As we live in the 21st century, you probably had a dilemma, at least once in a lifetime, where you needed to choose between online or offline education, service or any other digital/material product.
Throughout this post I will try to debate both sides of this story. Dilemma of 21st century, go digital vs. go material.
So let’s dive in with pros of good old fashioned in-person, live, material, call it whatever you want, education.
Live Training Pros
Live education is still the best way of educating other people, especially for hands on matter material. So here are the pros:
- Best for showing things that need to be shown live, so any kind of know-how and explanation of various procedures, let’s say – hands on matter things
- There is no procrastination, you do it, and you do it here and now
- There is a synergy within the workshop, classroom or any other form of gathering where we practice educational activities
- You can learn by trial and error, but much faster than on your own, during any other kind of remote learning
- Last but not least, you can get immediate results for all hands on matter educations (excluding only a showcase educations and workshops where lecturer only shows, but doesn’t work with students)
Online Training Pros
As we always tend to go positive first, I will debate pro online training now. So let’s dive into perks of online training form.
- Everybody learns different, online courses allow you to express your style, no rushing, take your time, do it your style.
- Forgot something, open the lesson you wanna remind yourself and dive back in. You will never lose notes or miss something because you lacked focus or your phone was ringing. This is especially important for health critical fields of work.
- You are busy? No problems, take your time and pace your learning up to your needs.
- Not sure that your question sounds “stupid” or not, ask anyway. Nobody will judge you cause you’re online, no flushing during the crowded learning session in the classroom.
- The instructor is showing things too fast, just slow down the video and follow your way. Pause when you need to go to the bathroom and never miss anything again.
Live Training Cons
As online and live educations are almost diametral opposites, you will probably find some online education pros inverted here, so let’s dive in.
- Everybody has a bad day, and you registered for a training on THAT day. Jinx! Live trainings are usually one to three days long and seats should be reserved way advance, you may never know what might happen, and probably you will never get your money back, at least not all of it.
- Live trainings might be a little bit overcrowded sometimes. Not all the time, but overcrowded for me and for you are two different meanings. Just, sometimes you would like there isn’t anybody around you when you focus to your task.
- You just can’t match everyones pace! Why? Simple, other people are slower learners, or maybe you like to learn slowly. Anyway, you will either be rushed or you will think that minutes are hours.
- Price, price, price… It almost always comes to that in the end. Live education seminars and workshops tends to have higher and higher prices every year, especially in the beauty industry.
- And for the end, logistics. You just need to make logistics, especially if education is in the other city or country. We all like to travel around, but it sometimes just sucks.
Online Training Cons
Some people think that enrolling an online course looks something like this photo above. Let’s debunk the myths and find out what are the cons of online education.
- Procrastination, procrastination, procrastination… We simply leave all for the last hour, especially when there is a long timeframe. That’s why all courses on HyaluronWorld have their timeframe set, so that you need to finish it someday, or your money is wasted.
- Lack of material, hands on matter learning. Yes, this might be a problem, but if the courses are structured well, this can easily be avoided. Also, if you add occasional Q&A live sessions with your students, as we do in our courses, you can overcome this easily and replace material classroom with a digital one.
- Lack of human contact. Yes, this sometimes might be bad. But we use forums to make our learning environment alive, but without distractions, communicate when you want, but learn in peace when needed.
- Lack of self esteem and motivation during your loner hours in front of the screen. You just don’t think you can do it, there is nobody to motivate you and tell you that you can do it. Well, we tend to communicate with our students regularly so they know that they are on the track.
Conclusion
Well, we got almost even score here. In the end it is up to your preference, but know that online education isn’t lacking behind the live one. You can learn a lot of things, and everyday it is making things more even.
New technologies, better and faster online learning platforms, augmented reality, 4k videos, all those things make our everyday education even more accessible and tend to remove the boundaries of digital and material world.
Self-paced, remote, online education is the key to expedited humanity progress. Just imagine how many under-developed regions are growing their geniuses today because they just need an internet connection, a few bucks, and a mindset. Just imagine how remote and cheap education is shaping a better world tomorrow.
