e-Learning: An Option

We get accustomed to be in a classroom with chatty and boisterous students.  We enjoy the lively discussions, sometimes, resulting to fights.  Students get used to teachers’ “sermon” which has oftentimes become the subject in class reunions.  Students have learned to read  teachers’ facial expressions and have learned the cue of approval or disapproval. Students came to love the pat on the shoulder which teachers oftentimes do as recognition of a job well done or a sign of assurance that he/she is there in time of need. Surely, these things were not  experienced during the Covid pandemic days.

What the students got used  is seeing a teacher via the internet, the television or any other platform of learning delivery.  There was no other choice, if one insisted going to school at a time of the pandemic.

In an interview I had with a college student who was on e-learning , for no other choice because of the lockdown, she said that learning has quite become impersonal because of limited interaction and the absence of personal interface.  It has also become time-constraining because unlike a normal class schedule, there are instances where outputs have to be submitted before midnight even on weekends. The unstable internet connectivity added to the struggle.   Though e-learning limited the oral discussion of students, it has maximized the writing ability because most outputs require research and a lot of written works. She has also noted that e-learning requires focus and facility of internet technology.  

It’s the call of the time and definitely if the student values education more than its encumbrances, then, he/she has to yield to it.