students can acquire skill sets required for professional settings through virtual learning by gaining an overview and understanding of online collaboration, effective time management, immediate feedback, and honing presentation skills.

Given the internet’s incredible reach, students and teachers alike have improved access to hard-to-find books and reading materials, easily retrieved through portals and learning management systems. 

Virtual learning environments are also proven to be more effective when it comes to maintaining student-educator communications. Since those involved can leverage the web at any point in time, relationships are not bound by official “study hours”. They can help create strong bonds through complete cycles of clarification and sharing of additional resources on new topics. 

Virtual learning continues to make learning during COVID-19 more seamless. Let’s better understand how the learning experience has been impacted by web accessibility and advancements.

Video conferencing as part of the virtual learning process

Video conferencing in education has become the most prominent tech boom since COVID-19 thanks to virtual learning programs. Video conferencing software allows for live, remote interactions between students and teachers to facilitate lectures, online courses, group discussions, and holding webinars and conferences. 

All of these elements have led to an exploration of the kind of educational experiences and learning opportunities students are provided with.

According to G2’s product stack data, the video conferencing stack was added by 4,601 people in January 2020, increasing rapidly to 17,949 later in the year, standing now at a staggering 26,471 people.

The data directly reflects the number of customers who have used or are currently using video conferencing-related software. These numbers indicate the massive adoption of video conferencing for virtual learning programs, business, and personal purposes.

While there are several advantages to how video conferencing furthers the process of learning virtually, here are five benefits of video conferencing that tie in most fundamentally to the process:

Content sharing in real-time

One of the biggest boons of video conferencing is its capability to share real-time content across students. This information can be shared during the virtual class for lectures while using the screen-shared documents as part of presentations or reference points.

Video conferencing improves virtual learning by allowing teachers to do more than just emailing material or posting them on an online portal. Everyone present in the remote class can thus have uniform access to the content as students can download it right after class.

Providing social connection

COVID-19 has left us all feeling isolated and lonely. It’s important for students to feel connected with their peers during distance learning. Video conferencing just does that; it provides that feeling of belongingness within the online environment through face-to-face interactions. This has also been helpful in ensuring students have positive mental health and well-being.

Students can also chat with their friends during online classes, as most video conferencing applications have this feature. Additionally, local and international students can connect and participate in learning activities for more robust social engagement.

Recording capabilities

Here’s what I want you to imagine: You’re in the sixth grade, and you missed school because you weren’t well. When you went back to school, how much could you retain from what was taught in class during your absence? Probably not too much.

This particular video conferencing power has been leveraged much more significantly since we adapted to virtual learning. For example, teachers can record lessons for future reference or for participants who may be absent in that particular session. This is significant as it ensures that all students have uniform access to class materials, lectures, and resources at all times. 

Video recording and screen capturing software can also play an essential role in helping students prepare for exams as they have access to everything taught during the classes. In addition, they can go back to any class recording and make comprehensive notes, making them more confident through repetitive learning options.

Group learning

Video conferencing is not limited to individualized or personalized learning. Video conferencing is also popular for its ease of use for small and large-sized group learnings. It’s quite beneficial for conducting group assignments and discussing projects by allowing teachers to send out specific video meeting invites to particular groups.

Expert insights from around the world

Before COVID-19, it would’ve been virtually impossible to get a guest lecturer or subject matter expert from across continents to come and speak to your students on a topic of study. But now, an expert can be brought in via video conferencing regardless of their physical location, be it in the same city or a different country. In this way, students can be exposed to a whole range of new perspectives from someone who has been in the industry for a long time. 

Video conferencing can inspire students, provide additional support to the discussion theme, add immense value to the topic by sharing insider knowledge and insights, and most importantly, break the monotony of hours of attending online classes in the same format.

Virtual classrooms for holistic learning

The conventional, physical classrooms were always perceived as interactive spaces bustling with students, providing the perfect environment for personal and academic growth for all age groups. And when these spaces had to be shut off, the scope of technology was extended toward creating virtual classrooms for remote learning.

While the concept of virtual classrooms was relatively uncharted pre-pandemic, COVID-19 led to an immense rise in both recognition and implementation of these technologies.

Furthermore, this shift is estimated to continue to rise as institutions (educational and professional) come to understand the ease and benefits of remote learning.

What is a virtual classroom?

A virtual classroom is an online learning interface where information and learning material is shared through video and audio conferencing between teachers and students.

In business, virtual classroom software can be leveraged for training, learning, and development purposes for dispersed teams. Several participants can be part of a single virtual classroom and participate in shared activities using standard online tools.

For a virtual classroom to be fully effective, it must take place in dedicated at-home areas and have the necessary technological and communication tools available. Like any other classroom, virtual classrooms must also have a particular set of classroom rules, goals, and expectations to function efficiently.

One of the biggest advantages of virtual learning classrooms is how they enable all the stakeholders to expand their knowledge base and rethink rigid curricula.

In addition, they encourage creativity and exploration of the subjects discussed within a class by using a larger resource pool (the web) to develop an inclination to learn about topics beyond the need for good grades.

Virtual classrooms have seen a tremendous rise in implementation since the pandemic started. Here's a quick graph from G2's category stack data to help understand this better.

Benefits of virtual classrooms

Virtual classrooms are highly cost-effective and convenient. Although a virtual class’ design has many similarities with traditional classrooms, many other benefits can only be achieved by learning virtually. 

Remote work

When staying away from people is the only way to save your life and theirs, working remotely seems like a norm to most of us. Virtual classrooms along with virtual workspaces software allow for remote work, while for students, they’re designated spaces in their surroundings to listen to and understand what is being taught.

They can be created, used, and accessed from anywhere and at any time while maintaining social distancing protocols and health precautions.

Collaboration and productivity

Today, there is software for almost everything. So it’s no surprise that technology can promote virtual classroom management manifold by integrating and adopting different tools for better visual collaboration and productivity. Visual collaboration software is great for maintaining such engagement across groups.

One of the other ways virtual classrooms can achieve collaboration during virtual learning is through collaborative whiteboard software. These provide a shared space for teachers and students to write or sketch in real-time, which enhances working together in teams to present and discuss topics.

Immediate evaluation methods

A big strong point of online education is scoring tests and assignments almost immediately thro

ugh pre-designed evaluation norms and assessment software. Through virtual classrooms, professors can grade tests within minutes, which are then shared uniformly with individual students. 

These methods play a vital role in encouraging teachers to think beyond conventional essays when evaluating students within virtual classrooms. 

Time and knowledge management

Managing time can be highly challenging in a student’s life. There are several things to juggle at once, ranging from academics to extracurricular activities. However, with virtual classrooms and online learning, it becomes significantly easier to manage one’s time, not only for students but teachers alike, provided that fixed schedules are maintained and followed to avoid getting distracted. 

When it comes to knowledge management, there are many ways virtual classrooms facilitate the efficient management of information and resources. These include using e-learning systems and online classrooms as ways to emphasize shared knowledge rather than personal knowledge.

This ensures that there is complete transparency in what is being shared and by whom.

Towards a new way of learning: cloud and beyond

We’ve all heard of the cloud and how it is part of our daily workflows and technologies. However, to use the cloud, we have to adopt it in our existing systems and processes.

This calls for a need to migrate all resources and information to the cloud.

Nearly everyone who’s learning or teaching virtually has migrated their data and applications to the cloud.

Cloud migration software helps transfer information out of on-premise applications to the private or public cloud. Here are some of the benefits of migrating to the cloud.

• By migrating your resources to the cloud, you’re giving yourself the flexibility of easily sharing information across several users at any time.
• Cloud migration software has extremely powerful computing capabilities and has virtually endless reserves for data storage.
• Cloud migration can also lead to much-reduced information technology (IT) infrastructure costs and better scalability as you only pay for the applications you need and use. 

Given that virtual learning and remote working are here to stay in the near future, cloud technologies such as platform as a service software (PaaS) will improve database and software management. PaaS also helps reach a larger audience by allowing for the expansion of applications needed for learning activities. 

Virtual learning is here to stay

Let’s be honest; virtual learning is much more than just video meetings and classrooms. A lot goes into sustaining virtual learning environments, such as data administration and storage, student engagement, and effective assessments. 

COVID-19 has shown how technology can completely transform something as fundamental as education. It’s evident that moving forward; these tools will be very intricately linked to all learning and teaching processes. 

E-learning has changed the way we interact with information and learning tools.  Learn more about how virtual classrooms are driving engagement to make it part of your education process.