A virtual Classroom

NO more difficult wake ups, NO more morning rushes for the bus, NO more facing bias teachers who favors "pet" students only, NO more having detentions for dozing off in class... no more classmates and friends.. Yes, it was proposed that students study at home, making education 24 hours accessible to them. Finally, education is catching up with technology. With such advanced technology today, we might as well send our avatar to school and he'll transmit all he learns back to our main server computer at home. Well, we've heard plenty about the pros and cons for having a virtual classroom to replace traditional whiteboard-lecturer classroom. Let's look at the idea from a video:



Cool isn't it? But is it applicable to students and apt for learning? Let's look at this systematically..

According to Bloom's Taxonomy, the most ideal learning involves 3 domains: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor.

Under Cognitive domain, students have to remember what is being taught, understand and apply it. A higher level for them will be to analyze the information given by the lecturer, evaluate it and re-create the information. From the video, the lecturer was apparently teaching geometry, it is analytical as the diagrams are precised. If they do not understand, they could virtually "raise their hands". Well... understanding it is one thing, applying it? I am assuming they have downloaded a worksheet, so that they can complete the questions and submit it back.

Under Affective domain, students learn best when they are emotionally "touched". For example, a teacher who cracks the best jokes in class is likely to receive attention, and during that point, the information related by the teacher will be embedded into students' brain. Another example, we all know how Titanic sunk, all due to the movie Titanic, with its amazing storyline and tears-triggering scenes. In a virtual classroom, i can't visualize how can teachers interact with students "affectively".

Under Psychomotor domain, students get to experience it real time, first hand. For example, nothing beats learning about Crystallization with doing the real experiment itself. Watching a video would be very difficult. You get to touch sodium sulphate, smell ammonium, taste (don't know) which would not be available through a virtual classroom. Sports, you can't become a sportsman by just reading up a Dummies guide to basketball. You have to experience it yourself: the sun and sweat, the the fatigue, the teamwork, the satisfaction of throwing the ball through the hoop.

Hence, although the cognitive domain is sufficiently attained, students who learn best in an affective and psycho motor domain get compromised. Of course, that's why schools in Singapore today still require students to be in class and the fields, but also INTEGRATE cognitive learning with technology by submitting assignments online, doing research and bringing it to class...etc. Yeah!