Technological change is rapidly changing people’s present and future perspectives. It is an inevitable alteration that will greatly affect all economic sectors such as education. It is with the help of the COVID-19 pandemic that industries were forcefully ordered to adapt to the current situation. As for the education sector, the University of the Visayas in particular, they were quick to adapt and provide a virtual learning environment for their students with the help of Mindweb eSolutions in the form of Teach Tech, Mindweb’s subsidiary.
Teach Tech provides the learning management system of the University of the Visayas with the use of the MOODLE platform. MOODLE stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which was designed to provide educators, administrators, and learners with an open, robust, secure, and free platform to create and deliver personalized learning environments. MOODLE is a user-friendly learning management system that supports learning and training needs for a wide range of institutions and organizations across the globe. It helps to organize eLearning contents in one location and provides unlimited access to it. This provides convenience for both the instructors and the students. While MOODLE LMS helps in reducing the risk of losing important eLearning data, it is also vital to the user’s productivity and skills development since they have unlimited access on-the-go, anytime, anywhere, using mobile devices. They need not have to wait for the scheduled class or training sessions to acquire new knowledge or do some work-related tasks in advance. With MOODLE LMS, instructors can easily track learners’ progress and performance. It helps them in ensuring that students are meeting their performance milestones and assess whether or not students need supplemental resources to improve their performance or learning behaviors. MOODLE LMS also reduces learning and development costs. It helps in eliminating costs that would be incurred in a classroom set-up such as instructor’s allowance and printing of eLearning materials or modules. Since MOODLE LMS is online, instructors can easily integrate social learning experiences by creating truly collaborative group activities. Activities that the students will benefit more from doing the activity as a group than doing it alone. With all the benefits and advantages of the MOODLE Learning Management System mentioned above, it is guaranteed that it will address all the challenges encountered in a virtual learning environment and that the University of the Visayas is focused on delivering a well-rounded, relevant, and quality education even during the current situation brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The economic downturn, inconvenience, and restrictions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic was a shot in the gut to the world’s economies. One of its most affected sectors was education, which forced educational institutions to quickly adapt and innovate on how they will cater a non-face-to-face school set-up and provide a virtual learning environment to its students that are both convenient and efficient to its students and instructors.
According to the figures of the Department of Education (DepEd), enrollment in kindergarten up to senior high school for the school year 2020-2021 dropped more than 25 percent from a year ago. With these expectations, one of the obvious ways to mitigate further effect is to provide a medium for students to be able to enroll online. The University of the Visayas tapped Mindweb eSolutions to create and handle its virtual learning environment and included in the package is the online enrollment system.
Mindweb’s Online Enrollment System is a web application that can be used anytime and anywhere and can be accessed through any web browser. It is designed to be mobile responsive and user friendly, which makes it easy to navigate. It can easily process online enrollments for both freshmen and non-freshman students and let them plot their subject schedule with convenience. Enrollees can easily attach a softcopy of their enrollment requirements. Students can view the history of their enrollment and also can check their study load through the web application. Users of the web application can easily be monitored.
With this Online Enrollment System, learners can be admitted to the university in single browsing of this web application. It helps in mitigating the actual interaction of learners in school; hence, optimum health safety plus convenience are achieved.
Without a doubt, technology has been improving the convenience, accessibility, and quality of education. It plays a crucial role in the current and future ways of education, providing students the tools and resources that will encourage them to thrive. With Office 365 Education for Students, all of these advantages that technology brings can be harnessed in a cost-efficient way. That is why Mindweb eSolutions is adding up the management and administration of your Office 365 on their arsenal of services offered. Mindweb eSolutions is a certified Microsoft partner capable of handling any of your Office 365 needs.
Office 365 Education for Students is an Office 365 plan that is available for free to students who attend academic institutions that have purchased Office for faculty and staff. This plan allows students to install Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access up to 5 PCs or Macs and Office apps on other mobile devices including Windows tablets and iPads. The plan also includes 1TB of OneDrive storage, managed by the schools. Students can use the plan until they graduate or when they are no longer enrolled at a qualified school.
With Office 365, students can easily create, share, and even collaborate in real-time with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote – without losing the formatting of the documents. With its collaborative tools, students can do group projects with more structure and instructors can easily guide, review, and participate by adding comments and notes to group works for feedback. It also saves instructors time with the use of Teams application for planning, giving assignments, communication, and more. Office 365 has the flexibility to cater to different teaching approaches used by different institutions. It supports modern teaching and learning strategies that encourage a growth mindset in students, emphasizing future-ready skills to help them succeed in ever-changing jobs and jobs that have not been yet invented. Office 365 offers easy and anytime access to all its resources to students. With an internet connection, students and teachers can connect to their files with ease. Students can do their school work anywhere they like and on any device they so choose. They can also easily make changes and updates on their documents, like if they want to add ideas in their essays or alter some slides in their PowerPoint file. Online Schooling is the new normal that we need to embrace. It may have its pros and cons, but we can maximize the pros and minimize the cons of using technology, using Office 365.
The Mindweb eSolutions Team with the assist of the UV ICTD Team, conducted a comprehensive IT Infrastructure and Employee Skill Assessment at the University of the Visayas Main Campus last November 06, 2020, to gauge the magnitude of a system overhaul that will be used as the basis for the proposal of a new UV ICT organizational structure lead by the Mindweb eSolutions Team.
This initiative was spearheaded by Engr. Wilcris Cortes, the CEO of Mindweb eSolutions, with him were Dr. Edgardo Cortes, Mindweb’s VP of External Relations, Engr. Stephanie Grace Villarubia, Mindweb’s Operations Manager, with the help of Mr. Neilroy Impas, UV Communications and Public Affairs Head, Mr. Roel Belarmino, and Mr. Romulo Villanueva of the UV ICTD. These assessments will be the first step in making long-lasting, critical changes to the UV ICTD environment. The goals were to identify issues requiring immediate attention and to understand the current standing of the existing technology infrastructure. The outputs of these assessments will be integral for future infrastructure upgrades. All school servers and the laboratory computers were carefully examined. The current computer network implementation was thoroughly inspected and the computer applications that the UV ICT Team hosted and maintained were also deliberately checked.
Mindweb eSolutions is the strategic partner of the University of the Visayas, who helped the university in laying the foundation of a quality, flexible, and efficient virtual learning environment in response to the inconvenience and restrictions brought by the pandemic. The project’s goal was to adapt and to continue to provide a well-rounded, relevant education that will prepare its students for the future and empower them for success, even during this kind of situation we currently experiencing. With this meaningful collaboration, UV was recognized by the CHED-7 as the best presenter during the webinar on “Preparation of all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Sharing of Best Practices and Developmental Plans for the New Normal/Flexible Learning Environment, Concerning Services for Student Welfare and Development: Student Affairs”. With all these accomplishments, the blossoming partnership of UV and Mindweb is now starting to solidify. UV offered Mindweb to take over the whole management of the UV ICTD, which was the main reason for the aforementioned assessments conducted by the latter.
Today’s learners want relevant, mobile, self-paced, and personalized content. This need is fulfilled with the online mode of learning; here, students can learn at their own comfort and requirement. Let’s have an analytical look at the advantages of online learning.
Online Learning Accommodates Everyone’s Needs The online method of learning is best suited for everyone. This digital revolution has led to remarkable changes in how the content is accessed, consumed, discussed, and shared. Online educational courses can be taken up by office goers and housewives too, at the time that suits them. Depending on their availability and comfort, many people choose to learn at weekends or evenings.
Lectures Can Be Taken Any Number Of Times Unlike classroom teaching, with online learning, you can access the content an unlimited number of times. This is especially required at the time of revision when preparing for an exam. In the traditional form of learning, if you can not attend the lecture, then you have to prepare for that topic on your own; in eLearning, you can attend the lectures whenever you want with ease.
Offers Access To Updated Content A prime benefit of learning online is that it makes sure that you are in synchronization with modern learners. This enables the learner to access updated content whenever they want it.
Quick Delivery Of Lessons eLearning is a way to provide quick delivery of lessons. As compared to the traditional classroom teaching method, this mode has relatively quick delivery cycles. This indicates that the time required to learn is reduced to 25%-60% of what is required in traditional learning. There are some of the reasons why the learning time is reduced by eLearning:
Lessons start quickly and also wrapped up in a single learning session. This enables training programs to easily roll out within a few weeks, or sometimes even days.
Learners can define their own speed of learning instead of following the speed of the whole group.
Saves time as a student does not need to travel to the training venue. You can learn in the comfort of your own place.
Students can choose to study specific and relevant areas of the learning material without focusing on each and every area. For example, they can skip certain areas they do not want to learn.
Scalability eLearning helps in creating and communicating new training, policies, concepts, and ideas. Whether it is for formal education or entertainment, eLearning is a very quick way of learning!
Consistency eLearning enables educators to get a higher degree of coverage to communicate the message in a consistent way for their target audience. This ensures that all learners receive the same type of training with this learning mode.
Reduced Costs eLearning is cost-effective as compared to traditional forms of learning. The reason for this price reduction is because learning through this mode happens quickly and easily. A lot of training time is reduced with respect to trainers, travel, course materials, and accommodation.
This cost-effectiveness also helps in enhancing the profitability of an organization. Also, when you are studying at your own place, you are relieved from paying for travel expenses (e.g. accommodation) when training happens in another city/state and/or external learning materials.
Effectiveness eLearning has a positive influence on an organization’s profitability. It makes it easy to grasp the content and digest it:
It results in improved scores on certifications, tests, or other types of evaluation.
Higher number of students who achieve ‘pass’ or mastery’ level.
Enhanced ability to learn and implement the new processes or knowledge at the workplace.
Help in retaining information for a longer time.
Less Impact On Environment As eLearning is a paperless way of learning, it protects the environment to a lot of extent. As per a study done on eLearning courses, it has been found that distance-based learning programs consumed around 90% less power and generated 85% less amount of CO2 emissions as compared to traditional campus-based educational courses. With eLearning, there is no need to cut trees for obtaining paper. Thus, eLearning is a highly eco-friendly way of learning.
This article originally appears on https://elearningindustry.com/9-benefits-of-elearning-for-students.
