With the development of technology and the Internet, virtual and distance learning has existed for many years.
There has always been a mixed opinion on whether virtual learning is a good alternative to physical learning! While many have considered distance learning to be comfortable, allowing them to focus on all aspects of life, many debate that virtual learning is not as effective as distance learning.
Whatever their opinion, amidst the COVID pandemic, all students and learners were compelled to join virtual and distance learning.
As its demand grew, there were more tools developed for the purpose.
But how do you know the tool that best suits your learning process? What are the tools available for virtual learning? What are the features they offer?
To jump off with any of the tools available might not be a viable decision. After all, we need a detailed search for everything, whether buying a course, guidelines, or selecting websites that write essays for you.
In this article, we have compiled the 5 best tools for distance learning that have been proven effective and efficient by teachers and students.
Best Online Teaching Tools for Virtual and Distance Learning
We all understand the difficulty behind making virtual learning a success. To make it better, there are helpful remote learning tools in place.
Here, we have grouped the tolls as per the needs of teachers and students regarding communication and messages, facilitating discussion, delivering lessons, and accessing lessons.
Most of the tools in our list are either free or cheap, making it simpler for everyone to put together a tool that works best for them in their remote learning process.
1. Google Classroom
While there are applications like Zoom and Google Meet, Google Classroom turned out to be one of the main tools for online education of students and teachers worldwide. Being a free, robust tool, it offers tons of versatile features for educators.
One reason for loving it is because of the people behind the development of this too. Google itself built this tool to help manage general classrooms and monitor student education progress. With the help of a unique code for every class, teachers can invite students to have private classrooms where they can attach and submit the assignments.
Google Classroom is the simplest way for learners to start the online learning experience.
Key Features of Google Classroom:
- Easy assignment management allowing teachers to create and distribute assignments digitally
- Streamlined communication via post announcements, reminders, and various instructions to the class stream
- Seamless integration with other Google tools like Google Drive, allowing easy collaboration
- Simple and straightforward process for distribution of learning materials
- Offers streamlines grading and feedback facility
Pricing
Google Classroom is completely free for everyone. Teachers, educators, students, schools, and everyone can use it for learning purposes.
2. Moodle
Moodle is another powerful open-source Learning Management System (LMS) offering educators a flexible and robust platform. You can easily create and manage online courses through this tool.
Moodle is developed with a great focus on collaboration and interaction. It offers great tools and features for online learners to extend their learning capabilities.
Key features of Moodle:
- Easy course management system to create and organize courses with flexible customization option
- Simple content creation and sharing option
- Upload a variety of resources like documents, multimedia, links, and videos
- Multiple tools for collaboration and communication purposes
- Includes a comprehensive grade book to track student grades
- Offers personalized learning paths for distance learners
Pricing
Moodle is mostly free and open-source. However, implementation and hosting costs do vary depending on your requirement.
3. Zoom
While Zoom has been a top preference by businesses to move forward with remote working, it does offer features and functionalities, making it a perfect suit for virtual studying.
It is a video conferencing and collaboration platform that offers flexibility regarding online classrooms and remote learning.
Students and teachers can enjoy its user-friendly interface and robust features to continue their learning and teaching process.
Zoom is on our list for being a seamless tool for educators to connect, communicate and collaborate the ideas and knowledge.
Key Features of Zoom:
- Offers high-quality video and audio conferencing to help students focus on class
- Screen sharing option even for computer and mobile devices
- Allows to deliver presentations, demonstrate a concept, and showcase the learning materials
- Offers breakout rooms to divide participants into smaller groups
- Provides chat features to allow enable students to text questions or queries that may arise during the teaching process
- Has a whiteboard feature to annotate and draw
Pricing
Zoom has both a free and a paid version. The premium plan begins at $14.99 per month per host. The paid version also has extended features of meeting duration, large participation limit, and many others.
4. Microsoft Teams
The top 3 communication tools that had been widely used all over the world for distant and remote learning included Microsoft Teams along with Google Classroom and Zoom.
Microsoft is a feature-enriched collaboration and communication platform that allows real-time options for students and teachers to connect together for video learning.
The tool is designed to facilitate a seamless teaching process, making it a popular choice for many institutions and schools, and colleges.
Key Features of Microsoft Teams:
- Offers a chat feature allowing students to send instant messages to individuals or in a group
- Video meetings and calls to better facilitate the live teaching process
- Option of live collaboration to make real-time changes in projects, assignments and group work
- Flexibility for institutions to create different classes for different grades, subjects and topics
- Integrates OneNote feature to provide a collaborative space to share class notes
- Has a strong security
Pricing
Microsoft Teams has a free version that offers all the basic features. You can purchase the Microsoft 365 Education Plan or the business entity plan, which offers extended features.
5. Edmodo
Edmodo is a powerful digital classroom platform built to enhance the virtual learning process. It connects educators, students, and parents in a secure online environment where they can process their learning process with great flexibility.
The extensive functionality of Edmodo allows educators to deliver lessons, distribute assignments, facilitate discussion and collaborate with students.
Key features of Edmodo:
- Allows educators to create and manage virtual classrooms
- Create and distribute assignments to students
- Provides an integrated grading system and allows feedback on each assignment
- Communication flexibility with various options such as share announcements, class discussion
- Includes an inbuilt quiz feature
Pricing
Edmodo is free to get started with. It also has a premium plan for teachers with additional features, which costs $2.99 per year.
Wrapping Up
This sums up our collection of the top 5 distance learning tools for virtual and distance learning. We went through reviews and ratings of many tools to come up with our top 5. The best part of these tools is that each of them has a free version to get started with.
According to Betterwritingservices, these learning tools have been highly recommended by teachers and students for their effectiveness and efficiency in virtual and distance learning.
Depending upon your need and flexibility, you’ll always have the option to move to a paid plan. However, being a free tool, they offer an impressive library of features and functionalities. These tools have been widely used for distance learning, making it a top choice for many educators.
Which of these tools do you think is the best? Are you using any of them for the purpose of distance learning? Do let us know.
