MMVC17- What to expect in online education in coming years

6th August  2017

Webinar by  Parminder Mitter Chaudhury

What to expect in online education in the coming years. A Teacher's  Perspective.

I was online and I could follow this interesting webinar dealing with the issue of technology and online education in coming years. The main focus was on the learners and how they will learn, the technology, the LMS and also information about  Moocs and types of courses which have been provided so far.
According to the speaker more and more learners have had access to courses online  so far and the number is growing.
Not only universities and public institutions are now involved in  providing courses online, but there are also private companies.  There should be a further development in the next years as tablets, laptops and smart phones are now widely used by  people who want to have access to education.
 
The role of teachers becomes crucial and many educators need to be taught about how to work with online technology and in courses online: learning about  LMS is important as the role of teachers becomes more challenging when designing  tasks and courses.

 Here is the interesting conclusion about our future as educators and also digital instructors which the speaker shared with us:

I connected with the other  attendees and shared my ideas about my experiences as a learner online. Personally ,I have always liked Moocs  but since they began I have found a lot of changes. I did not have  to pay for Certificates of attendance in many  courses while now I do have to pay with Edx.org and Coursera. I also expressed my doubts about some quality of the courses.
The content in this  webinar was really engaging and interesting for me as an educator as more and more teaching is happening in a blended learning form. Also in my country we have now teachers who are starting working  online.  Moocs are also very popular. In schools it is not so easy to start working online as  schools have poor quality technology and not all the educators are provided with the right skills to start working online. Some tech-savy educators are doing well. 

When I watched the webinar I  thought that the future might be smart for educators as  more people will have access to education in the next years.  Good educators are also learning now online thanks to many  courses which do not  cost much.  
I felt that it is important to be hopeful as education is continuously changing but  we should not be afraid of technology.
Implementing the ideas will require a lot of optimism but the young generation of educators can be ready, the next steps to take the challenges require a lot  of team work in schools but I am sure that thanks to  people like Dr. Nellie Deutsch and also to many  Mooc providers educators can learn also while working online.

I have already learnt how to work on Moodle and I have tried to become more aware of the issue of education in the future by doing some online courses. I think that in some years I  might try to work online. What I am doing now is providing some activities by using  the Flipped Lesson Approach but I think that there will be more online educators also in Italy.  

Next step:  I think that if I could meet the speaker in 5 years  I would like to ask her  to enquire about the quality of the online courses.

Education for all means  improving the Quality in Education? 

Here is the recording of this webinar