Future flavors of digital learning

Last week, someone asked me where I thought digital learning was headed in the future. My reply was that it was all about nurturing a community environment in digital learning. What do I mean by that? Learners meet regularly during digital learning journeys. But unlike in the face-to-face environment, they don’t get to know and grow to trust each other. The main aim of nurturing the community is to make learners feel at ease, happy and satisfied in their online peer group. This helps them lower their stress levels as they get through the intense and solitary moments in the digital learning journey. Someone has to invest time and effort in threading the flow in the community. For example, starting two weeks before the actual delivery of content, bringing peers together to an online social hub, which is a place for learners to meet online. On the hub, initiate, nurture and nudge active communications, chat, share humor and answer questions. At the finish of the learning journey, transition the hub into a source of support, forums and introduce new peers into the community.

The digital learning industry has grown exponentially during the lockdown. This has also forced the industry to acknowledge the limitations of the environment. The feelings of joy, personal satisfaction, and learning that adults get from the contacts with their peers in the face-to-face learning is noticeably missing.

The main challenge in nurturing the community is to pull the learners and motivate them to participate. It is worthwhile to make the online social hub convenient to access and comfortable to interact. The stories of the peers on the hub makes it grow and become dynamic. The hub is a place for observations in the community. The discussions on the hub give insights into interests and concerns of learners, along with ideas to resolve challenges. The effectiveness of the digital learning is realized from the outcomes of the application of skills. The community activities where glimpses of experiences, satisfaction and plans are shared is the future flavor of digital learning.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-flavors-digital-learning-anulekha-roy