It is just not always possible to go to a classroom at a set time every week. Outside pressures and factors such as work, family, distance, Eastenders etc. all make it difficult for many people to commit to a regular evening class. Luckily, this doesn’t mean you have to give up and remain uninformed and untrained forever. The exciting and fast expanding world of e-learning is here to save the day.

Distance learning has been around for quite a while. Some historians swear that Plato never met Aristotle, and instead they just sent stone tablets carrying philosophical questions and answers back and forward by courier (although they’re not very believable historians). More recently the Open University made great use of off-peak British TV to broadcast their lessons, and many people have taken correspondence courses by post. None of these delivery methods managed the ease of access, interactivity and just general handiness that e-learning provides.

The field of e-learning covers anything where technology meets education. Generally it means the delivery of a programme of learning either by CDROM, DVD, email or over the internet. (The growing area of learning by mobile phone is called M-Learning.)

One valid criticism of distance learning attempts in the past was that they were basically old courses in new bottles – not unlike a photocopied handout sent in the post or published online. In many cases not enough thought was put into designing a course programme to take advantage of the possibilities opened up by technological developments. This is changing as e-learning delivery methods become more sophisticated.

Most e-learning courses are still ‘asynchronous’, which is a fancy way of saying learners and teachers don’t have to come together at the same time, and the student can study when it suits them. Many courses now have synchronous elements however, such as online chatrooms and instant messaging where the learner and teacher can communicate in real-time, or with virtual classrooms where the teacher can talk to students situated all around the world over their broadband connections.

Newer e-learning technology holds the potential to do even more. Greater interactivity is the main bonus for the e-learner. Podcasted lessons which the student can download from the internet and listen to in their own time is a recent innovation which is catching on. As are class blogs where students can publish their own questions, tips and ideas on their own dedicated course website. The future is sure to see technology used in even more innovative ways to really push the e-learning envelope even further. As they say.

Although e-learning is a very flexible and easily adapted method of taking a course, it isn’t ideal for all subjects. A hands-on, classroom or laboratory-based approach is more suited to some biology and nuclear thermodynamics courses, for instance. However for most subjects e-learning fits like a glove.

E-learning is often most talked about in association with corporate or on-the-job training. Many companies already use e-learning programmes in staff training. In modern businesses where staff have to keep up to date with all the latest trends and technologies, but may not be able to take chunks of time off to attend training sessions, e-learning strategies are more and more important. There are also a growing number of university degrees available online (be careful when choosing an institution though). However, at the moment, most e-learning opportunities are designed to provide smaller bites of training and knowledge.

Most relevant for this article, a growing number of evening classes and nightcourses are available through e-learning. Irish colleges offer e-leaning courses in subjects as diverse as Project Management, Food Hygiene, French, Security and Lighting Design, as well as a huge variety of IT subjects. This is just a sample; the best way to find out exactly what is available is to search our online database.

Also, as the whole point of e-learning is that the internet means you don’t need to be in close physical or temporal proximity to the teacher, it is relatively simple to take an e-learning course with a non-Irish based institution. Nightcourses.com has information on courses offered by colleges based in the UK and even further afield.

The combination of our busy modern lifestyles, and the requirement for lifelong learning and training in most careers, means that e-learning is going to get more and more popular and important. So if you’re looking at taking an evening class, then e-learning is well worth considering as an option.


Feartured Provider: Instituto Cervantes

You can take advantage of our Spanish on-line Course (AVE). Instituto Cervantes Spanish Virtual Classroom is an Internet-based educational infrastructure set up to provide Spanish courses. These can be completed in different ways: semi-attendance and distance.

The following resources are available to students:

- Interactive, multimedia course materials: Video, recorder, audiotape, games...
- A personal tutor to guide and advise students, provide them with reinforcement or motivational exercises and evaluate their work.
- An automatic assessment system that collectsdata on completed exercises and to which students have access whenever required.

For further information on this course, please call Instituto Cervantes at 01-631-1524 or visit our web page
www.ave.cervantes.es to see a demo of the course and take a placement test to assess your level.