The advancement of communication technology has improved access to information for many people around the world. Where a reliable internet connection exists, people with communication devices can tap into the treasure trove of information available online. Improved access to information is especially apparent in the education sector.
Increasingly, people can access high quality education via the internet. The proliferation of internet-based education has opened access to education to a wider population through real-time online classes. This means there are plenty of people who are advancing their knowledge and skills who would have otherwise not been able to do so.
That said, real-time online classes have their challenges. For instance, with the different time zones and different working schedules of students around the world, it is very difficult to schedule a class when every student or attendee is available.
This is where webinars come in. Webinars – web-based multimedia lessons, seminars, discussions, and demonstrations – offer the very same advantages online classes do, namely the ability to reach dozens or hundreds of people all around the world, with additional advantages included as well. Importantly, the benefits of webinars mean that educational institutions and companies of all sizes never have to compromise on the quality of their education. In this blog, we will explore the various benefits that institutions can accrue from using webinars.
1. Webinars Are a Cost-Effective Learning Tool
Webinars are very cost-efficient for every party involved. Students do not have to invest in transportation or accommodation to get an education. Similarly, the educational institution does not have to make great investments to accommodate additional students in terms of footage or class size.
In this regard, there is quite a lot of potential cost-savings when using webinars as a teaching tool.
2. Webinars Offer Great Flexibility and Convenience
Web-based webinar software, such as MegaMeeting, comes with the ability to record a webinar live, or pre-record and play the recording during the webinar session. This introduces a convenience factor that no other form of learning or learning tool can emulate in its entirety.
Students, seminar attendees, or event attendees can access the webinar anytime that is convenient for them. Similarly, webinar presenters and lecturers can pre-record the webinars whenever is most convenient, posting them at the scheduled time.
Effectively, webinars make for a very flexible learning experience thanks to the time convenience they yield. They’re also convenient, geographically speaking. Presenters and attendees alike can lecture or learn from anywhere in the world. This is one of the major benefits of webinars in education.
3. Webinars Encourage Interaction Through Anonymity
There is something comforting about the anonymity that comes with webinars. For starters, all students or seminar attendees interact with the teachers or presenters on equal footing. This means there are plenty of people in any given webinar who may be more willing and likely to participate than they would in a face-to-face class. This improves constructive discussions in the chat sections of the webinars. With increased interaction, students can achieve improved understanding of the contents of the webinar.
4. Webinars Are an Effective Learning Experience
While this might seem counter-intuitive, he U.S. Department of Education conducted studies on webinar effectiveness and found that students who attended online classes had, on average, better performance than students who attended face-to-face classes.
There are plenty of elements that account for this kind of disparity in terms of performance. For instance, online classes offer playback from the live recording, screen sharing sessions, chats, file sharing, and many other features that bolster the learning experience and keep the students more engaged in the material they are learning. When engaged in a webinar, students are in a better place to effectively understand the lesson, thereby performing appreciably better than those attending traditional classes.
5. Webinars Provide A Wide Variety of Lessons
Webinars increase the choice of courses students have. Many students are never able to enroll in courses they would like to take, simply because those courses are not offered in their educational institution and they cannot or are unwilling to change schools.
With webinars, students can take extra courses, regardless of the geographical distance between where they live and the school offering the course. This helps students broaden their skills, as well as their understanding of their field of interest. This also allows students to attain new knowledge and skills that can supplement or complement their main field of study.
6. Webinars Are Easy to Use
For presenters and lecturers, investing in intuitive software like MegaMeeting means you get a premium experience with easy-to-use webinar software. For students and event attendees, everything is intuitively designed to make it easy to attend the lesson, seminar, or presentation.
Importantly, webinars through web-based software like MegaMeeting are browser-based multimedia presentations. You do not have to fiddle with software to watch. With a compatible browser, you can access the webinars from a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer, all in the comfort of your home, office, or anywhere else that suits you.
7. Webinars Offer Educators a Wider Reach
Webinars allow institutions to reach out to tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people instantaneously with exceptional ease. Compare this to face-to-face classes, which are only accessible to the limited number of people that a lecture or conference hall can host. This means that with webinars, educational institutions have the capability to reach out to more people, thereby imparting knowledge to more people and accessing a wider market of students.
8. Webinars Allow Participants to Grow Their Networks
As mentioned above, among the defining characteristics of webinars includes a wider reach and the ability to share files. This means there is an inherent opportunity to reach out to more people, and subsequently, empower participants to share their contacts. In effect, webinars give students or event attendees from around the world the ability to share and network with vastly more people than they could possibly do so in a face-to-face class, seminar, or event. This is a benefit of webinars that is not to be understated.
In summation, the benefits of webinars in education are many, and educational institutions that adopt them will find they they’re able to do plenty of good. With the right webinar software, both the teaching party and the learning party will gain immensely from using webinars.
If you’re an educator interested in using a webinar for your class or institution, contact MegaMeeting today to arrange a free demo.
MegaMeeting solves the biggest challenges of modern video conferencing. For users, it is an all-in-one platform that delivers both video conferencing and webinars in a single, simplified interface. For attendees, it is 100% browser-based, making it highly accessible; joining a meeting is instantaneous from a single click. For enterprises, it is highly customizable, with white-labeling options for a private branded solution. For developers, it is API-driven and easy to integrate.
Powered by WebRTC, Node.js, React, and GraphQL, it is a cutting-edge platform that is fun and easy to use for users and developers alike.
