The students learn to the best of their capability when education is provided in the native language.

No doubt English is lingua franca, and the internet is dominated by English. But many global students around the world prefer to learn in their mother language.

Learning is an ongoing process. It helps the students and employees to cope in the fierce world of competition. All the latest work is done in the field of medicine, technology, engineering, and other fields that are spread around the world through the internet. It is called e-learning. If you want all your educational work to be understood by the people beyond the local boundaries, then you need to resonate with your content with global learners. Here comes the need for e-learning localization into play.

What is e-Learning Localization?

E-learning localization is acclimating your content according to the culture and audience of your target market. Localization of educational content shows that you are providing the same learning experience to your global students as you are providing to local students. It connects the learning audience with you. You can impart the knowledge in the best way, and learners continue to learn online safely with you with great zeal.

Worth of e-Learning

Because of technological advancement, the market size of online education is growing tremendously. The COVID-19 pandemic raised the usage of e-learning platforms and digital learning tools like webinars, remote live lectures, online quizzes, student polls, discussion boards, zoom meetings, and learning conferences. The quarantine situation has enhanced the growth of e-learning platforms phenomenally and, it is expected to grow more in 2020-2025.

Why Should You Localize e-Learning Content?

According to the report by Digital Journal, the worth of e-learning will reach 30 billion dollars. Let’s see why that growth is expected. Online educational platforms cost less than traditional means of education. You can access it anytime, anywhere, no matter in which corner of the world you are. It is becoming even more popular because of the globalization of the business. It resulted in the need to localize education and training content that is according to the cultural, regional, and linguistic nuance of foreign learners.

What Should You Localize?

The pivotal elements that need to localize in educational platforms are

• Written Content
• Audio
• Video
• Graphics
• Navigation buttons
• Formatting, units of measurement, date, time currency.

How to Localize Online Educational Platform?

Make Localization Strategy from the Start

While designing online content, keep the localization strategy in mind. Keeping the content parallel with localization will help to create localization-friendly material. In this way, you don’t have to work hard in the localization process. Moreover, it will save a lot of repetitive work, time, and money.

Develop Content According to the Target Market

You should know your target market before preparing online educational material. That will help you engage the potential learners with you. You should know about their cultural and regional preferences. For example, something that is considered humorous in one culture can be considered rude in other cultures. It is better to get the assistance of a native localization expert. They know the preferences of local people and help you understand the target audience well. They assist you with generating such material that resonates with the learners.

Incorporate Local Flavour

If you add local flavor to your learning content, then you can easily transfer knowledge to learners. Learners can easily relate your content with their surroundings. So, you should add local names, places, and cultural-specific examples. When learners associate the content with their environment, they learn more rapidly and retain the information for a longer period.

Add Local Images

Graphics and images play an important role in the e-learning process. They should be acceptable to the target audience. For example, some gestures are considered insulting in some societies, and in some cultures, they are accepted in a good way. If you are using graphics and images in learning material, then use neutral images so that you cannot offend your audience.

Hire Local Professionals

Reaching the foreign learners in no time is not an easy task. You can make it easy by hiring professional localization experts that also possess industry-specific knowledge. They know all the important elements that need to be incorporated into your online educational platforms to make it more effective. In this way, you can impart knowledge beyond boundaries.

What Should be considered in e-Learning Localization?

Cultural Nuances

While preparing educational content, you should consider the communities of students and employees. Culture is a very important element of localization. It includes values, norms, the hierarchy of organizations, and the historic reputation of institutions. When you prepare the content as per the culture, the target audience will engage easily with your educational and training content. The medium of instruction should also be in the native language otherwise you need to translate the educational and training material into different languages. The content in multiple languages will help you reach a wider audience.

Social Know-how

Social know-how includes understanding the mode of learning in pairs, one session, and groups. The learning content should be localized according to social bonding, the number of students, and teacher-student interaction. Furthermore, it should be as per the social intricacies of the different societies and countries.

Financial and Economic conditions

You should develop your content after knowing the financial and economic conditions of the target audience for which you are making your content. If your content is for an audience that has poor financial conditions, you should consider it. The price of the course should be reasonable for such a target market. In developing countries where there are not many facilities, online training and education become a problem. It is important to check the localized resources of the target audience and regional adaptability before catering to such a target market.

Technology

Technological advancement has an influential impact on educational platforms. Knowledge seekers will take interest in learning if it is delivered in a friendly mode of instruction, which is secure for the students online. Learners will be able to navigate easily with multiple language input methods. You also need to consider the unavailability of different technological applications in different regions when developing your educational content.

The countries that are advanced in technology are using online technological platforms like Udemy, Teachable, WizIQ, Ruzuku, education, LearnWords, Thinkific, CourseCraft, and Skillshare. These platforms need to be localized to impart the knowledge effectively to the audience.

Wrapping Up

Learners learn effectively in their native language. With the native tongue, educational content should also resonate with cultural, social, regional, financial, and technological nuances. In this way, localized educational platforms can educate the young generation well, and enable them to succeed in every aspect of life starting in front of their door.