With the World Health Organisation (WHO) declaring the coronavirus (COVID – 19) outbreak as a pandemic now, we understand how concerning the situation might be for educational institutions across the globe. Many schools and universities have either closed temporarily or are considering announcing a closure soon.
Uncertainty over the functioning of schools and universities leave parents and students concerned
This has also left the parents worried: while several seek for the closure of the institutions as precautionary measures to curb the spread of coronavirus infection, many others believe that an untimely temporary shutdown could adversely impact the academics of their children.
At this tumultuous time, we, Classe365, would like to help the educational community: we wish to ensure that irrespective of a closure, schools, and universities could still provide seamless educational experience via distance learning to the students through our Learning Management System (LMS) and Student Information System (SIS).
Harvard and other premier institutions move towards distance/ online education
It is safe to say that this could be the right time for all institutions to embrace distance education. In fact, some of the premier higher education institutions across the world including Harvard University in the United States of America and the London School of Economics have acted swiftly and have already moved to distance education/ online education. The fact that the number of institutions offering e-learning increasing day by day is a clear indicator that if implemented in the right way, providing online education would be as effective as face-to-face lectures.
Advantages of online education/ e-learning
Online education, while retaining most of the core features of traditional classrooms, provides several additional advantages as well. Here are some of them:
♦ It provides greater flexibility and convenience for both the teachers and students to take a more flexible and dynamic approach towards education
♦ It gives the opportunity for students to do self-paced learning
♦ It facilitates in more efficient student-teacher interactions through common forums; the forums also help in better brainstorming
♦ It cuts costs for both institutions and students in several ways
♦ Lectures can be posted any time of the day and if required, live video lecture sessions could also be provided
What Classe365 offers
Classe365 has two most important tools to run virtual education efficiently: We have a highly efficient SIS that would allow institutions to easily maintain the overall records of students, and LMS that would take care of every facet of academics. With the help of various features and tools on our learning software, schools and universities would be able to go ahead with their planned schedule for this academic year without any breaks or interruptions.
Here are some of the features on our LMS for the educational institutions to function effectively and efficiently, from anywhere and anytime:
♦ Teachers through our LMS, can record and upload lectures, upload resources, post announcements, conduct online assessments, quizzes, and homework for students. They can clarify any queries, as and when required. With Zoom integration, the teachers can even conduct live video lectures.
♦ Students would be able to view curriculum, lectures, access resources, complete quizzes, and upload assignments. This aside, they can also engage in social learning and brainstorming with their peers and teachers using the available discussion forums.
♦ Resources can be added to the system by uploading from local drive, from Google Drive or other cloud storage platforms.
There are a lot of people working selflessly day in and day out to curb the coronavirus outbreak and hopefully, we get out of this difficult situation soon. Until then, let’s stay safe and help each other out.
(We are currently offering LMS for free for two months for our new subscribers. Free LMS Module is offered for new customers and existing customers with active core module subscription who don’t have an active LMS Module subscription)