Recognition for online course has been steadily increasing over the past couple of years. And there is an online course for almost any subject that you want. The quality of online courses are almost the same as traditional courses, there are even completely free online courses that are on par with traditional courses. There are also many advantages that come with online courses which can make them better than traditional courses. The advantages are:

1. No boundaries: Online courses are restricted by a certain location or a time when you have to be present. You don’t have to attend at a certain time or location, which means that you can attend whenever you want from wherever you want. This also means that you don’t need to fight traffic and you don’t have to change the schedule of your other activities in order to adapt to class-time as with traditional courses. You can do online courses at any time you and at any place (you’ll need an internet connection though).

2. It’s more fun: If the ability to take an online course from your home is not a good enough reason, then what if I told you it is more fun than a traditional course. Online courses use modern methods and technology to make the course more interactive. By using elements of gamification and multimedia the course is more fun, interesting and modern than a traditional course. Another thing is that communication with the teachers and instructors is much easier through the discussion boards. 

3. Cost-effective: Online courses much more cheaper than traditional courses. Some online courses are even completely free. And unlike traditional courses, you can keep all the course material, even after the course ends. You can even keep the lectures and the assignments given to you.

4. It fits: Online course are a good fit for almost everyone. They can just blend into your schedule and most courses will send you emails and notifications in order not forget about them or miss deadlines.

As you can see there are many advantages to online courses. And if you still aren’t sure you can just try an online course and see if you like, they are much cheaper than traditional courses and some are even free.

Written by: Osama Waheib

Social media is often seen as a distraction, something that would lower student productivity. But this is because social media is like any tool if it’s not used correctly it won’t give good results. Sure, social media can be used to connect with friends and family, to waste time chatting with people or discuss meaningless topics. This is what most people use social media for. But it could also be used in a much more productive way and can be used in education. In fact social media is one of the most powerful educational tools we have right now; that’s, of course, if it’s used correctly. When it comes to social media both the educator and the learner need to use it properly to make the most out of it. Some of the ways social media can be used in education are:

1. Making a Facebook group: By making a Facebook group for the class, the class announcements, assignments and deadlines can be easily posted and broadcasted to everyone. Students can also help each other out by asking questions, answering them and explaining concepts to each other.

2. Making a topical twitter account: A twitter account could be made that talks about a certain topic. Tweeting creative ideas and/or up-to date information and resources for studying. It can also be used to discuss current topic in the news.

3. Encouraging students to showcase their work: Making students post their work and showcase it on social media, lets them evaluate each other’s work. It makes them realize and understand the different perspectives of others. All of this makes them more motivated to become more adept at what they do.

4. Instagram as an outlet of student creativity: Instagram can be used to showcase the creativity of students. A carefully crafted Instagram class account can showcase student artwork, photos of the students with books or items that interest them; or things they have built. It can be used to broadcast the accomplishments of students. And if it’s masterfully crafted, students will use it as a resource to brainstorm ideas. A picture is worth a thousand words.

  Most students and people already use social media in a non-educational way so integrating it into education isn’t hard. And it would make learning more fun and interesting. And it gives students new opportunities and opens new doors for their future. Social media is the world’s largest city and smallest village.

Written by: Osama Waheib

In the past, in order to find an expert to learn from, you either had to be lucky to have somebody living near you or you had to travel to find that expert. You had to have a lot of money in order to get world class education, but nowadays it’s much easier. Technology brought the world together and turned it into a small village. Consequently, learning has become easier and more connected. You could connect and communicate with experts in a certain profession in a matter of minutes or seconds.

Online courses or MOOCs are becoming more and more relevant. You could learn real and applicable skills that are used in the real world from experts while you are in your underpants. You can get a job without a college degree. You can learn a lot of things online now, not just a lot of things, but almost anything online. All of this for little to no cost at all. You just need to be motivated, determined and put in some effort.

Another thing about MOOCs is that you aren’t learning alone. Some courses have hundreds and even thousands of students enrolled at a time. There are usually discussions boards and forums where students can discuss the course material and help each other. And since most MOOCs are international this gives students the ability to interact and make friends with people from various cultures and various backgrounds. This makes MOOCs give a college like experience minus physically meeting new people.

Though, a negative thing about MOOCs is that if you aren’t motivated enough you might not complete it. Since MOOCs lack the physical interaction that traditional courses offer it might be easy to lose interest or forget about them. This can be solved by taking the online course with a friend or making friends and study groups within the course. This would also make taking the course more fun and interesting.

Technology is moving and advancing very quickly, a lot of popular jobs that exist now didn’t exist 10 years ago. Jobs like digital marketing specialist, cloud services specialist and data scientists didn’t exist 10 years ago. And reports from the U.S. Department of Labor, McKinsey and Company, and the World Economic Forum say that 65% of grade-school kids will have jobs in the future that don’t exist today. Experts now believe that almost 50% of occupations existing today will be completely redundant by 2025. Therefore learning new skills and keeping up with the fast-paced advance of technology is a must.

Written by: Osama Waheib

Nowadays online and digital learning is gaining more and more popularity, and technology continues to play a huge part in this evolution of learning. Books have always been a part of the education process, they are treasure coves of knowledge but one can’t have so much of them at a time. But this is not the case today, with e-readers one can have thousands of e-books in a space that’s smaller than a traditional book. And e-books have been slowly finding their way into education, with more and more schools using e-books. There are many reasons why e-books are better than traditional books among them are:

• You could get them instantly: You could download e-books instantly when you need them. You wouldn’t need to go all the way to a bookstore to buy your book, and you wouldn’t need to worry about the possibility that the book would be out of stock or unavailable.

• They’re portable: E-books are obviously more portable than traditional books. With e-books you wouldn’t need to carry a heavy bag full of books that would later give you back problems, you would only need to carry your laptop or tablet or an e-reader with you.

• They’re more content-rich: E-books can contain a wide variety of media in them ranging from video to links for more material on the web which makes them much more interactive than traditional books. This also makes e-books a much better option for students who don’t like plain text as a learning material and prefer to have additional resources along with said text.

• They are more convenient: If you have a vision deficiency e-books would be a great help for you as you could change the font size to your personal preference and some e-books even let you change the font of the book. If you’re visually impaired there is also the TTS feature or the text to speech which reads the text on the book for you. Even if you have good vision those features are still convenient to have.

• Dictionaries and translations: You’ve probably ran into a word before which you didn’t understand while reading a book before. It sometimes happens that you find weird words that you don’t understand and you have to find a dictionary. Most e-readers have dictionaries embedded in them so that you would be able to fetch the meaning of a weird word like “desiderata” instantly.

• The search feature: The search capabilities in an e-book is another hard to beat weapon in the huge arsenal of weapons that e-books have. How many times have you picked up a book searching for a little snippet of text or a quick answer? This amazing feature of e-books makes it extremely easy for students to find what they want inside an e-book; and you could also bookmark and highlight text like a traditional book.

Those are some of the reasons why e-books are better for students than traditional books. In addition to all those benefits when you use an e-book rather than a traditional book you are helping environment as e-books don’t involve the cutting of trees in order to make them.

Written by: Osama Waheib

Online learning and virtual classrooms are quickly becoming a replacement for traditional classrooms, because they are cheaper and more flexible. Many students reported that they can concentrate in a virtual classroom more than they do when they are in an actual classroom.

To put it simply the benefits and advantages of a virtual classroom outweigh the benefits of traditional classrooms by leaps and bounds they are simply on a whole another level than traditional classroom they just are… Ok I am done that enough praise for virtual classrooms; let’s get into why they are better than traditional classrooms in more details, shall we?

1. Simplicity and flexibility: Location and time are the two most limiting factors when wanting to learn something. Virtual classrooms almost completely eliminate those two limitations, in an online course or a virtual classroom you can work at your own pace, and so you can adjust it to your own schedule.
2. More productive: With the integration of technology into the learning process; clever design, user experience and multimedia virtual classrooms can prove to be more efficient and deliver better results.
3. Much lower costs: Online courses are a more affordable option than traditional courses; they provide you with the most up to date content with way cheaper costs. The total costs for a traditional course are usually higher than base cost, due to costs of commuting; some traditional programs even require you to buy expensive textbooks. These additional costs aren’t present in online courses where the only commuting you will do is walking a couple of steps to get to your laptop, that’s if it’s even far from you and if your course requires a textbook you can  find it online easily in the form an e-book.
4. More convenient, comfortable and friendly environment: As previously mentioned online courses allow students to plan their study time around their day and that’s only the tip of the iceberg; students don’t have to attend physical sessions and the material is electronically sent to them, then they can read the material and do the assignments. All of this gives the student time for his work and/or precious time with his family instead of the stress that comes with having to go to a physical session; fighting traffic and finding parking places in order to do so.
5. More interaction: Although there is controversy on whether virtual classrooms offer more interaction than traditional classrooms, one thing is certain: shy students can interact and participate more in virtual classrooms, some even report they can focus more because virtual class rooms are more distraction free.

In conclusion, I recommend virtual classrooms due to the freedom, flexibility and ease of use. They are just much simpler and free you from a lot of the stress and fatigue that comes with real classrooms.

Written by: Osama Waheib