How To Choose The Perfect Online Learning Platform

Online learning is growing rapidly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced millions of people to stay at home and practice social distancing. The benefits of online learning have become clear after teachers and students were forced to use it. The classes are more accessible, the material for the course is available from any device, which attracted more students, and eliminated the geographic restrictions to enroll more students. There are dozens of platforms that facilitate creating courses online, and each platform offers different features for a price. In order to choose the right online learning platform, you need to carefully examine your options.

Easy-To-Use

The online learning platform should be easy to use for teachers, students, or administrators. The learning curve should be reasonable, the platform-tools should be intuitive, and the controls should be clear. The interface should be comprehensible to users with different computer levels. Typically, the tutor includes different kinds of multimedia in their lessons, and the platform must enable them to present the multimedia in a clear and accessible way to the students. Well-built platforms will help in selling your courses by simply being easy to use.

Accessibility

Students use different devices and connections to access their lessons, and you need a platform that is compatible with these devices and connections. Video conferences shouldn’t lag or glitch to ensure the engagement of every student. Forcing your students to invest in new technology to have access to your content will discourage most of them to enroll in your classes. To consider the needs of all students, you must make sure that the video content is captioned automatically. Auto captioning benefits all the students, not just the disabled ones.

Learning Experience

The ability to provide students with different experiences to help them acquire knowledge faster is essential when you are evaluating an online learning platform. The platform should offer a combination of live teaching and teaching activities. The services provided at Teachable give you insight into how a reliable teacher always has the right tools to conduct exams, quizzes, learning games, and other interactive content to embed into your lesson. This is necessary to ensure engagement and satisfying different learning preferences. Receiving grades and comments from the instructor on the students’ work is a feature that you should look for in any online learning platform you consider.

Compatibility with Your Existing Systems

The online learning platform should offer smooth integration with the learning tools you are already using. Whether it is a Learning Management System (LMS), webcams, or any applications you use to deliver lessons. Choosing a platform that is compatible with your tools will save you money and time because if it’s not compatible, you will have to purchase tools and take time to learn them to be able to use the platform.

Security

With technological advancement, the need for security is on the rise. The platform will save sensitive information about teachers and students, for which security must be guaranteed. The teacher must have complete control over their material and should be protected against unauthorized access. Additionally, the platform should protect your online classes from any disruptions of any kind.

Reliability

Online learning is growing rapidly, and the number of students is increasing. That’s why you need to find a reliable online learning platform that can handle heavy traffic, and support different devices. If the platform fails in any way, it will make you lose students and harm your credibility. Research the stability of the platform you are evaluating and the downtimes if there are any to have a better idea about what to expect from it in the future.

Analytics

Analytics will help you identify numerous aspects of your course. You will be able to know if the students watched and completed the videos or not. You will identify any parts of your course that are difficult for your students if they re-watched it several times or have a high failure rate if it’s a test. Analytics will also help you evaluate your students efficiently and provide more support for underachieving ones. You can refine your classes and make them more effective by using a platform that provides analytics on different aspects of your class.

Choosing an online learning platform should be about meeting your students’ needs while providing you with the necessary tools to create an efficient course. The features offered by these platforms are similar, but some of them are easier to use and are more compatible with any kind of device or browser. Choose the platform that will enhance your student’s experience in your class.