The educational platforms have changed the educational training offering new possibilities to the students and the teaching staff. Many times, We’ve seen that an e-learning platform is confused with a space in the cloud to house documents. That is very far from reality. The virtual learning environments (VLE) have essential characteristics that make them the main agents of the training they accompany. Because of the ease of use, the integration of their services and the connections that exist between them to facilitate the work.
The main advantage of value is the integration in one place of all the information in a structured way and with a methodology. But there are many more.
What ideal characteristics should your E-learning platform have?
There are 6 characteristics that cannot be missing in an e-learning platform or LMS (Learning Management System) in an online training, blended learning or language laboratories.
#1 Integration
The e-learning platforms should have a development that includes all the solutions in the same educational environment for a successful learning experience: student management for all types of learning, enrollment, forums, student communities, virtual classrooms with publication of schedules, reservation of classes, room creation, content libraries, tools to personalize and create own contents. All this functionabilities make it possible for teachers to save valuable time and facilitates them so that they can give a complete and up to date training adapted to new technologies
CAE platforms have a development that includes global and integrated solutions for learning, in addition, they facilitate parental management access so that the parents of the younger students can easily access the progress of their children.
#2 Tracking and reports
The registration, analysis and tracking of a student’s progress is essential to correct the shortcomings that students present immediately. The e-learning platforms must register all kinds of information to present it in exhaustive reports that would otherwise cost many hours of effort to the teaching staff.
#3 Automated evaluation
If we talk about saving time for teachers, the automatic evaluation is the star in virtual e-learning campuses. These fulfill two fundamental functions: the automation of the correction and the recording of the data.
The automatic correction allows to evaluate a test in real time, providing teachers and students results instantly. In addition, the software marks the correct and incorrect answers, so that students have all the information they need to analyze their mistakes and learn from them.
To this we must add that the daily work done on the e-learning platform is recorded by the program, stores the ratings obtained by students’ day by day in the course, calculating the averages and final grades.
#4 Content in the cloud
Having the content in the cloud under a collaborative work system, allows the contents to always stay updated and available to students, without having to stop the teaching cycle. Teachers can create and update content and publish it in an easy and agile way.
All this also allows having a multi-device access at any time and place, which now has become a basic characteristic. Teachers and students can connect to the course through PC, mobile or tablets with connection to the network from any web browser, without the need of facilities.
#5 Gamification
Gamification, or the appraisal of learning, adds new ways to maintain the interest and motivation of students throughout the course. In the e-learning courses, gamification can be considered in different ways, but it tends to include: rewards for meeting objectives and medals or scores that are taken into account for the student’s effort.
The Gamification also includes classification tables for the student to see their progress and compare it with the rest of the group. In this way, you get an extra motivation that translates into an extra effort to overcome yourself and your peers and not get off the hook.
#6 Virtual Classroom
Flexibility in teaching is one of the characteristics most appreciated by students who choose to learn online. In addition, it is a way to save costs and offer the added value provided by the interactive and multimedia materials of digital courses. Learning through virtual classrooms offers greater flexibility and reach.
CAE’s platform allows integration with Zoom, MS Teams and Google Meet, which facilitates communication between teachers and students and gives on-site classes without students having to go to the center. In the same way, it encourages the active participation of students through live interactions, comments through chat and file sharing between them. In addition, the platform is responsible for recording student attendance and teacher evaluations to add to their reports and their gamification statistics.
Virtual campuses have become indispensable allies in teaching and centers and companies seeking quality and effective learning must have educational platforms to achieve their objectives. I see it every day in customers who trust in CAE technology, and in our experience of more than 35 years in the sector, to digitize their centers and companies: thus increasing their competitiveness and effectiveness.