4 Rising Trends to Watch in Online Education

As an educational brand, you evolve as much as needed to help your students. It’s important to keep an eye on new trends in learning, administration, and technology to keep your competitive edge.

Studying and embracing new methods that optimize the learning experience for students is imperative. Staying up-to-date allows you to provide your service as efficiently and effectively as possibles.

Read up on these four rising trends to watch in the online education industry:

1. Personalized or Adaptive Learning

Personalized learning provides a unique learning path for every student, in which both the pace and approach are highly tailored and individualized. Goals, content, and activities may all differ depending on the students’ strengths and weaknesses.

This is in contrast to a traditional, one-size-fits-all instruction. This strategy can be implemented in a variety of ways. Teachers can deliver their instruction, while using assessments, student feedback, and analytics to understand and support students at different performance levels in their academic journey.

Lastly, digital courseware or AI can help to aggregate students’ prior learning experiences and preferences to provide guidance for their individual learning paths.

2. Microlearning

Microlearning refers to precise, bite-sized learning activities that compact the maximum amount of learning possible in the shortest amount of time.

Learning in bursts of 3-7 minutes most closely matches the working memory capacity and attention span of your average human brain. Doing so leads to higher memory retention, immediate application of information for students, and quicker skills mastery. Microlearning is highly engaging for students at any age.

For educational businesses seeking to appeal to students across grade levels, this structure can help to shape curricula delivery and teaching styles. Examples include quizzes, games, infographics, 5-minute videos, gamified activities, and short podcast episodes.

3. Flipped Classrooms

The flipped classroom model offers a “learning by doing” alternative to traditional learning. The concept of the flipped classroom has existed in education for a while. However, applied to online learning, it offers a whole number of possibilities for increased engagement.

Rather than teachers delivering pre-planned lectures during class time, and students working on homework and problem sets by themselves, the order is reversed. Students can watch video lectures on their own, while using online class time to discuss questions, receive feedback, and work directly with teachers.

Examples of flipped classroom applications include: solving problem sets in front of the teacher, peer reviews with classmates, delivering speeches or presentations, as well as class discussions and debates.

4. User Generated Content (UGC)

User generated content in online education describes any type of content contributed by students. Creating this two-way dialogue can be both beneficial for the student and brand, leading to a sense of genuine community.

Examples of UGC include authentic blog posts, videos, photos, quotes, reviews, as well as social media posts and shares.

Students who actively contribute content can experience a range of benefits, such as content mastery, increased connection with fellow classmates and teachers, and a greater sense of overall empowerment and engagement.

For the brand, such content can provide unique viewpoints and social proof regarding a course, lesson concept, or overall student experience. 

Conclusion

For many educational brands, there are two priorities: first and foremost is helping students learn, which is the primary mission. Secondly, though, is differentiating and standing out from the competition.

By staying up-to-date on rising trends in education, your business can do both.

For more tips like these, download our free guide on how to launch an online education business.

Note: This is the third installment of our How to Launch an Online Education Business series. For previously published articles in this series, please visit our blog.