Online school is a school where the students can study at their own pace based on their own academic needs. Every department of these online learning institutions operates on a common portal. The educators just need a smart device (mobile phone, laptop, tablet, or computer) to educate uncountable students at any point in time, from anywhere in the world.
How Do Online Schools Work?
Online school is a new-age educational institution that primarily focuses on online learning and its other methodologies. These schools are also known as cyber schools, digital schools, and internet schools.
Usually, the online schooling concept is supported by a learning management system (LMS) which is a virtual platform (a software, application, or website) that provides a classroom dashboard to the learners.
Learners of a school just have to log in to the LMS dashboard to get access to the learning content. Moreover, the dashboard performs multiple tasks like allowing access to all the academic content, downloading educational sheets, completing assessments, conferencing with educators, and educator’s support. While some schools operate on both online and offline mediums; There are different kinds of online schools, worldwide.
What is a Learning Management System?
The Learning Management System (LMS) can be termed as the backbone of any school that is operating online. It provides a dashboard (a customized, personal space) for both educators and learners to complete, assess, and edit their educational tasks. In easier words, the LMS can be referred to as the workstation for both, the educators and the learners. It is exclusively developed to support e-Learning as it can perform tasks like administration, assessment, conferencing, documentation, tracking, and adaptation in the educational curriculum.
Top 10 Preferred Learning Management Systems
Below is the list of the top 10 systems that are preferred by 90% of online schools.
- Google Classroom
- SkyPrep
- KnowMax
- ProProfs LMS
- Talent LMS
- MindFlash
- Edmodo
- Blackboard
- Schoology
- Adobe Captivate Prime LMS
Some online schools do not prefer third-party systems, therefore they choose to develop a personalized and customized dashboard specifically for their school.
What is an Online School Like?
Online Schools are a brand new concept that may take a little time to step into the life of students in India. Since the traditional schools have been in the scenario for uncountable years, Indian people may take a little more time to adapt to the change.
This elaborative segment throws some light on the real experience of attending an online school.
- Online schooling allows the students to personalize their schedule of learning. The classes and subjects are completely flexible and easy to shift.
- These institutions provide a convenient environment where students belonging to different religions and background; comes together from different places across the world to learn and interact with each other.
- The learning management system here, allows the student to learn anything, anytime, anywhere. This is the most considerable merit that online schooling provides.
Advantages of Online Schools
As mentioned above, online schooling can ultimately be productive, beneficial, and meritorious for students who are willing to learn from a distance, focus on non-academic activities, and contribute some time to any other career option.
- Time-Saving: Online schools require less time as compared to traditional schools and educational institutions. As known, travelling to an educational institution consumes most of the time. Whereas, a learner will not have to travel anywhere to attend the online school classes.
- Affordable: Affordability is one of the major merits that can be considered here. According to the facts, they effectively cost 1/3rd portion of the fee charged by a traditional or an offline school. Miscellaneous expenses like travelling charges, project fees, and additional costs like infra developmental fees are not charged for these schools.
- Personalization: A student can personalize the learning experience in his/her way. All the schedules, lesson timings, serial of the class, and hierarchy of attendance are digitally accessible. Students can attend whichever class they like to at any point in time, according to their convenience.
- Education Quality: The academic content prepared by an online school is either developed by the school or outsourced from professional educational content creators. Therefore, the quality of academic content is premium.
- No Boundaries: A student can attend one lecture multiple times. Sometimes, individuals face reasoning issues with one or multiple topics. In a traditional school, the learners have to wait for the educator to elaborate on the lesson again. In the online era, the lectures are already recorded and saved after streaming for the learner’s convenience.
Disadvantages of Online Schools
Any digital platform can be both productive or unproductive for the same individual. While there are many advantages, there is only one major demerit of an online school.
- Improper use of digital assets: If the digital assets used for online schooling are not utilized in an appropriate format, they can surely turn into time-killing activities in no time. Therefore, learners have to make sure that all the provided assets and online learning activities are being properly utilized for efficient and appropriate learning.
Remember, online schools are new in India. And you cannot trust them all.
How Much do Online Schools Cost?
A good online school in India can range from ₹35,000/year to ₹75,000/year. Although, there are not a lot of online schools in India. Mostly, only the traditional offline schools are operating virtually.
Any trustworthy and valid online school that is accredited and recognised by an educational board body, and operates completely online, would charge slightly higher than the schools that are neither recognised nor accredited.
Conclusion
Considering the growing trend of online education in the world, and the benefits of online school classes during the lockdowns, we should take online schooling as an option for a safe and innovative schooling of our children.
