E-learning in business and education - opportunities and use cases

E-learning platforms are gaining more and more popularity. The trend in their use as an effective alternative to traditional training methods used by companies and other institutions is growing. And it is precisely this demand that has led to an increase in the offer of platforms that allow the exchange of diverse materials, the delivery of interactive training, and the almost immediate evaluation of the content taught.

The success of e-learning’s applicability to any industry is largely due to its wide range of services and its great flexibility. In this article, we will give you some useful tips on how to use this resource so that you can take full advantage of it and make your business fly high.

E-learning platforms in business

There are countless ways in which e-learning platforms can grow your business by empowering your activities are countless. Today, it is possible to create a site for skills improvement, implementation of new regulations and standards, or training employees on company responsibilities and policies. Educational content can cover any industry as it can be tailored to the needs of each target audience. All the user needs to do is provide the knowledge and let the platform take care of the creation of the training materials.

In fact, e-learning platforms can even solve many of the problems associated with traditional teaching methods. Below, we share some of these issues with you.

• Traditional training methods usually follow certain patterns and adhere to a specific schedule. In addition, they sometimes even require learners to travel to a specific location, which in turn demands a great deal of their time. Not to mention that training is often delivered too hastily and in a monotonous manner, which leads to low employee productivity, and undoubtedly that has an impact on business operations.
  
  Of course, an e-learning platform is a solution to this problem thanks to the dynamic nature of its training, since it offers a wide variety of teaching methods, exercises, videos, and infographics. Not only that but learning can be consolidated through content repetition exercises that users can access at any time and from anywhere. The best part is that supervisors can monitor the courses and evaluate their effects.
   
• The obstacles involved in the logistics of classroom training are another disadvantage to consider. These obstacles range from transportation, food, lodging, to all the expenses associated with the organization of the training itself. Taking all these points into consideration, it is undoubtedly a financial challenge.
  
  In that sense, the implementation of online training is for life, so to speak, and the costs compared to classroom training are much lower. Not to mention that the investment in an online training platform only has to be made once, but an unlimited number of people will be able to benefit from its educational content as many times as they wish or require for many years to come.
   
• In the case of multi-branch companies, the dispersion of employees and their different schedules can be a real nuisance and a challenge when it comes to organizing any training that requires encouraging the interest of all employees to participate in it.
  
  Bringing them all together in the same place at the same time can be very complicated and sometimes even impossible. Fortunately, e-learning platforms allow each employee to access the materials at the time that best suits them without having to adapt to a specific date or place.
   
• And of course, the lack of time is worth mentioning for this affects many companies, small or large. The frequent excessive workload makes it very difficult to find the right time for training. Online courses are an excellent practical solution as participants choose the time they spend on training based on their possibilities and preferences. The automation of some processes, such as the creation of evaluation reports, is an additional advantage for those responsible for training delivery.​

Video conferencing instead of traditional meetings

Within the platform, it is also possible to organize video conferences. This is a pleasant form of contact, as the location and number of participants in the meeting are not important. Thus, the tool finds particular application in business, primarily for conversations with, among others, clients or contractors. It also facilitates communication between employees in multi-branch companies.

Online meetings help not only save time but also money, which would be spent on travel and its organization in a traditional form. Video conferencing is also used for e-training - webinars.

The participants, after logging into the platform in advance, can take part in professional training or lecture. This is an interesting form of sharing knowledge with those interested in the topic, the advantage here is also convenience and great accessibility.

An alternative to conferences and trade fairs

Those traditional conferences that we were happy to attend until not so long ago can now be held in an online reality without jeopardizing the expected learning.

Virtual meeting rooms, webinars, broadcasts, or presentations are now an alternative to traditional presentations and speeches, and public chat is replacing discussions and questions asked during a speech. The appropriate configuration of virtual rooms also gives the opportunity to partially reflect networking.

Of course, the only thing that the application cannot reproduce is the atmosphere of a conference, the excitement of being there, or the crowds of people passing by.

Something similar happens when organizing online trade fairs. Thanks to the help of virtual rooms it is possible to conduct face-to-face conversations with the representative of a company.

The possibility to send documents replaces the traditional delivery of brochures and other informative resources. In addition, thanks to video streaming, which, by the way, can be recorded and analyzed in detail in the future, the company can present its products and services.

Distance learning in education

This resource also fits perfectly in educational institutions since its functionalities range from the wide variety of classes, the application of interactive evaluations, the application and review of assignments and homework, and even the generation of student performance reports.

A non-standard form can often be a great incentive and a way to increase student involvement. With the help of various interactive exercises, graphics, and audio-visual messages, students are more eager to deepen their knowledge and, above all, better understand the material they have to learn.

On the other hand, thanks to extensive reports, teachers can track the results and progress of their students on an ongoing basis, and issue an appropriate assessment based on them.

Another way to use e-learning platforms is in various complementary forms: subject courses, which will be an excellent supplement to prepare for regular or matriculation exams, or language courses, which can not only teach them their chosen language but also refine it.

The person who conducts such training then can create course groups and adapt to the level of sophistication of the materials placed on the platform. Importantly - the education process can be planned in such a way that a student who has already reached a certain level and passed the necessary tests is automatically transferred to a group with a higher level.

Scientific competitions are also an interesting method of applying e-learning in education. This is a great way to motivate students to expand their knowledge. Thanks to the platform, you can organize an online test competition quickly and easily. Participants must introduce their access data to log in to the platform and individually complete a set of competition tasks.

A major advantage that the tool offers is that participants do not need to travel to the institution that organizes it. Individual online learning and tutoring are other useful applications offered by this resource, as teachers and tutors can share teaching materials and teach their classes from home. In addition, the platform has a large number of additional elements, including chat and video, which facilitates interaction with students.

Conclusion

The possible applications of e-learning are many and virtually every industry can benefit from them as it helps to solve problems that everyone must face to some extent. It is a resource that can enhance many of the processes and in turn, make almost any business grow. And, of course, the educational field is a very fertile ground for e-learning due to its wide educational offer and its motivational capacity to encourage students to expand their knowledge.

However, it is a reality that there is still no technology that can fully replace human interactions, whether between students and teachers in a class or between speakers and participants during a conference. Of course, it is also worth mentioning that in some cases there is no other alternative available.