Breaking Through Online Learning Challenges in the Growing Teaching Landscape
Shivani Manohar
February 6, 2025
‧
5 min read
Online learning has transformed the education landscape, bringing both significant benefits and a fair share of challenges. While the advantages of digital classrooms are extensive, they come with certain drawbacks. If left unaddressed, these issues can lead to student disengagement and a decline in motivation.
If you are someone who is struggling to navigate the world of online learning, you are in the right place. In this blog, we will delve into the key challenges of online learning and share practical strategies to overcome them, paving the way for a more engaging and effective virtual classroom experience. Let’s get started!
Although online learning provides remarkable flexibility and accessibility, along with reducing the need for physical infrastructure, it also presents several challenges that educators need to recognize and address to ensure a productive and engaging learning experience for their students. By understanding these online learning challenges, educators can implement effective strategies to overcome them and make the most of their teaching efforts.
Lack of technical knowledge is one of the major challenges of online learning. Before you start taking a class online, you first need to understand if your students have the technical ability to successfully log in, book their classes, check their assignments and communicate with other learners. Insufficient computer skills like not knowing how the learning platform works can severely impact student involvement and engagement. In such a situation, ask your students to spend some time beforehand to gain familiarity with the platform on which you will be conducting your classes.
How to cope - Embrace user-friendly tools. Look for an online learning platform with an intuitive interface that requires minimal technical knowledge. Consider platforms that offer pre-made templates and resources, specifically designed to empower students who are new to the online teaching world.
It is undeniable that students are deeply accustomed to the traditional classroom setting, where a physical teacher is present to address their questions and concerns. While the online environment can be highly enriching, it may sometimes feel limiting. Students often benefit from a physical space where they can interact directly, resolve their queries, and engage hands-on with real tools and people.
How to cope - To resolve this issue, try and combine online courses with some kind of classroom training. Organize debates between the students and arrange weekly or bi-weekly group activities to humanize the learning process and get your students to be more comfortable with you, their classmates and thereby, online classes.
Compared to traditional classes with structured, fixed schedules, online learning provides students with much greater flexibility—a feature often celebrated as one of e-learning’s biggest advantages. However, this same flexibility can sometimes backfire, leading to a lack of discipline, procrastination, and ultimately, inaction.
How to cope - Create a clear and consistent schedule for your students so they can easily adhere to it. Break down your course into brief, manageable modules that can be completed in a short period of time to keep students focused (let’s face it, it is tough to not get distracted during online lectures) and prevent them from feeling overwhelmed. Establish a clear and simple calendar indicating when the student should have completed each part of the online course and put systems in place to monitor their progress and punctuality.
Pro-tip: Platforms with built-in calendar features can be a game-changer, allowing you to schedule lessons, set deadlines, and track student progress effortlessly.
In the absence of a physical teacher to promote diligence and focus, students often struggle with motivation during online learning. While some learners may begin fully engaged, their enthusiasm can quickly fade. In today’s world, where attention is scarce and information overload is common, it is essential to demonstrate the value of your course to keep them actively involved. To achieve this, you must deliver an interactive and immersive e-learning experience that captures their curiosity and sustains their interest.
How to cope - Make learning interactive and engaging by incorporating microlearning techniques and using gamification elements like points, leaderboards, or challenges.
Microlearning - Microlearning refers to an educational strategy that involves delivering content in smaller units, designed to combat learner fatigue, boost knowledge retention and learner engagement. Content in microlearning can take any form, from text or video to games or quizzes, but it must always be bite-sized.
Gamification - Gamification, simply put, is the use of elements that are typical to gameplay in another field, like education. This can include incorporating the sense of competition, scoreboards, rules of a game, etc, in the learning process to bring out a more fun approach to your syllabus and to keep your students engaged.
Students are used to learning through a mix of theory and practice. However, with the shift to online learning, the practical side is often missing, leaving students to focus more on theory. This makes learning less engaging, leading to disengagement.
How to cope - Incorporate a healthy dose of innovation, creativity, and every engrossing resource you can get your hands on to transform your material into something engaging and exciting. Try and come up with ways in which students can make use of what they learn in their daily lives. Giving your students some control and encouraging them to get involved in creating their own content can also produce valuable results. Look for platforms that allow you to integrate multimedia content like videos, podcasts, images, and even student-generated content to keep your lessons fresh and engaging.
When we shift to an online learning environment, assuming that one teaching approach will work for all can be detrimental to learning. Creating generic assignments and course structures works fine if you have a one-on-one class, but for a larger number of students, each with their own learning styles, a personalized teaching experience is extremely crucial.
How to cope - Mix it up - use audio, video, text, quizzes, flashcards and more to get your point across to a diverse set of students (with the rise in EdTech, the options are never ending!) Instead of giving only one assignment or activity to your students, offer them a choice between two or three varied topics, so they can choose what is best suited for them. Encourage students to ask questions, share doubts, or express their insights and opinions about any subject matter at any given point in time.
One of the biggest disadvantages of online learning is that as an educator, it becomes difficult to provide each student with personal attention. Thus, it becomes important to foster personal interaction within the online world as much as possible. Facilitate conversation between you and your students as well as among the students themselves. Stress the importance of feedback and show the students that their individual voice matters.
How to cope - Look for platforms that have built-in communication tools to facilitate discussions between students and instructors. These should allow you to organize webinars, groups or forums where students can exchange notes, discuss concepts and resolve their queries. One popular method of making sure that your students don't feel isolated is introducing the concept of ‘Happy Hour.’ It's a digital replacement to the ‘water cooler conversations’ that students would otherwise engage in during breaks.
Overcoming the above discussed challenges is key to shaping the future of online learning, making it more inclusive, engaging, and meaningful. By tackling issues like lack of motivation, limited interaction, and the absence of hands-on learning, you can build a stronger and more effective e-learning environment. Also, using collaborative tools and interactive content can also help students stay more engaged and actively involved.
If you are new to online teaching or looking for ways to enhance your current classes, check out our guide to teaching online effortlessly. And don’t forget, Classcard is here to support you on your online teaching journey. With its simple, user-friendly features, Classcard helps you easily manage attendance, schedules, payments, and even collaborate with staff and students. The right tools and strategies can make all the difference—so why not make your online teaching experience smoother and more rewarding?