E-learning, also referred to as ‘online learning’ or ‘digital education’, is a form of distance education that takes place over the internet, by making use of different technologies.
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for this type of digitized learning skyrocketed, with 98% of companies having adopted some form of online learning in 2020. The new reality pushed students, employees, institutions and companies to rethink education and training and seek alternative ways to get and grant remote access to high-quality instruction. However, with the advancement of ICT hardware and software over the past years, e-learning had already taken off even before 2020. In fact, as shown by eLearning Industry, 77% of US companies were already benefiting from e-learning in 2017.
As the online learning industry grows in market size and users, so does its repertoire of options. Nowadays, there are multiple types of virtual courses to fit everybody’s needs:
Among the e-courses that take place live, in real-time settings, we can mention:
Some of the online courses that don’t involve simultaneous meetings are:
Although at the beginning of the pandemic most people were forced to adopt online learning, many continued choosing it later on. In fact, a 2021 survey carried out by Cengage states that nearly three-quarters of students (73%) reported that they would prefer to take some of their courses fully online after the pandemic. This shows that during the pandemic years, the online learning industry proved itself as a useful and effective alternative to traditional education. Some of its benefits are listed below:
The rise of virtual learning saw the growth of various education platforms that wanted to expand their market and reach broader audiences, following the trend toward globalization. With this rise comes an increased demand for e-learning translation and localization to satisfy the worldwide desire for these education models.
Some of the services LSP can offer to said platforms are:
To offer their services, schools, universities, and companies need quality e-learning translation to attract larger audiences, and for this, Language Service Providers (LSPs) that offer localization services can be of valuable help. Accounting for cultural and regional differences when translating and adapting content is key to achieve success globally by offering worldwide audiences education in all languages.
From employee e-lectures to highly technical training courses for software developers, through localization of K-12 school books and materials, at GeaSpeak we are highly experienced in the Education field. We have localized dozens of virtual courses including user interface and video subtitles, as well as printed materials such as coursebooks and student manuals. Some of the education projects we most frequently work on include the localization of training decks, e-learning/self-learning courses, course platform interface and a wide variety of employee training courses and presentations (selling, compliance, ethics, finance, gender equality, software and app use, among many others). For these courses we also complete a task called “Online Review” (for checking everything looks fine online) and “Narration Review” (when there is also narration in addition to text).