Positive aspects
Nowadays, we live in a modern and technologically advanced world, where smartphones, the internet, connectivity, gadgets, computers, and robots are common elements. In the very near future, most jobs will require digital literacy, since digital skills are already used in virtually every industry. One, relatively easy way to acquire these kinds of skills is through e-education.
- Such resources will be further enhanced and implemented in the educational context, leveraging their greatest benefits, flexibility and accessibility, which will lead to a set of advantages in the e-learning process, namely:
- Having access to lessons regardless of location, so avoiding travelling and being away from home for long periods, as mentioned in the previous section.
- Learning in one’s home context, which, as mentioned above, gives e-learning flexibility that other traditional ways of teaching can’t offer.
- Self-directed learning. This means that while students are acquiring new knowledge, they will have to develop ways to learn as effectively as possible. To achieve such a thing, they will have to learn how to schedule and plan their daily activities (Montes, 2022).
- Larger offer and variety of online training courses.
- Unlimited learning tools.
- Collaborative learning. E-learning isn’t a one-way street. This means that online learning isn’t just based on getting studying tools and learning from them. Learners have collaborative spaces through them, they can share their doubts and questions and learn new information and help each other (Montes, 2022).
- Reduced resources to access online sessions, since only a computer, a phone and the internet are needed, and, adding to that, lower emissions of CO2 and reduced energy use, as explained before.
- Cheaper formative offers in comparison to face-to-face options.
- The possibility of restoring, repeating, or replacing classes.
- Higher levels of education lead to economic growth and convergence. With e-learning giving more people access to higher levels of education, the economy and resulting levels of social wealth will increase (Głodowska & Wach, n.d.).
- It stimulates more active learning-teaching processes and also creativity and innovation. This represents the opposite of traditional teaching that has been settled in several pedagogical methods for decades (Głodowska & Wach, n.d.).
One benefit of online learning above traditional classes is that it may be modified more easily if the professor or trainer decides that the current method isn’t working as effectively as it should (Acton et al., 2005).
A positive aspect that must be reinforced is that e-education makes it much easier for everyone to access education. In rural communities, for example, it is much harder to travel, and accessing all the needed tools from a computer or a phone with just the internet makes it possible to allow a lot more people to acquire new formations. Furthermore, there are a lot of people who can’t afford to invest time just studying. E-education allows everyone to adjust their time so that they can work and still get access to higher levels of education (Montes, 2022).
Another enormous advantage of e-education is how much it improves digital literacy. In the previous section it was stated that it is becoming more important every day to be able to use digital tools. And it is undeniable that in some years, almost every job, if not all of them, will require technology. Even without considering the knowledge acquired with each course taken, E-learning by itself will make every student who engages with it train and gain new skills when using digital platforms and technologies (Montes, 2022).
e-education also has advantages at the behavioural level, as the virtual context can help to overcome feelings such as anxiety and shyness, allowing greater student participation