Internet Classrooms vs. Traditional Classrooms

張貼日期：May 13, 2011 6:16:48 AM

Pace Chen

Internet enables us to do anything without going out of our home. Due to its convenience, college students begin to have chances for the distant learning. I had taken a distant learning course at my previous university. It was a brand-new experience and I thought it was cool at first. Later, the Internet classrooms did not work well as it was expected. From this experience, I find out that I prefer the traditional learning style. Interaction, timeliness and supervision are three problems we need to be concerned about before carrying out the project of Internet classrooms.

If students learn a lesson at home, there is less interaction with the teachers or the classmates. We are social beings. Lacking interaction leads to isolation. We tend to be lazier and lazier if going out of our home becomes unnecessary. Teachers and students also cannot know one another well because of the times when they show up in the traditional classroom are few.

The second problem is that students cannot ask questions in class or during the break. When I did the distant learning at home, I needed to write down questions and waited for the next time when the teacher assigned us to appear in the traditional classroom to raise the questions. It was inconvenient and the teacher might not remember all the things she had recorded on the videos.

The last problem is that teachers are unable to understand or supervise students’ learning effectively. Sometimes students play computer games, chat with roommates, or do not even sit in front of the computer monitor while playing the teaching videos via the Internet. The teacher can only see the records shown on the system, which indicates how long students watch the videos. This was the problem I heard from the classmates. It is impossible to control the learning condition of the students in the distant learning.

People might argue that online discussion boards or emails are platforms on which we could ask questions. I believe that there are questions which are hard to explain through written words. Talking face to face with teachers makes students understand answers more efficiently.

The Internet classrooms won’t replace traditional classrooms. The effect of the Internet classroom on students’ learning is not that great. Most students are passive in learning. Supervision in the traditional classroom pushes us to learn or do the homework more efficiently than that in the Internet classrooms. According to my experience, unless you are a highly motivated student, it will be a waste of money to take distant learning courses and learn via the Internet.