Podcasts, music and audiobooks today, these audio-oriented media are becoming the first preference of audiences. Especially the young people, the high-schoolers and college-going students, who are always on the move. For them, these audio media are a perfect source of entertainment and education. Yes, education too, if these are used effectively, and today audio media is being used for educational purposes. If you explore major online selling platforms, you will find many courses which have “audio-only” written in their description.
Now, as its name says “audio-only” you might have got some idea what they are.
“Audio-only” Online courses are those courses which are available only in audio format. It means the teacher or expert will teach you about the topic using audio-only, there will be no visuals, i.e; slides, videos, animation, clipart etc. Learners will listen to the whole course content and understand it, yes there will be subtitles as per the learner’s requirement.
Audio-only gives a better option to both teachers and learners. Teachers who want to create their online courses, but don’t know how to create an online course with video, can create audio-only videos. And the students who are good audio learners, for them such online courses are boons.
Audio-only courses have several advantages for both teachers and students. Let’s have a look at some.
Learn Anywhere: Video courses have many advantages, no doubt. But can you watch videos while you are hiking on your college stairs or can you watch videos uninterruptedly while commuting on a bus or train? No, right. However, you can listen to your topics while walking on the stairs or standing on a bus or train. Just plug your headphones in your ears and you are ready to learn. Audio-only courses make learning easier and more accessible to all learners. So that they can learn from anywhere.
Keep The Learners Engaged: Have you ever wondered why you still remember the bedtime stories that your parents told you years ago? While they didn’t use any dramatic visuals or actions, they kept you hooked to the stories, through their voice. Presented, and told engagingly and interactively students can be kept hooked to learning. Voices and audios are proved to be better learning tools, than visuals.
Greater Retention Rate: As discussed in the above point, audio-only courses keep the learners hooked. It means when students are listening carefully, they can understand the concepts clearly and remember the learned topics for a long time. Learning from audio courses increases the rate of knowledge retention in the students, thus, making them better learners.
Easily Downloadable: Video lectures are of more storage and take lots of data to play and download. This creates problems for those learners who don’t have access to stable internet connectivity. Audio-only courses are available in MP3 format and are easily downloadable. Thus, making it easier for learners to download, listen and learn.
Improves Creativity: Audio-only courses give students the freedom of imagination and bring out their creative powers. When students listen to audio content, they listen to every word and sentence with concentration, and then they imagine the situation discussed in the course. This helps them to visualise a problem, and when they can visualise that, they can easily come up with the solution to a problem too.
Makes Them Multi-Tasking: The lifestyle of today’s youth has become quite dynamic and packed with multiple activities. Today students are attending their classes, doing part-time jobs, taking extra classes and some more extra courses. They are required to balance all this stuff together, which can be quite hectic sometimes. Audio-only courses help them to manage all the other activities while they are learning, for example, if a student works as a part-time gardener, then he can listen to the audio course and do the gardening at the same time. This makes them swift as multi-tasker.
Affordable: When teachers are going to put their online courses on the course selling platform, they do worry about how to sell online courses and make them affordable and accessible for learners. Audio-only courses are the answer, they’re affordable in comparison to online video courses. Thus, many students prefer audio-only courses over video courses.
