Webinars: The new way of learning

What is a Webinar?

The word ‘webinar’ is a blend of ‘web’ and ‘seminar’. A webinar is an event held on the internet which is attended exclusively by an online audience. This distinguishes it from a webcast, which also includes the presence of a physical audience.

How Does a Webinar Work?

Just like an in-person workshop or seminar, a webinar will usually consist of one host or a panel of participants presenting live for 30-60 minutes. Attendees can interact via chat and messaging, also some webinar hosts will also allow them to use their microphones to speak during the Q&A portion.

Importance of Webinar in a student’s life

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. 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.

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; especially with the current state of the world.

Webinars offer an alternate mode for education

Across the globe, as the COVID-19 virus obliterates formal face-to-face learning, teachers and teacher educators have been told to “teach online” so that they can continue to provide ongoing education to student and adult learners. This mandate has spawned tremendous interest and curiosity about online learning in general and one form of online learning in particular: virtual or “face-based” online learning in the form of web conferencing, webinars and webcasts.

Webinars Offer Great Flexibility and Convenience

Web-based webinar software 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

Webinars Are an Effective Learning Experience

While this might seem counter-intuitive, the 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 session thereby performing appreciably better.

Webinars Provide A Wide Variety of Lesson

Webinars increase the choice of courses students have. Many students are never able to enrol 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.

Better interactivity

The webinar allows for better interaction between the students and the professors/recruiters as it brings all the students on an equal footing. It helps remove the scepticisms from the minds of the students who are not confident enough to raise their hands and ask questions in front of everyone. However, in a webinar, there is no one to judge you as you all are in a different place connected just through your computer screens.Questions can be put up either verbally or textually during the live seminar or through emails once the seminar is over.

Access to Session Recordings

Some webinars host also provide the attendants with a recording of the session so that it can be referred to later on. In case, you missed out on the session due to some unavoidable circumstances you could ask the hosts for a session recording.

So, what are you waiting for? Use this time to hone your skills through the power of webinars!