Online learning has become the preferred education method for many reasons, including:
- Access to the best teachers regardless of where students live;
- The opportunity to study lecture materials at any convenient time;
- The possibility of combining studying with work, etc.
But for communication between students and teachers to be effective, the form in which information is transmitted is critical. In this regard, the PDF format has no equal, not only because of its professional appearance but also because of its 100% compatibility with all operating systems and software. That is why teachers should know not only how to create an online course. PDF format mastering is an essential component of e-learning success.
Converting Lecture Notes to PDF for Easy Sharing and Annotating
Even if you have not previously used the PDF format for your lectures, you can easily convert them to PDF using an online converter app. You won’t have to retype them again. Just upload the file to the converter, and it will instantly save it as PDF. Knowing how to use such software tools is essential since they provide many advantages:
- You can protect your lectures from being copied. Thanks to this feature, students will not be able to write their homework by simply compiling them from the texts of your lectures.
- The PDF format allows you to present visual material in excellent form. You can add images, diagrams, charts, etc. to your lectures in high quality for easier comprehension of educational material.
- If you’ve been preparing presentations for your lectures, you can convert PPTX to PDF so you don’t have to type your lecture notes again.
- PDF editors offer an annotation function, which allows you to briefly convey the meaning of large fragments of text. Once you find out how to add annotations to a PDF with the help of a PDF converter, you will for sure begin to use this function quite often. An annotation can be added anywhere in the text. And so that it does not interfere with reading, it will be shown as a special icon pointing that there is additional text here.
Creating Online Courses With Interactive PDFs
If you want to create an online course with an interactive PDF, an online converter will help you with that thanks to the commenting feature. You can put questions in the comments, inviting students to join in the discussion on the topic, or make comments on current events. In this case, the text of the lecture will be unchanged and not tied to the current situation. You can clear the comments each time and fill them with new ones that are relevant to the date students master your course. Also, the following elements will add interactivity to your course:
- Engaging quizzes;
- Visual elements that require additional analysis;
- Fill-in-the-blank sections with or without ready-made answer options;
- Open-ended questions, etc.
Converting eTextbooks to PDF for Universal Access and Note-Taking
Using eTextbooks in online education can greatly simplify the tasks for students when converting them to PDF format. In such formatting, students will be able to perform a lot of additional actions with the text that will help them master the proposed educational material:
- Highlight particularly significant places in the text with a marker, underline, increase the font of a paragraph, make it italic, etc. This will facilitate easier visual perception of the main ideas and better memorization.
- Comment on the educational material with their own thoughts, which can later be elaborated when writing a text.
- Create bookmarks to quickly find the necessary text fragments.
- Extract particularly significant chapters to form a personal course outline.
- Merge pieces from different eTextbooks in one PDF document for long-term storage, etc.
The effectiveness of e-learning largely depends on the teacher’s proficiency in new methods of working with e-texts. PDF converters are simple and intuitive software tools that open up additional possibilities when creating educational courses. Thanks to this format, you can easily fill your course with visual materials, highlight the main points in lectures and eTextbooks, create space for discussion, etc.
Using PDF converters, you can offer students an easier way to master the knowledge and the opportunity to get even more from remote education than from offline one.