Benefits of e-learning
For learners, e-learning can offer:
- a wider range of more attractive activities
- activities based on a strong personal motivation such as exploring family or local history
- opportunities to work at their own pace and in their own time or if they miss a class
- the opportunity to communicate with other learners outside the classroom; and
- ways in which they can develop their own learning skills.
For you, it can bring:
- ways of keeping in touch with your learners between sessions or as an alternative to face-to-face teaching and training
- the possibility of offering on-line support and individual coaching
- up to date material and images to enhance your learning resources
- access to existing learning resources that you can adapt for your learners, saving yourself preparation time; and
- sites that offer you software for designing activities, for example, multiple choice questions, crosswords, jumbled sentences or matching exercises.
The examples below show how two tutors used technology to enhance learning.
Miriam arranged a 'field trip' to Tate Britain for her art group at an adult education centre in the east of England. She arranged to have an ICT room with Internet access and a technical support person. Working together, she and her learners used the computers and interactive whiteboard to do a 'virtual tour' on the gallery's website,
New browser window: www.tate.org.uk/britain/.
This helped them prepare for the actual trip.
'We use digital cameras to help ESOL learners with language learning. After a trip round the area taking photographs, we upload the images on to our network, and we can then view them on the interactive whiteboard. It provides us with opportunities to do things like matching words to pictures. This way, learners develop a basic vocabulary that's of immediate relevance and interest to them.'
Nasreen, tutor, ESOL.