Can Elearning Solutions Be Applied to The Study of Arts and Letters?
What we can learn is limited by the ambit of our experiences and of the media that we are exposed to. Usually, the best media that creates a deep imprint on us is good Literature. However in order to appreciate good literature, we must in turn have already seen what we have read at work in our own lives, even for just a glimmer of this sight is enough and literature will awaken and deepen that glimmer of insight. But if we have not at all seen any part of ourselves or our lives in the text, then the text will never come to life. And this is applicable to teaching as well. What is taught in any humanities classroom, especially if these things have something to do with the profundity of human experience (I am speaking primarily of literature, philosophy, psychology and the arts) but such human profundity of insight can be seen in every humanities subject such as history or sociology. The difference will always be in the slanted use of discourse to achieve whatever power struggle the teachers wish to establish will only translate well if the students have some concrete idea of what is being taught. Otherwise, they will only be able to memorize facts, if they succeed in that at all since the context will always make the facts easier to remember.
The trouble is that elearning solutions cannot help but remove the teacher from the picture. After all, it is the essence of elearning to be fast, easy, and done at one’s own pace. With a full-time teacher, the pace will have to be managed and if the teacher is any good, he or she will continually challenge the students’ thinking.
Perhaps elearning can be used as say a primer for reading support and assessment. But without the full insight of a responding human person, there can be no recitation or no reaction paper written in an elearning class for the arts and letters. The practical applications of quick and accessible training are just incompatible with the image of the Arts and it will probably always be that way until the end of time.
With the humanities, the teacher must always be present. The equation is simple, take away the human, then there is no humanities left at all. Of course courses such as literature can still be taught by computers, but the student will not be able to feel feedback from his or her insights. After all, the essay and reaction, analysis reports are essential to these subjects. And no computer built today is yet able to even process such things. Elearning solutions will always be effective in the corporate arena. It should also be used in the sciences and in math primarily. And finally, it can only act as supplementary or support to the subjects of Humanities.
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Online Degrees Help Save Time!
Individuals no longer have to attend regular classes at a traditional college to further their education as they can easily do so now through online education. The variety of online degree programs being offered these days is just about the same as those being offered conventionally. Infact, there are individuals who take on online degree programs while studying at a traditional campus. Classes and programs that are difficult to join are now available online and one can enroll as long as they fulfill a certain criteria. With so many online colleges and universities functional now, acceptance is rarely an issue. But you need to make sure that the online institution you opt for is properly accredited, as not all of them are. The accreditation of the school is the most imperative factor which proves the quality of education being provided by it. After all, you really do not want to spend a year studying online only to find out that your degree is not even worth the paper it is printed on, do you? What you can do is conduct research on your chosen institution and find out whether it is accredited by proper accrediting agencies or not.
Just like any other good thing in life, online education comes with its cons. The basic factor that one must take into consideration before enrolling in an online program is that you would have to make a schedule and manage time on your own. Numerous distractions take place while studying online, so you must have a certain level of discipline or you might lag behind. Procrastinators and those who cannot follow schedules usually have a bad time studying online. Such people are better off studying at a traditional campus where face-to-face interaction takes place. Some believe that another con of studying through eLearning is the feeling of inhumanness that it causes through isolation as there is no face-to-face interaction. But then again, the feature of online chat rooms and discussion boards has created online communities which let elearners communicate easily and not feel isolated. But there are certain people who also appreciate this isolation and find it beneficial. A majority of people who opt for online education find the experience more peaceful, considering that they do not get to face stress by peers.
So online education has its pros and cons, but for most it is the perfect academic option, considering the commitments we all have professionally and personally.
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BigGyan Cloud eLearning for Coaching Institutes
Get Started Today
- Build WebPresence
- Integrated approach of teaching – Online course management-
- Superior Instruction
- 24X7 support to students
- Tracking Student Performance
- Parent Portal
- BigGyan Services
- Environment Friendly
Building WebPresence
Internet has emerged an important platform for marketing. It is inevitable that coaching institutes need to build their online presence as more and more parents and students are going to internet to obtain information related to career. However, the rules of creating web presence are different from the ones that work in normal world. Internet is all about starting early and targeting right. The early you start more websites will link to your website making your website more relevant, which makes the website appear higher in search results of search engines like Google. What good is a website which does not have considerable number of visitors? Further, it is extremely important to build online presence professionally. A badly designed website may do more damage than good. BigGyan helps you create web presence professionally which is directly targeted to your target audience.
Integrated approach to teaching – Online course management
BigGyan reduces work of teachers and administrators by helping them manage various aspects of courses with cool online tools. BigGyan enables teachers to be creative and use innovative teaching methodologies, allowing them to make learning fun for students. Teachers can minimize time spent to perform admin chores for courses.
- Assignments
- Online Attendance
- Online Gradebook
- Database
- Online Quizzes
Assignments
Teachers can collect assignments from students online, review it and provide feedback including grades. The grades automatically are fed into online Gradebook of the students. Students can submit any digital content (files), including, for example, word-processed documents, spreadsheets, images, audio and video clips. Assignments do not necessarily have to consist of file uploads; teachers can ask students to type directly into online text editor available in BigGyan.
Online Attendance
The module allows teachers to mark attendance of students. The grade corresponding to attendance is included into the students Gradebook automatically. Students can also view their attendance record. The attendance records can be exported into MS Excel spreadsheet format for record purposes.
Online Gradebook
BigGyan offers a very flexible Gradebook, which can be used to fit any specific requirements. Administrators and teachers can change the ways in which grades are calculated, aggregated and displayed, as well as means to change the grades manually. Various types of reports can be generated. Further, grades can be exported to MS Excel spreadsheet, OpenDocument spreadsheet, plain text file or XML file for record purposes.
Database
Teachers can build searchable repositories. A common use of this module is for storing past exam papers, activities for students to do or print out, or collections of students’ work.
Online Quizzes
BigGyan offers a powerful tool for conducting online quizzes. Teachers can design and set quizzes consisting of a large variety of Question types (multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions etc.). These questions are kept in the course Question bank and can be re-used within courses and between courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback and/or show the correct answers. BigGyan also allows you to shuffle questions within quizzes and to shuffle choices in multiple-choice questions. Even randomly generated quizzes from pools of questions.
When teacher want to prepare an offline exam, they can just pull out questions from the question bank and printout the quiz.
Superior Instruction
Multimedia content
Teachers can include multimedia content – videos, interactive animations, presentations (ppt), and images to enhance their course curriculum and make learning for their students more fun. BigGyan offers tools to use any type of content with their courses.
Online Test Series
Teachers can provide online test series to their students using BigGyan. The tests can be designed such that all students have to take online test during a specific time period. BigGyan can automatically check answers submitted for objective type questions. The grades go directly to online GradeBook. Further, automatic feedback can be provided for wrong answers.
BigGyan Search
BigGyan search engine was created using Google Search Technology. Internet is filled up with low quality content. Nobody wants low quality content especially when it is being used for education purposes. BigGyan search provides only good quality content. It also groups content into lecture notes, videos, presentations, pdfs, tests, quizzes. So you can quickly reach the content you are looking for.
Rapid Course Development
With web 2.0, lot of websites have come up where people share various types of content. Ex. YouTube, Teachertube, Metacafe, Vimeo for videos; Slideshare for presentations; Scribd, Docstoc, Issuu for documents, Odeo for audio. Teachers can search for content on these sites using BigGyan Search and easily include the relevant content in their course.
24X7 support to students
Online Course Material
The entire course curriculum (lectures given by teachers, online quizzes, assignments) is stored online. Students have 24X7 access to the content. This is especially useful during exams, as students do not have to worry about lost notes, assignments. They can feel safe that they all the content. This is part of “No Child Left Behind Policy” as envisioned by BigGyan.
More Interaction
Students have support of their teachers and peers as and when they require it. They can do group activities online, discuss assignments online, share and solve problems during exam preparation.
- Forums
- Chats
- Group activities
Special Classes
Teachers can conduct extra classes using online conference (Dimdim – Web Meetings). The extra classes conducted during exams could help notch up student’s performance.
Tracking Student Performance
BigGyan provides teachers with access to finer details regarding student’s efforts and performance. It allows teachers to monitor and analyze students’ performance from a much closer perspective. Teacher’s can provide feedback which is much more relevant and beneficial to the students.
Parent Portal
BigGyan offers tools to get the parents more involved in their child’s education experience. Parents can monitor their child’s progress through the BigGyan Parents’ Portal.
The Parent Portal gives parents and guardians access to selected content from their children’s school BigGyan. Parents will be able to browse sections that the school wishes to share with its parents. Content could include upcoming events, discussion boards, and personal material related solely to their child. Parents can also communication with teachers using forums, chats and emails included in BigGyan.
BigGyan Services
BigGyan provides professional services to help you implement eLearning at your institute. Our trained professional staff is equipped to support all our client’s requirements. Institutes may not employ additional IT staff for activities surrounding BigGyan eLearning.
BigGyan provides following services:
- Fully Maintained Installation
- Fail-safe Data Backup
- Resolve Issues
- Data Entry Services
- Training Services
- Content Authoring
- Instruction Designing
- Course creation – SCORM compliant, IMS
Environment Friendly
Helps cut down Treeware
Treeware refers to all content printed or written on papers. BigGyan helps administrators, teachers and students to cut their treeware significantly. This is not only environment friendly but also saves costs and is more convenient as teachers and students are not required to carry content of paper wherever they need. No need to maintain content on paper. No chances of losing the content.
Save fuel
BigGyan provides tool to Institutes to cut down fuel costs of teachers, parents and students. Using online conference tool Dimdim integrated with BigGyan institutes can hold Parent-teacher Meetings online. Even for extra classes students are not required to attend classes physically. Dimdim provides online whiteboard, desktop sharing, chatting features to facilitate online conference.
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