Last October, from the 28th to the 30th, EIIL’s Ent-Ex – The Entrepreneurial Experience, our programme for young leaders, took place a bit different than usual. Whereas the educational event for young innovators of any background or discipline normally takes place in real life in four different cities (Cologne, Barcelona, The Hague, Milan), this year it was bound to the online spheres due to the recent COVID19 measurements.
Lizard Global’s CEO and co-founder Jeremy had the honor to be a part of the event for the second time now, and spoke about his experience as an entrepreneur, helping young and aspirational innovators to recognise and develop the skills needed for successful entrepreneurship and starting your own business. Even though the 3-day workshop had been turned into an online event, it still managed to be a great success.
But how do you turn a successful event like Ent-Ex, which has been running for 9 years, into an online experience without losing its educational quality?
Online Education and EdTech
Considering the fact that online events like these will become more and more frequent, it’s essential to have the right software available to still be able to provide the best possible education and learning experience. The shift towards educational technologies forms an integral part of Lizard Global’s software projects. Because technology can play an essential role in the improvement of education, as well as the growing accessibility to learning material worldwide, innovation in the field of online education should be of high priority. An increasing number of educational technology, or EdTech applications have been launched on the market recently, all with their own unique functionalities and purposes. Generally, the most popular applications are designed and built to provide a centralized digital environment for students, teachers, and parents to access and view their learning progress, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The benefits of online learning
Educational software is booming, and with a good reason. The benefits of EdTech are countless, and the more educational technology arises, the more it will contribute to a feature of promising solutions. Learning Analytics can provide insights into the learning progress of students, and AI algorithms can make sure that the learning material is adapted to the needs of individual students in order to prevent dropouts in the long term. Besides that, Augmented Reality technologies such as Virtual Reality, can provide a much more immersive experience, which doesn’t only stimulate students to actively engage with their learning material, it also prevents potential accidents in real life in the case of, for example, driving lessons or medical surgery practices.
Probably one of the most important benefits of online education is the fact that education becomes more widely available. Nowadays, education remains inaccessible for millions of children, teens and adults around the world. Providing online education can greatly reduce these numbers, as it allows people who aren’t able to access education in person to learn digitally. It allows students to access learning material from wherever they are, which also forms a more environmental-friendly solution than physical education.
The challenges of online learning
Probably one of the most challenging aspects of digital learning revolves around the matter of attention. How do you keep people motivated to keep learning and actively interact with the learning material? Until now, education has always been taking place in real life, with direct contact between the teacher and student. However, a lot changes when taking the step from offline to online education. Although EdTech can provide a lot of benefits for both students and teachers, it also raises the question of how to keep users engaged and interested for a longer period of time. Turning a normally physical event such as Ent-Ex into an online experience requires all attendees to make a shift in the way they participate. Whereas the real life event allows participants to physically collaborate on projects, online it requires proper video conferencing software, as well as a stable internet connection.
Lizard Global has experience in the development of educational technologies, and makes use of a set of functionalities that are known to greatly optimize the overall engagement and learning experience of users, among which “gamification”. Gamification of app/web functionalities can turn the most mundane and repetitive tasks into engaging and interactive experiences. A gamified feature can be, for example, customizable content, such as the creation of a personal avatar, which provides a much more personal learning experience. Other examples include:
- Completion bars towards goal achievements
- Challenges with a reward system, which offers users a virtual reward when they’ve successfully completed a task
- Rankings and leaderboards, which stimulates users to compete with their peers
- Quizzes, surveys and polls
- Chat and video calling functionalities that provide a space for discussion and support
EdTech at Lizard Global
We had the honorable opportunity to have Lizard Global’s CEO and Founder at this year’s online Ent-Ex event, which inspired both of us to tell you much more about the benefits and the future of online education, as online educational events are just the beginning of a promising future with much more innovative educational technologies. Do you want to know more about the benefits of educational technologies? Or are you interested in developing your own educational app, web-app or website? Lizard Global gladly gets in touch with you to hear more about your innovative ideas, and perhaps we’re on the way to a successful partnership towards a bound-breaking new EdTech application.