by Alfieri Avilan
Academic Consultant Central America & the Caribbean

The new learning era has turned into a great dilemma that has taken a whole decade to begin to understand, its depth has not been measured yet, it seems as if we are struggling to cope with all the changes and challenges that such wave has brought within.

Educators, researchers, linguistics, scientists, technicians, all have come together to propose plausible solutions to these new challenges, yet the main matter, learners´ necessities, still evades many.

In Pearson for more than one hundred and fifty years, we have preserved three values that drive our behavior, thoughts and actions. One of these values, the imagination of harnessing new technologies in what we do, not with the sole purpose of producing great educational goods, but thinking of and for the future as well as placing the learner in the center of the teaching-learning process has made us understand and measure this new learning era.

It is because in Pearson we understand the new challenges that one of our great online solutions meets in great deal the needs of a new set of learners. The sort, who lacks time to attend regular lessons, is friendly to technology, seeks motivating content and finds it hard to pursue and stay on goal. Pearson English Interactive matches not only these needs; it also faces one of the most important aspects on the inclusion of technology in the classroom, what it represents for teachers and students.

For teachers it means having a remote assistant who can support with extra content, immediate grading, close measurement of students’ progress, also with extra hours, a hundred per level, helps you stay in communication with your groups, and other useful help.

Marking becomes easier; paperwork drops dramatically; personalization of instruction gets as real as it can be.

For students, PEI represents the way they learn, a digital environment where they spend most of their productive time. One may fall for the quick thought that everything digital is good for our learners, it cannot be a more incorrect concept; the key to this successful educational online solution, PEI, resides in its interactivity; it enables the learners to have a large amount of participation. This would resemble a live classroom, except for the fact that a good amount of students does not get that much interaction in real lessons.

Seemingly, Pearson English Interactive being an online solution overlooks the practice of four skills, nothing further form the truth. It allows learners to work and master all four skills and pronunciation, covering the standards for real communication.

It sees English as what it is nowadays, lingua franca, exposing learners to real forms in which people talk around the globe, a critical concept in learning a foreign language, this provides with the authenticity that is necessary in the classroom regardless of the setting, so that the learners understand how the real language is used in the real world.

One other factor that makes PEI so effective is its flexibility, learners can access their courses anytime anywhere, and this allows them to schedule their own pace. Teachers and learners are never apart; they are in contact through an effective, flexible, user friendly, motivating learning management system.

Enabling teachers and learners alike to join the new era of education has become one of the pillars for creating Pearson English Interactive. Blended learning is the future, the way to support, improve and enhance classroom activity, a way to ensure that learners reach their ultimate outcome, communication in the 21st century.