Some research shows that students retain on average 25-60% more material online than in the classroom. This is mainly due to the fact that students can learn faster. At the same time, online learning requires 40-60% less learning time than traditional classroom learning.
Students learn more than in a traditional classroom
IBM has found that participants learn five times more material in online courses using multimedia content than in traditional face-to-face classes.
Because online courses give students control over their own learning, students can work at their own pace. They can move more quickly through the areas of the course that they are comfortable with, but more slowly through the areas that they need more time to work on. They can backtrack, skip, or accelerate as they need to. It depends on the quality of the course, the technology, the processing of the application and the methods used.
Availability
Online courses allow students to participate in quality education when distance and scheduling make physical instruction difficult to impossible. Students can participate in classes from anywhere in the world as long as they have a computer and internet connection. In addition, the online format allows physically disabled students greater freedom to participate in class. Virtual classes are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
More frequent assessments can increase concentration
One of the great things about online courses is that assessment can become more of a process. This is good news for students because interspersing videos, graphs, and content with regular short tests can improve student engagement. In fact, research from Harvard showed that using these short, regular tests cut student distraction in half, tripled the number of notes taken, and improved overall retention of content.
It's also worth noting that the more frequently students are assessed, the better their instructors can track their progress. Increased student tracking means that teachers can intervene earlier if there is a problem.
The level of the learning environment
In an online environment, students have a certain degree of anonymity. Discriminatory factors such as age, dress, physical appearance, disability, race and gender are largely absent. Instead, the focus is clearly on the content, and the individual's ability to respond and contribute to the subject matter in a thoughtful and intelligent manner.
