Lab7

The Classroom: Real vs. Virtual? What are your thoughts on e-learning?

E-learning consists of both advantages and disadvantages. On the good side, it allows individuals to easily gain access to educational materials and learnings at anywhere and any place as long as they have a computer. With technology emerging in such a fast pace in society today, e-learning does seem to be an ideal and new way to obtain knowledge through educational systems. However, e-learning is not the perfect solution either. Education and schooling is based human interactivity with teachers, the peers and the student body. Students learn by team work and communicating with peers to discuss their assignments and context that they are being taught. It is difficult for one to do this online. One can use online forums or emails but these web tools will still not be able to replace traditional human interactive, hands on learning. Moreover, different students have various studying habits as well as learning techniques. If all the students uses e-learning methods, people who are interactive learners that consume knowledge more effectively by team work or group work will not be able to absorb as many teachings if they participate in online learning. This is because they would be solely reading off the webpages. On the other hand, some individuals do learn better by working independently, so e-learning would be an ideal solution for them. I believe that both e-learning and classroom learning consists of both advantages and disadvantages, but it is a fact that it is not possible for the whole student body to convert to pure online learning systems.