A Look into the Future of Learning: What do our Classes Look like in the Future?

Have you ever thought of what going to school, and doing assignments look like in the future? Just a few years ago, who would have thought that classes would be conducted through our personal computers or mobile devices and we would be constantly submitting essays online rather than writing on a piece of paper? 

More than two years since the pandemic, we have learned to manage the struggles that COVID-19 has brought. We have come to adapt to the new normal and more flexible methods of learning, such as HyFlex learning, which has allowed students to freely choose whether to take classes onsite or online. This has seen great success in our school and has allowed for a more fruitful class discussion amidst the pandemic. A question arises, however, do students prefer taking classes and learning face-to-face or online? Both have big advantages and disadvantages over the other, and a majority might pick face-to-face or online over the other but, the simple answer might just be to combine their strengths together as we’ve done during Hyflex learning. 

Online learning comes with the benefit of being incredibly convenient as long as you have an internet connection and an electronic device, even the students who are in China are able to attend classes through Zoom Video Conferencing. Online learning is, indeed, great when it comes to submitting assignments as we have experienced during online classes. But when it comes to listening to class discussions and talking to classmates and teachers, online classes aren’t that great, with students being more prone to distractions. 

Even before the pandemic, we have already utilized online learning for school. Online, we’ve created classroom group chats, talked with groupmates regarding group work, and submitted a number of assignments to teachers. Not just school education, now more than ever, we can find materials available online that we can study, we can even get certificates from websites like edX, MOOC.org, etc., which are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs),

All schools will be transitioning back to face-to-face classes, meaning there will be no more online classes, by November as per the latest announcement by DepEd. But this does not mean the end of online learning. The pandemic has shown us the many great utilities of online learning that will surely remain to be a part of education in the future.

Without a doubt, whether it be from something small and simple that we now have, like submitting assignments online to our teachers, to something new and never before seen, like maybe a virtual reality classroom with famous lecturers across the globe, there will definitely be a place for online learning in the future.