World Distance Learning Day is celebrated on 31st August every year. The day was established to raise awareness of the learning resources and options available to students and to celebrate how far the concept of distance education has advanced over the years.

Learning facilities haven’t always been few clicks away in the past. The concept of distance learning started with Caleb Phillips back in 1728 who offered shorthand lessons via mail on a weekly basis. Later in 1960’s Universities began to offer distance learning options via Open Universities. Universities could offer decent alternative to traditional learning methods and led the path to developing new technologies and teaching methods. The internet could create a revolution in distance learning by making it easier, faster and affordable to everyone. The first ever online course was introduced in 1984 and resources were available online, students participation has been rapidly grown over the time.

The power of the Internet, with its ability to connect people across the world, has opened up new opportunities for education. Companies such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX have revolutionized the way people learn, with their respective online education platforms offering courses in a variety of fields. With everything from AI-driven teaching algorithms to simple message boards, there are more options than ever to learn whatever you need to know.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education in over 150 countries and affected 1.6 billion students, which led in turn meant that more students than ever turned to distance learning. Depending on the current statistics 35% of the students around the world involved in distance learning courses, 18.7% of the students that have a portion of their course via distance learning and 16.6% of the students that conduct studies completely via distance learning. The internet, which was once a luxury for most people, became a necessity for education instead. The ease and speed of internet access also opened up opportunities for education that would have been impossible in the past. The internet has also opened up new job opportunities in the education industry such as virtual education, which allows people to receive education from anywhere in the world. This has also led to greater opportunities for education in the workforce, such as the ability to learn new skills and update old ones without leaving the workplace.

Distance learning is often more flexible and cost-effective than traditional learning methods. Distance learning also offers a chance for a more diverse learning atmosphere and experience, offering you valuable opportunities to interact with and learn from people with different cultures and backgrounds across the world. The top benefit of distance education is its flexibility. The choices have been widened for students by allowing them to choose when, where, and how they learn by selecting the time, place, and medium for their education. With the scalable nature of digital learning, it has reduced the cost of education. Online degrees are more affordable and there are accredited online only universities in the world eliminating the expensive infrastructure. 

Acentura is helping to change the millions of lives of students around the world  by facilitating the online education with our learning management industry partners. We contribute to building a platform to connect students with relevant education and help our partners reach their goals. Education is the key to a better future, and we are committed to making it accessible to all even in the remotest areas of the world.  Our goal is to create opportunities for students to learn and succeed in the 21st century by building a platform that empowers people and organizations to collaborate, share, and transform knowledge. The Internet has given everyone the opportunity to share their ideas, information, and knowledge.

As an organization we are extremely pleased with our efforts on training and development to ensure all our employees are up to date with the latest tools and technologies as well as best practices in the industry and be well prepared and equipped for the future requirements in the industry. We always try to introduce cutting-edge technologies to projects and keep our teams abreast of the latest trends in tech. Innovation is at the core of our company. As the current market demand is at a peak for new services such as Cloud, CRM, IoT, and Blockchain, we have successful partnerships with large enterprises ranging all the way to startups, catering to domain-specific services and products. To remain relevant in the current fast-paced industry, we prioritize learning and development opportunities for our employees whereby there is a systematic and methodical training structure promoting webinars, TechTalk series and tech certifications such as AWS, Azure, Appian, TOSCA, UiPath, etc, domain certifications in the Telco, Insurance, Apparel, and other relevant spaces, and process frameworks such as ISO 9001, 27001, CMMi Level 3, etc. Our acenTalk series is mainly focused on providing domain specific knowledge to our employees. All those discussions are public and available on Acentura YouTube channel. This has given anyone an opportunity to gain knowledge from different perspectives and experts.

Many studies have shown that retention rates for distance learning students are much higher than for traditional, in-person students. Distance learning increases access and makes it more likely that a student can finish a course or program when physical limitations are removed.