virtual classroom essay

Essays About Online Class: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Essays about online class tell many stories. If you need to write about e-learning, discover the top examples and prompts for the subject in our guide.

With over 5.8 million American students attending in 2021, online classes are now one of the education sector’s most popular and modern learning methods. Although it became prevalent because of the pandemic, it’s believed that the concept of distance learning began in the late 1800s .

Online classes pose many benefits that many still take advantage of even after the pandemic. However, not everyone adjusts well to this technology-centered learning due to no face-to-face contact and difficulty learning without the back-and-forth of lesson question time. 

1. My Experience as an Online Student by Debra Sicard

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“I am not a traditional student, so I have non-traditional needs… online classes fit my lifestyle.”

Sicard shares her positive experience with online classes, primarily centering her essay on convenience. She says that with online courses, she can fit more lessons into her schedule, save her money on gas, and have more time with her family. In addition, she mentions she can work and do other things besides taking her credits.

To have a proper perspective of the topic, Sicard also includes the disadvantages of virtual learning, such as devices catching viruses and missing in-real-life interactions with her professors and classmates. But, she believes that an online student can learn as much or even more than what students learn in traditional classes.

“In an online class, a student can only achieve success if he is committed to time management, balancing personal obligations, finding an ideal study environment, asking questions, and applying more effort to completing the course requirements.”

This essay contains steps a non-traditional student can take to avoid failing online classes. The author says that students, especially multitaskers, must know how to manage and balance their time to avoid losing focus. In addition, having a dedicated study spot is necessary to avoid distractions.

“Online classes or online method of learning presents an easy and comfortable method to achieve knowledge. Online classes have now become a great alternative to traditional classes.”

The writer delves into the benefits and drawbacks of online versus traditional learning. Virtual classes offer students freedom regarding their schedules and whereabouts. Some schools also allow students to learn for free. E-learning effectively trains individuals to be responsible and disciplined. 

However, individuals who are not computer literate will find online classes frustrating. Plus, electronic devices can be bad for health, and a lack of personal interaction can hinder personality development.

“[Online course] will also help you become more self-motivated, a trait that will make you stand out in the workplace and beyond.”

By listing the similarities and differences between online and traditional schools, the author demonstrates what classes a student should pick. The writer concludes that while traditional schools prepare students for the real world by interacting with diverse people, online schools help students become more self-motivated to stand out.

“The advantages of online classes take over their disadvantages. If students want to learn, then they have immense opportunities to learn from online classes.”

The author defines online classes as a type of education system where students use electronic devices with an internet connection to learn. However, while online learning improves the quality of education, it can also make the student lazy and cultivates a sense of isolation. Ultimately, they believe that to have the best education system, school teachers and officials must learn how to combine the two methods.

If the topic you’re thinking of is still confusing and you don’t know where to start, here are seven easy writing prompts to inspire you:

Explain the topic to your reader and give a brief history of the origins of online classes. Then briefly compare it to the traditional class to make the differences clear. Finally, point out the distinct features of online classes that conventional learning doesn’t offer, such as face-to-face interaction and question-and-answer debates. You can also discuss various online classes schools offer, such as hybrid learning, interactive online courses, etc.

Tell your story if you’re a student with experience with online classes. Narrate how your school switched to virtual classrooms. Relay the challenges you encountered, including how you adapted. Finish your essay by stating your current preference and why. 

For example, you favor e-learning because it cuts your transportation expenses, helps you be more responsible for managing your time, and lets you sleep in the mornings.

Relate your experience when your school moved online. Discuss any equipment or devices you need to buy before enrolling in your online class. Explain how your school handles online courses and what it does when there are technical difficulties. Add how these challenges (such as unstable internet connection and sudden power outage), such as attendance and participation, impact a class.

To make your essay more intriguing, add the average price of your online classes and if you think it’s fair. For instance, you can argue that since schools don’t provide computers and save expenses on cleaning and utilities when physical classrooms are unused, they should cut their laboratory or miscellaneous fees. You may also be interested in these articles about back to school .

Zoom, Google Classroom, and Microsoft Team are just three of the most popular online teaching software for online classes. In this prompt, look for the most useful and efficient software sites teachers or schools should incorporate into e-learning. Find examples or reliable data that show the number of students or schools that use them. Finally, ensure the details you add are accurate to make your essay credible.

Do you want to write about technology instead? Check out our  essays about technology .

Discussing online classes’ positive and negative effects is a usual essay topic. To make your essay stand out, pick the most impactful points on everyone involved. Don’t just explore the students’ perspectives. Include how virtual learning influences teachers, parents, and businesses.

To give you an idea, you can look into businesses near the campus that closed down when the school shifted to virtual classrooms.

This prompt requires you to search for publications about online classes and share your opinion on them.

For example, John F. Lyons’s book, How to Succeed in an Online Class , published in 2011, introduced technology students encounter in online classes. Suppose you read this book. First, enumerate Lyons’ advice, tips, and learning techniques to prevent a student from failing their online course. Then, briefly explain them individually and include examples or proof that his advice helped.

Online schooling has been around for a long time but has only become widespread because of the pandemic. Use this prompt to write your opinion on whether schools should make virtual learning a permanent option for students. Whatever your answer is, explain your reason to your readers.If you’re interested in learning more about essays, check out our essay writing tips !

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Strategies for Teaching Students Online and Face to Face at the Same Time

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(This is the third post in a multipart series. You can see Part One here and Part Two here .)

The question-of-the-week is:

What are the do’s and don’ts of hybrid teaching?

Many districts, including the one where I work , are making plans to begin teaching in the physical classroom after being fully online since last March. Teacher vaccinations and decreasing COVID-19 infection rates in the community are now making that move a possibility.

Many schools are considering an option that has several names—concurrent, hybrid, hyflex—and most include teaching students who are in our physical classroom at the same time we are teaching some who are online.

What better way to learn how to do this kind of teaching than from those who have been at it for months?

The first two posts in this series appeared in October. With the imminent return of so many of us to the physical classroom, I felt like we could use all the advice we could get, so decided to “restart” the series now and invited many more experienced educators to contribute their lessons. Look for several more posts in the coming week.

In Part One , Amber Chandler, Tara C. Dale, and Holly Spinelli offer their hard-won experiences..

In Part Two , Deborah Gatrell, Amy Roediger, and Carina Whiteside provide their suggestions. I also include comments from readers.

Today, Christina Diaz, Christina E. Cox, Erin R. Scholes, and Matt Carlstrom share their recommendations.

You might also be interested in A Beginning List Of The Best Resources To Support Concurrent/Hybrid Teaching .

Student Interaction

Christina Diaz has been teaching EL and bilingual students for 12 years. She is currently a 4th and 5th grade dual-language teacher in Downers Grove, Ill. You can follow her on Twitter at @BilingualLions:

If you have found yourself being asked to teach virtual and in-person students concurrently, you are not alone. This instructional model is sometimes called hybrid learning, and while some teachers have been teaching it since the beginning of the year, many are making the transition from remote to a form of hybrid teaching over the next portion of the school year. This may sound daunting (and it is), but the following are some practices that may help with your transition.

• Make your remote students feel like they’re still part of your class even though they’re still learning from home . Your remote students should still be able to participate in the same activities and lessons that your hybrid students are. This may require you to plan ahead if you want to send home or have families pick up crafts or activities . You can also have the students submit an activity electronically and you can print it out afterward so they are included.
• Have your in-person and remote learners interact with each other often , via breakout rooms or on apps like Jamboard, Kahoot, or FlipGrid to maintain your classroom community. Community is EVERYTHING!
• Set learning expectations for in-person and remote learners . While they may be different for both groups, students should know what materials they need to have for class daily, when and how to submit work and expectations while on Zoom, such as cameras, participation, and safety.
• Give your remote learners a variety of ways to demonstrate that they’re engaged during your lessons . Just because their screens may be off, doesn’t mean they’re not there. You can encourage them to unmute themselves, use the chat box, use reactions or hand signals to share.
• Create routines . Give your students a sense of routine and stability by starting your days the same way. You can begin with a question for the students to answer while you take attendance; begin with a fun greeting or class meeting; review the schedule for the day; and assign class jobs (greeter, attendance taker, chat monitor, co-host for the day, etc.).
• Reach out to your school/district technology department for support. You’ll want to make sure that your in-person and remote students can see the same things while you are teaching. I accomplish this by projecting my computer on the board for my in-person students and then sharing my screen on Zoom for my remote students. My projector has built-in speakers that allow my in-person students to hear what the remote students are saying. Because every school/district is different, it is important to reach out to see what devices and tools you have at your disposal.
• Use a second device to give your remote students a glimpse into your classroom. While this is optional, it allows your remote students to see what’s going on in your classroom and to see their classmates. Your in-person students can also see their remote classmates through that second screen.
• Find ways to celebrate your students . This has been such a tough year, so celebrate the little things, such as birthdays, student accomplishments, spirit days, and class rewards.
• Do find opportunities for experiences like virtual field trips. Take advantage of experiences that websites , museums, and children’s organizations are offering.
• Don’t expect to follow the same pacing as you did last year. Everything takes longer, and that’s OK.
• Don’t be so hard on yourself or your students . Give yourself and your students grace. It’s easy to get discouraged when something goes wrong. When something does go wrong, don’t take it personally. This is all new for you and your students.
• Don’t forget to unmute (or mute) yourself ! This happens to me WAY too many times!
• Don’t overextend yourself trying to keep up with other teachers . Find 2-3 resources/apps you and your students are familiar with and stick to them.
• Don’t forget to practice self-care . Teaching concurrently is no easy feat, so make sure you take care of yourself! Meditate, stay active, spend time with your family, and leave schoolwork at work every so often. Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.

Take care and best of luck, teacher friends!

‘Don’t Panic’

Christina E. Cox is the chair of the history department at York Preparatory School in New York City:

Here’s what I’ve learned since I first started teaching online and in person concurrently in September:

• Get creative about class discussions. The biggest challenge has been facilitating classroom discussion. Even in the best circumstances, students participating from home aren’t always able to hear their masked and distanced classmates as well as they could when everyone is logged in from home. I do my best to repeat student questions and observations so that the Zoomers can hear, but I’ve moved some of these conversations to our LMS, Canvas. On Canvas, I can set up electronic discussion boards that allow students to interact with each other in real time. PearDeck is another great option for facilitating interaction between students in different locations.
• Use breakout rooms to set up partners. Buddy in-person students with classmates at home and have everyone log on to Zoom. One caveat: Avoid having more than one in-person student in the same breakout room, especially if students don’t all have headphones handy, as this can create feedback issues. (Ask my 10th graders—I tried this, and it was a bit of a disaster.)
• Try a 2021 version of a “ Fishbowl Debate .” In an archaeology elective I teach, students were given “case studies” of different ethical dilemmas that an archaeologist might face in the course of her career. Teams in the classroom worked together from their seats via shared Google Docs and teams made up of students at home worked together in breakout rooms, each proposing their own solution to their assigned dilemma. Then spokespeople for each team took turns presenting and arguing their cases over Zoom. It was great to see students at home and in the classroom engage with each other so passionately—and it was a lot of fun!
• Project-based learning has been a great fit for the hybrid model. This year, I’ve assigned all of my classes medium- to long-term projects. My 9th graders, for example, were each required to research an overlooked historical event and argue for its inclusion in history curricula in a short paper. Whether students are in the classroom or at home, I ask them to share their Google Docs with me and I talk through their work with them as I leave feedback in their documents as I go. It’s been an excellent way to build and maintain student relationships despite having a physically divided class. Breakout rooms have worked wonderfully for peer review, and students can share their projects with the class over Zoom when they are done.
• Don’t forget anyone! (But if you do, don’t panic.) Dividing my attention equitably between students at home and students in the classroom has been a major challenge. It’s easy to get drawn in by what’s happening in the classroom and forget to check to see if a Zoomer has a question (and vice versa!). I’m still working on mastering the art of hybrid teaching, but I’ve gotten better with practice. And don’t forget that a teacher’s best assets are her students. Be upfront with your class about the challenges of switching “modes” as you teach and ask them to point out if you’ve missed a student who needs help. In my experience, high school students have been incredibly patient and kind—and they know that you’re only one person. Indeed, one of the silver linings of this very difficult year has been seeing how hard students have been willing to work to make lessons go smoothly and how gracious they’ve been when they haven’t. It gives me hope for the future.

‘Roomies’ and ‘Zoomies’

Erin R. Scholes is a 7th grade math teacher in northeastern Connecticut. She is an ISTE certified teacher, on the board of trustees for the Association for Middle Level Education, and the co-creator of the website Tech4Teachers.info :

Those first steps into a school building that you haven’t seen for a year are full of emotions; excitement, uncertainty, and a fear of the continued unknown. The truth is, you have so many of the skills you need to be successful in the hybrid model because you have been teaching remotely all year. It really will be the cross between in person and remote in more ways than one. Stick to what you and the kids know; remember that you are an exceptional teacher who has learned a lot over the last year.

Classroom Setup

Realize that by following all of the protocol and safety guidelines, your room will look different, but it doesn’t mean you can’t still make it your own. Add your own personality to the plastic dividers or to the tape marks on the floor, Washi Tape or colorful painters tape can go a long way to add your own personality to your classroom.

Teacher Technology Setup

Hybrid learning gives your students in the room a little break from being on the screen all day; create a teacher technology setup that allows the in-the-room kids, or “roomies,” to see what you are presenting on the front board.

To make your life simpler, I would suggest one of two options. If your district has access to dual monitors, I would suggest using them; this allows you to have two screens, and that way, you can see your remote kids, or “zoomies,” on one screen and share the other screen both in the classroom and with your “zoomies.”

The second option is logging into your digital classroom with two devices. Use your main device to see your zoomies’ faces and the chat. With your second device, log in without connecting to audio (trust me the feedback will be awful!) Use this device to present your lesson or whatever else you need all your students to see. This should also be the device connected to your projector in the classroom.

Classroom Management

One of the great things about hybrid teaching is not having to wait for kids to unmute. The open conversation that happens as the kids enter and leave is one part of teaching I really missed during remote teaching. Continue using the same routines and expectations that you did during remote. Keep using the same learning-management system to distribute and collect assignments; the consistency will be helpful to you and the kids.

For lessons and student practice, use interactive technology that lets you see all students’ work at the same time. You may already be using some of these, but I would suggest technology like Pear Deck or NearPod that both let you make your lessons interactive. You could also use something like ClassKick , Whiteboard.chat , or Whiteboard.fi . These all let you see a grid of all of your students’ work at the same time and let you jump in and assist as the students need.

Finally, find ways to continue to engage all of your students, roomies and zoomies. A few things that have worked in my room: Let zoomies use the chat to participate and/or plug in the computer sound to speakers, so the full class can participate and hear each other. Play games “Roomies vs. Zoomies.” This can work great when kids use whiteboards to communicate with their team. Encourage participation from your zoomies. Recently, I have been saying, “The last one to turn on their camera will answer the next question.” (Sometimes I am left answering the question, because they were all so fast I couldn’t tell who was last.) Have your roomies log into Zoom and create breakout rooms so that every breakout room is connected to the classroom through a roomie. This really encourages participation, because the roomie needs to communicate with the group what is happening in the room. This is an awesome way to finally get to do some group work where you can still monitor part of the conversation.

Switching from remote to hybrid is “one more thing” in this already stressful year, but you have the skills to tackle it all. You will love getting to know your students in person, and they have missed the human connection, too. Honestly, they have missed school, they have missed their friends, and they have missed their teachers, too!

‘It’s all about the relationships’

Matt Carlstrom is in his 29th year of teaching social studies, 23 of them in Deer River. He is the social department chair and a board member of the Minnesota Council for the Social Studies (MCSS) as well as working on the Minnesota State Social Studies Standards team:

Being in hybrid since September, I’ve learned a few things about teaching in this environment:

1) As in normal face-to-face teaching, it’s all about the relationships that you create and maintain. I decided early on that I was going to be very intentional about how I greeted kids as they entered my class, regardless of geography. I enthusiastically announce each student who arrives in my class, and for those who’ve missed a few days, I greet them and then tell them how thankful I am that they chose to come to class.

2) My interaction with the online kids doesn’t end after I’ve greeted them. Regardless of the online platform you’re using, the mechanics are the same. My student “squares” are on my laptop, and my students are in their desks. I keep my roster close by to put a check mark next to each student I call on, to make sure I’m getting as many different students as I can. My online students can virtually raise their hand or as often happens, they just start talking. I’ve got my notes or assignment up on the TV screen that I’m sharing with both online and in-person students.

When having a discussion and at the beginning of the class, I have my camera on, but if we’re taking notes or working on an assignment in class, I turn it off because many of my students online have said it’s distracting. Throughout the class, I will call on my online students just as often as I do my in-person students. And when I call on a student in class, I doubt that all my online students heard the response or the question, so I try to always repeat what was said and who said it. The in-class students can easily hear the online students through the speaker system or TV.

3) Do not force cameras to be on. … And any administrator who says you have to … they are wrong, and I’m certain they don’t have the data to support this position. I want my students to come to class regardless of what their room or house looks like or how they’re dressed or what their hair looks like. Be respectful of the different environments your students come from. Teaching in a pandemic is not a time to potentially shame students, even if unintentionally.

4) Pacing is very important to the success or lack of success of your hybrid students. We’re teaching and learning during a global pandemic during which some families have lost jobs and family members and some of my students are responsible for their siblings when they’re online. Just because you’ll see most of your students every other day or whatever system your district is choosing, fight the urge to ramp up the pacing. In my humble opinion, and fortunately that of my admin and school board, we are not sprinting to get all of our standards in and every lesson taught this year.

Be intentional about what you choose to teach; modify assignments to get the most bang for the buck. Work with your students to find the porridge that is “just right.” I have found that my students, most of them anyway, have been very honest in this conversation. I’ve asked many times this year, “How’re you/we doing? You OK with the timeline for the assignments, etc…?” And that has led to some good discussions and given my students some ownership of the class. In all honesty, even with these discussions, as the year has gone on, I’ve had to extend many of my timelines on “due dates” as the stress of the year is really starting to wear on my kids.

5)I know “due dates” are a hot-button issue in education with two very distinct sides: those that are in favor of hard due dates and those that are in favor of no due dates. Prior to this year, my “late work” policy was: “All work from the beginning of the quarter to mid-quarter was due the Friday of mid-quarter week. Then all work from that Friday on was due the last day of the quarter.” I did this for multiple reasons, but key amongst them was I wanted my kids to be “present” in the learning. If a student is rushing the last week of the quarter to do assignments from the first week of the quarter, how focused can they be on either what you did then or what you’re doing now?

This year? My “due dates” are “soft,” and while I’ll mark them “Late” in Infinite Campus, I deduct no points. Our class periods this year have been 25 minutes, with an 8th and 9th hour that are 60 minutes long for the tech-ed, band/choir, and science labs to give kids enough time to work on their projects, labs, and full choir/band with spacing. So, I was going to have to change my pacing and late-work policy regardless.

6) How to manage the students in class without losing your online kids? I’ve taught myself to stay tethered to the desk when I’ve got kids in both environments. My F2F students bring their questions and work to me. It’s not ideal, but it lets the online kids know I’m there for them as well.

For those of you moving to hybrid from online, I’m guessing that you’ve already learned much of this. Be patient with both yourself and your students. Like you, your students are worn out from this year that is unlike any you or they have lived in; be willing to acknowledge that. Approach each day asking yourself, “What is best for my students,” and you’ll be OK.

Thanks to Christina Diaz, Christina Cox, Erin, and Matt for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign—new ones won’t be available until February). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first nine years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.

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8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom

As Covid-19 keeps people home, educators share their best synchronous and asynchronous strategies to boost student participation.

In every classroom, there are students who always have their hand raised to participate, and those who are hesitant to engage. Whether they’re introverted, tend to think awhile before they contribute, or are just having a bad day, it can be hard to bring kids into discussions who are reluctant to add their voices.

The challenges of getting students to participate have intensified during remote learning, we’ve heard from many teachers. Digital platforms can create added communication barriers by making it hard to know when to talk, for example, or how to read subtle but important elements of discourse like a person’s body language and facial expressions. Additionally, online discussions are often hindered by variability in students’ access to technology and by privacy concerns, and consequently many teachers have had to rely on students’ submitting work over isolated channels like email, which can leave back-and-forth between peers (and between students and the teacher) by the wayside.

Getting kids to contribute in virtual classrooms takes some work, it turns out. “We keep calling this generation digital natives as if they are simply whizzes at everything computerized. They aren’t,” wrote Tim O’Brien on Facebook. "They need personal support, scaffolding, and reassurance that technology does not provide. It is simply a tool, not a teacher.”

To find out how to improve student discussions and participation in online learning, we culled through hundreds of comments on social media and followed up with more than 20 educators to see how they tackled the challenge last spring. Teachers offered a range of smart strategies, both synchronous and asynchronous, to integrate the values and the voices of all kids—even the quietest or those with disrupted schedules—into their classes this fall.

Synchronous Strategies

For synchronous learning, some teachers said they translated traditional discussion strategies from the classroom to live video chats, while others found that digital tools helped boost classroom participation.

1. Spider web discussion: During remote learning this spring, students in Shai Klima’s high school class led their own discussions over Google Meet. Before the live class, students answered questions independently, and then shared their responses at the start of the meeting as a jumping-off point for a broader class discussion.

While students conversed on video, Klima listened and drew lines on a sheet of paper tracking the flow of the conversation, resulting in a spider web. At the end of the discussion, Klima shared the drawing over video, and then asked students to reflect on the experience and what they learned about who talked, who listened, and who built on the ideas of others.

“It has been successful as a means to get kids to credit their peers with helping them come up with new ideas, which helps build rapport,” said Klima, who let students struggling with bandwidth call in to the meetings.

2. Using chat to check for understanding: After giving lessons last spring, Paul France had his third-grade students use the Google Chat feature to ask and answer questions or type in emojis, like a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, to show whether they understood a concept. To create structure around the responses, he guided his students in creating norms around using the chat feature—they decided as a group to use only one emoji at a time, for example. France said the practice helped him check for student understanding and pushed students to engage more with the content.

Kindergarten teacher Ruth Calkins, meanwhile, used Zoom chat when holding live lessons with her kindergarten students. She said they enjoyed typing “T” or “F” for true and false questions while answering math problems in the chat box, and some even attempted to write sentences in response to her questions. Typing responses also provided a lot of keyboard practice for her young students.

3. Flip your classroom to stimulate deeper discussion: Forrest Hinton, a high school math teacher, says he found that a blend of asynchronous and synchronous instruction worked well to stimulate student discussion during remote learning.

First, he taught new content asynchronously through recorded videos and online activities. At the start of his live class, students briefly summarized the concepts they had learned together and then divided into breakout rooms to solve related problems in small groups. Flipping his classroom allowed Hinton to spend less class time in direct instruction—and listening to students at the start of class and in small groups helped him identify, and then address, where his students were struggling. “This has allowed me to clarify concepts in a more targeted way and better assist students,” said Hinton.

4. Adapting think-pair-share to Zoom: Ryan Tahmaseb, director of library services, says he found that giving more project-based learning activities to his elementary and middle school students—and allowing them more autonomy over assignments—naturally encouraged richer discussions in virtual learning. “If we give students as much freedom as possible to experiment, research, and pursue interests within our content area, then they inevitably have a lot more to say,” said Tahmaseb.

When it came to class discussions, Tahmaseb adapted think-pair-share to Zoom. Students were given a prompt, broken into groups, and then placed into breakout rooms to discuss and record their answers on a shared Google doc, which allowed students to share their thinking in writing or read aloud. Since Tahmaseb wasn’t in each breakout room to listen to the conversations, the Google doc kept students accountable. Once they returned to the whole class, volunteers from each group shared their answers with everyone.

5. A new twist on show-and-tell: To get students comfortable with online participation, Brittany Collins, the teaching and learning coordinator at Write the World , a global online writing community for middle and high school students, converted the familiar show-and-tell activity into “think, write, share.”

In one activity, Collins asked middle and high school students to find a photo, painting, or drawing that represented intergenerational connection and independently respond by writing to the following questions from the Making Thinking Visible Framework before discussing them over video as a class: What are we looking at? What makes you say that? What do you notice (see, feel, know)? What more can we uncover? What do you wonder? “It helps to break the ice in a virtual learning setting where unplanned participation can prove challenging for some students,” said Collins.

Asynchronous Strategies

Although some teachers—and students—said that synchronous discussions were more engaging because they resembled a traditional classroom, many educators found that asynchronous discussions were more equitable because they opened up participation to students with low bandwidth, who had schedule limitations, or who were uncomfortable engaging with the full class.

6. Online forums create back-and-forth dialogue: Angelina Murphy, a high school English teacher, said she used Google Classroom’s question feature to get her class to respond to readings and discussion prompts during remote learning this past spring. When each student commented, Murphy replied with clarifying questions to create a back-and-forth dialogue and also asked every student to respond to at least two of their peers’ comments to create a broader base of discussion.

Fifth-grade teacher Raquel Linares said she used Nearpod Collaborate (Apple, Android), a virtual collaboration board, to get students to share images or write a response to show what they had learned about an article they read. To inspire connection and reflection among classmates, Linares also used Flipgrid (Apple, Android), so that students could hear their peers’ voices even though they were remote.

7. Seeing and critiquing peer work through virtual gallery walks: Virtual “gallery walks” give students an opportunity to view their classmates’ projects while learning from each other, according to Joe Marangell, a high school social studies teacher. After his students presented their own projects through five-minute screencasts, they were then required to give feedback to at least two other students on theirs.

Using Google Sheets, students provided feedback to their peers by answering the following prompts: What’s something new I learned about this topic?; What’s something that surprised me about this topic?; What’s something I liked about this presentation? The online format gave every student the opportunity to see their peers’ work and their assessment on theirs for deeper reflection, Marangell said.

8. Moving station brainstorming online: When carousel or station brainstorming activities are conducted in traditional classroom environments, small groups of students rotate around the room to different stations to answer prompts—and view and add to each groups’ responses.

To translate this online, Marangell divided his students into groups online and created shared Google docs—or a series of Google slides—for the prompts/questions. Each group left their thoughts under the questions by the assigned date and then followed up by commenting on the other groups’ responses the next day. “The strategy still allows them to maintain a sense of classroom community [in a virtual setting],” said Marangell.

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• Published: 25 January 2021

Online education in the post-COVID era

• Barbara B. Lockee 1  

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The coronavirus pandemic has forced students and educators across all levels of education to rapidly adapt to online learning. The impact of this — and the developments required to make it work — could permanently change how education is delivered.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to engage in the ubiquitous use of virtual learning. And while online and distance learning has been used before to maintain continuity in education, such as in the aftermath of earthquakes 1 , the scale of the current crisis is unprecedented. Speculation has now also begun about what the lasting effects of this will be and what education may look like in the post-COVID era. For some, an immediate retreat to the traditions of the physical classroom is required. But for others, the forced shift to online education is a moment of change and a time to reimagine how education could be delivered 2 .

Looking back

Online education has traditionally been viewed as an alternative pathway, one that is particularly well suited to adult learners seeking higher education opportunities. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has required educators and students across all levels of education to adapt quickly to virtual courses. (The term ‘emergency remote teaching’ was coined in the early stages of the pandemic to describe the temporary nature of this transition 3 .) In some cases, instruction shifted online, then returned to the physical classroom, and then shifted back online due to further surges in the rate of infection. In other cases, instruction was offered using a combination of remote delivery and face-to-face: that is, students can attend online or in person (referred to as the HyFlex model 4 ). In either case, instructors just had to figure out how to make it work, considering the affordances and constraints of the specific learning environment to create learning experiences that were feasible and effective.

The use of varied delivery modes does, in fact, have a long history in education. Mechanical (and then later electronic) teaching machines have provided individualized learning programmes since the 1950s and the work of B. F. Skinner 5 , who proposed using technology to walk individual learners through carefully designed sequences of instruction with immediate feedback indicating the accuracy of their response. Skinner’s notions formed the first formalized representations of programmed learning, or ‘designed’ learning experiences. Then, in the 1960s, Fred Keller developed a personalized system of instruction 6 , in which students first read assigned course materials on their own, followed by one-on-one assessment sessions with a tutor, gaining permission to move ahead only after demonstrating mastery of the instructional material. Occasional class meetings were held to discuss concepts, answer questions and provide opportunities for social interaction. A personalized system of instruction was designed on the premise that initial engagement with content could be done independently, then discussed and applied in the social context of a classroom.

These predecessors to contemporary online education leveraged key principles of instructional design — the systematic process of applying psychological principles of human learning to the creation of effective instructional solutions — to consider which methods (and their corresponding learning environments) would effectively engage students to attain the targeted learning outcomes. In other words, they considered what choices about the planning and implementation of the learning experience can lead to student success. Such early educational innovations laid the groundwork for contemporary virtual learning, which itself incorporates a variety of instructional approaches and combinations of delivery modes.

Online learning and the pandemic

Fast forward to 2020, and various further educational innovations have occurred to make the universal adoption of remote learning a possibility. One key challenge is access. Here, extensive problems remain, including the lack of Internet connectivity in some locations, especially rural ones, and the competing needs among family members for the use of home technology. However, creative solutions have emerged to provide students and families with the facilities and resources needed to engage in and successfully complete coursework 7 . For example, school buses have been used to provide mobile hotspots, and class packets have been sent by mail and instructional presentations aired on local public broadcasting stations. The year 2020 has also seen increased availability and adoption of electronic resources and activities that can now be integrated into online learning experiences. Synchronous online conferencing systems, such as Zoom and Google Meet, have allowed experts from anywhere in the world to join online classrooms 8 and have allowed presentations to be recorded for individual learners to watch at a time most convenient for them. Furthermore, the importance of hands-on, experiential learning has led to innovations such as virtual field trips and virtual labs 9 . A capacity to serve learners of all ages has thus now been effectively established, and the next generation of online education can move from an enterprise that largely serves adult learners and higher education to one that increasingly serves younger learners, in primary and secondary education and from ages 5 to 18.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to have a lasting effect on lesson design. The constraints of the pandemic provided an opportunity for educators to consider new strategies to teach targeted concepts. Though rethinking of instructional approaches was forced and hurried, the experience has served as a rare chance to reconsider strategies that best facilitate learning within the affordances and constraints of the online context. In particular, greater variance in teaching and learning activities will continue to question the importance of ‘seat time’ as the standard on which educational credits are based 10 — lengthy Zoom sessions are seldom instructionally necessary and are not aligned with the psychological principles of how humans learn. Interaction is important for learning but forced interactions among students for the sake of interaction is neither motivating nor beneficial.

While the blurring of the lines between traditional and distance education has been noted for several decades 11 , the pandemic has quickly advanced the erasure of these boundaries. Less single mode, more multi-mode (and thus more educator choices) is becoming the norm due to enhanced infrastructure and developed skill sets that allow people to move across different delivery systems 12 . The well-established best practices of hybrid or blended teaching and learning 13 have served as a guide for new combinations of instructional delivery that have developed in response to the shift to virtual learning. The use of multiple delivery modes is likely to remain, and will be a feature employed with learners of all ages 14 , 15 . Future iterations of online education will no longer be bound to the traditions of single teaching modes, as educators can support pedagogical approaches from a menu of instructional delivery options, a mix that has been supported by previous generations of online educators 16 .

Also significant are the changes to how learning outcomes are determined in online settings. Many educators have altered the ways in which student achievement is measured, eliminating assignments and changing assessment strategies altogether 17 . Such alterations include determining learning through strategies that leverage the online delivery mode, such as interactive discussions, student-led teaching and the use of games to increase motivation and attention. Specific changes that are likely to continue include flexible or extended deadlines for assignment completion 18 , more student choice regarding measures of learning, and more authentic experiences that involve the meaningful application of newly learned skills and knowledge 19 , for example, team-based projects that involve multiple creative and social media tools in support of collaborative problem solving.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, technological and administrative systems for implementing online learning, and the infrastructure that supports its access and delivery, had to adapt quickly. While access remains a significant issue for many, extensive resources have been allocated and processes developed to connect learners with course activities and materials, to facilitate communication between instructors and students, and to manage the administration of online learning. Paths for greater access and opportunities to online education have now been forged, and there is a clear route for the next generation of adopters of online education.

Before the pandemic, the primary purpose of distance and online education was providing access to instruction for those otherwise unable to participate in a traditional, place-based academic programme. As its purpose has shifted to supporting continuity of instruction, its audience, as well as the wider learning ecosystem, has changed. It will be interesting to see which aspects of emergency remote teaching remain in the next generation of education, when the threat of COVID-19 is no longer a factor. But online education will undoubtedly find new audiences. And the flexibility and learning possibilities that have emerged from necessity are likely to shift the expectations of students and educators, diminishing further the line between classroom-based instruction and virtual learning.

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7 Benefits Of The Virtual Classroom

• March 10, 2021

• Safety comes first
• Tutoring anytime, anywhere
• Boost your child's confidence
• Digital learning for everyone
• Giving you a break
• We make learning fun
• Work smarter, not harder

Even though many things were paused, a lot of the things we were able to continue virtually. Thanks to the best technology, virtual learning has quickly become the new norm and teachers have adapted to new technology and screensharing options .

And most importantly, virtual learning means our children continue to learn throughout the pandemic. A personalised learning experience, the flexibility of long-distance learning and new options for collaboration are just a few benefits to improve the whole learning experience in a new setting.

Virtual classrooms help our children to learn, grow, and have fun from the safety of home. Plus, they gain important life skills, while parents save time and gain more flexibility over the learning process. Digital learning makes the learning process affordable , timely and significantly improves visualisation with students. 

So let’s take a look at the main 7 benefits the virtual classroom can offer you and your child...

#1 Safety comes first 👩‍🏫  

In the current situation we encounter large difficulties . Parents try to protect their kids even more in times of the pandemic and the best way to put safety first is to stay home. This difficult time does not mean our children should face barriers while learning!

A virtual classroom lets your children interact with our highly qualified tutors in the safest way possible. Tutoring lessons can be taken from anywhere and are affordable for everyone. Our highly qualified tutors make the learning experience fun and dynamic.

Through a personalised interaction with the student, our lessons are completely different from the frontal teaching method used in schools. Our individual, transparent rating system will help you pick the right tutor for your child, to give you that extra peace of mind, when finding the right learning partner.

👉 Let us show you how effective virtual learning can be when done right! Book your first free trial lesson here .

#2 Tutoring anytime, anywhere 🏡

Through digital learning, you can experience the right learning experience right at your doorstep! Our 100% flexible platform means you can schedule a session at any time that suits your family. If your child is an early bird , kick the day off with a lively morning session, then you’ve got the rest of the day free. Prefer to have your weekends free for quality family time? Then line up a tutoring session during the week.

It’s totally up to you, and our flexible booking system means if something comes up, you can easily reschedule at the click of a button. We want to make it as easy and stress-free as possible for you and your child. 

For your convenience, we also have the option for students to record all their sessions . Simply hit record, and we’ll automatically create a file. It’s a fast, simple and convenient way to build up a library of personal study resources. In this way, your child can refresh their learning at any time and won’t forget what they were taught in the individual sessions!

#3 Boost your child's confidence 💪

Just as a physical classroom teaches children important social skills like patience, sharing, respect and kindness , a virtual classroom has many hidden benefits. your children will gain vital skills using technology as part of their everyday life, and get more confident interacting online. .

Learning online also helps them prepare for a career in a digital environment, which offers tons of opportunties! Our high-powered technology like the interactive online whiteboard supercharges the learning environment, and your children will get to experience it all!

These skills are vital for future workplaces. Arming your children now will help them get ahead later in life! At GoStudent, we see it as our mission to help to create a generation of confident, tech-savvy children who are fully prepared for their future career. Independent learning in a virtual setting, makes them become self-starters and prepares them for a digital workplace.  

#4 Digital learning for everyone 👐

Not only are virtual classrooms significantly cheaper than traditional established schools , but you can also save when it comes to travel expenses and lock-in contracts. Think of all the time, money and hassle you can save by bringing the learning experience to your living room. Once you try it, you’ll never want to go back to the standard tutoring setting!

We have a variety of packages starting from just €19.20 per session to suit every budget. Plus, our guaranteed replacement tutor means you’ll never be out-of-pocket. Our packages are the most competitive on the market, as we are trying to suit everyone’s needs. Depending on your learning requirements, you can speak to our team and they can find you the right tutor, so your student makes the jump to a better grade! 

#5 Giving you a break ☕

Parents, you deserve a break . Even if you enjoy helping your kid with your homework at home, there are always going to be some subjects where you feel slightly out of your depth and outside of your comfort zone. So let a tutor who specialises in that field help take away some stress and lighten your load.

We handpick the best qualified tutors , for you to face the next exam of your kid with a relaxed mind. Our tutors will work individually with you to discuss specific learning goals and then focus on reaching and celebrating big  learning milestones along the way.

GoStudent offers over 11,000 verified tutors . They have been independently evaluated for their friendliness, expertise, reliability and teaching skills across 16 subjects. They make sure to be available 7 days a week, to make tutoring fit into your schedule. Plus, we make it easy for you to stay updated through a private WhatsApp group to ensure you receive constant communication, progress, updates and advice first-hand.

#6 We make learning fun 🚀

Is your child feeling frustrated or losing motivation ? A change of environment might just be the trick!

Let our tech-savvy tutors instantly grab your child’s attention with their toolbox of tricks such as YouTube videos, virtual quizzes, music, games and competitive challenges. Virtual classrooms have access to a world of resources at their fingertips, so lessons will never be boring. We love to bring in playful learning through games such as Kahoot! for students.

Students can face their competitive spirit, whilst playing classic warm-up activities like Charades, Simon Says and Pictionary. These games make online learning fun! In fact, one of our students Max loved his tutor sessions with Alex so much, he told his Mum he wants to be a tutor when he grows up. These achievements really bring a smile on our face and make us really enjoy our mission to build the #1 global school worldwide!

#7 Work smarter, not harder ✔️

We speak with many parents daily, who tell us they would like to see results immediately! That’s why we have built the most technologically advanced tutoring platform available. Tutors can send students a link to a resource, or screen share so both student and tutor are on the same page, without any distractions.

Your child will receive instant feedback on spelling tests, tricky maths equations or quiz results . Plus with 24/7 communication, tutors can give students instant help on the problems and challenges they are facing. The future of learning is here!

The accessibility, flexibility and individual focus that students get from a virtual classroom can help them reach their full potential, in a way that suits them. Virtual classrooms provide an effective, affordable and safe experience for children to learn from home, relieving some of the stress busy parents can feel.

By individually analysing your child’s needs, we’ll find the best match and create a learning plan that is perfectly suited to each student. Our mission is to want to get more kids as excited about achieving their learning goals! 

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Home » Blog » Virtual Learning Is the Way Forward for Educators

Virtual Learning Is the Way Forward for Educators

CHALKING THE LINE | BY DEBRA MEYER  | 6 MIN READ

One of the major consequences of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruption to traditional classroom learning and instruction. And yet, in many ways, the move to remote learning has highlighted what’s essential in the classroom (and what’s not).

The transition was not easy. A national health emergency in the spring forced the move online, and although educators had more time to plan for online and hybrid classes this fall, they faced many unknowns: changing rates of infection, chaotic decision-making, and more.

But if we examine what we are teaching and how we are teaching it, rather than when and where we are teaching, the pandemic has revealed possibilities we had not considered before.

We need to embrace new ways of teaching. We need to stop wishing we were back in a traditional classroom and focus our energy on more powerful learning possibilities and teaching strategies that are now in front of us.

We have learned a lot by going remote, but we could enhance our teaching even more if we leaned into virtual learning . The virtual approach is one we can—and should—take back to the physical classroom when we all return.

What Have We Learned from Going Online?

For me, remote learning has meant trying to re-create the traditional classroom online. Remote learning attempts to reproduce the organization, materials and activities in a different physical space. For example, most schools have continued to organize teachers and students in class groupings and follow modified school schedules, trying to replicate traditional teacher and student interactions in “Zoom classrooms.”

Many teachers have been creative in their remote classroom practices and these educators are to be celebrated. Their efforts highlight the essential learning interactions. For example:

• The importance of student-teacher relationships. Simple practices like greeting students and being authentic help to build these relationships, as this video celebrates .
• The value of student-to-student interactions. Teachers have successfully re-created many of the small-group student learning structures that support collaborative and higher-level learning, as seen in these breakout room examples .

Such remote learning success stories reveal the power of teacher imagination and the importance of innovation when adapting to change.

But what will happen to these remote teaching practices when students and teachers return to the traditional classroom?

Will we use them to include classmates who are at home, sick? Will we use them to connect to students from other communities? Could breakout groups begin to include peers from other schools or other countries?

How Virtual Learning Improves on Remote Learning

Virtual learning is designed to extend educational experiences. It does not try to replicate them. In virtual learning environments, students access resources and interact in ways they would not or could not in the physical classroom.

Many educators use virtual learning and have been for a while. Below are some examples from the WeAreTeachers website:

• Virtual field trips.
• Virtual science labs.
• Virtual read-alouds by authors who wrote the books.

It is important to highlight that these virtual learning links were designed to show different ways of learning—not to provide a new way of doing the same thing online. Also, these links were created prior to March 2020.

Virtual teaching not only presents opportunities for today’s remote learning environments but also promotes new ways of thinking about teaching, learning and the traditional classroom.

I’m advocating for more virtual learning now—and even more when all students and teachers are face-to-face again. And I offer these three reminders:

• Virtual learning is not “extra” or “same thing, but online.” It is a “different learning experience.” An important distinction that I’m making with using the term “virtual learning” is that it is not a traditional classroom activity moved online; rather, it is a learning experience integrated within the curriculum that is specifically designed to be experienced online. It lives online regardless of whether a classroom is face-to-face or remote. Students engage in core learning processes and outcomes in a virtual learning instructional sequence, which will require different types of computer technologies.
• Virtual learning personalizes the student experience. Another key distinction of virtual learning is that it is designed to individualize learning experiences—even though it can be experienced with others. What might that kind of personalization look like? Check out another example from WeAreTeachers.
• Virtual learning will be new for teachers, too! Teachers need professional development in this instructional approach. For the most part, we prepare teachers to learn new strategies primarily for the brick and mortar classroom. The development of instructional knowledge and strategies needs to be integrated with virtual learning as a pedagogical approach—one in which the classroom walls come down and individual learning pathways for students emerge in virtual spaces.

It may seem like I’m splitting hairs when distinguishing between remote learning and virtual learning. But I believe it is useful to view remote learning as “doing school” by changing the location, whereas virtual learning is “doing school” in a virtual environment regardless of location.

Assuming remote learning ends and we return to the classroom and push the desks back together, what new ways of teaching and learning will we return with? What traditional approaches will we no longer use because we’ve discovered better ways?

However you choose to answer these questions, this is why I believe we should be focusing on teaching virtually. Virtual learning doesn’t depend on location and opens up innovative and new possibilities—ones that can be incorporated into any educational format when students and teachers are fully resourced with 21 st century technology and professional development.

A Final Word on Equity

Whether face-to-face, remote or virtual, the pandemic has exposed the growing inequities in our educational system. We can now more easily see where school funding and community infrastructures have made connecting remotely all but impossible.

While some students have lost educational opportunities due to structural disparities and lack of resources, other students now have at-home tutors or work in learning pods to support and supplement their remote learning. These students’ schools are more likely to have the funding so they can continue specials subjects (e.g., art, music, physical education) and participate in extracurriculars.

The “educational debt” that Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings talks about only grows larger. We owe it to all the students not to leave them behind or the impact of the inequities will be with us for generations. It is essential that we not only think about how to return to “normal,” but also how we should redesign learning experiences and opportunities to make up for the ones that have been lost to so many students.

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How to Set Up a Virtual Classroom

Micah Castelo is a web editor for  EdTech: Focus on K-12 . Her experience includes education and community news coverage for the  Syracuse Post-Standard  and international news reporting for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. 

Setting up a classroom looks vastly different for many educators this fall with  continued remote learning in place . Instead of decorating bulletin boards and planning seating arrangements, most are figuring out  how to provide engaging, meaningful learning experiences  for their students online.

The unexpected shift to remote learning in the spring revealed that many educators are not prepared to teach online. More than half of teachers shared that they don’t feel prepared to facilitate learning remotely, according to  Class Tag’s report  on how teachers are turning to technology amid coronavirus school closings.

Now, many teachers are stepping out of their comfort zones to learn new tools and online teaching strategies. That includes knowing how to create an environment that enriches student learning and contributes to effective instruction, even if it takes place over the internet. Here are four tips educators can use to get started with setting up their virtual classroom.

1. Get Your At-Home Workspace Ready

Creating a designated space for work and online teaching is crucial for educators working from home. Doing so can help them stay productive and focused throughout the day and minimize distractions that may disrupt student learning.

Teachers don’t necessarily need to have a home office or retrofit an existing room into one. Some have invested in new equipment such as professional cameras, headsets and whiteboards to provide higher-quality synchronous and asynchronous instruction. However, making small adjustments — from moving to a well-lit, clutter-free room to live stream or record a lesson to using a stack of books to raise a webcam up to eye level when videoconferencing — can make a huge difference in how well they teach online.

Day 1 for "year 3" is in the books! My home classroom was super effective with the kiddos in our journey into #SelfAwareness ! #First5Days @SpringISD pic.twitter.com/vVXtSWNdDz — @TutorTime_MissJ (@TutortimeM) August 17, 2020

2. Test Your Tech Before the Start of Class

Educators should also be aware of common technical issues that they or their students may encounter during online learning, such as microphones not working properly or embedded videos not playing in presentations. This is especially important, as many IT departments are swamped with tackling more urgent requests and bigger challenges now that schools are largely distributed.

It’s a good idea for teachers to conduct a video and audio test on any devices or platforms they’ll be using. They should also consider doing a run-through of their lessons before livestreaming or recording them. Taking these steps can help minimize the amount of troubleshooting they have to do throughout the day and can make them feel more prepared and confident with online teaching.

READ MORE:   Learn how to use audiovisual equipment for effective remote or blended learning.

3. Set Classroom Expectations, Goals and Routines

Even if students aren’t physically in a classroom, educators will still need to set clear expectations for their classes. Emily Kirsch, instructional technology coach at Educate, tells  EdTech  that establishing class norms and goals with students encourages them to take ownership of their learning and fosters productive learning environments.

Many schools have set expectations and guidelines for students when using school-issued devices,  videoconferencing platforms  and other digital tools. Teachers have also created posters and presentations to share on  Google Classroom ,  Microsoft Teams  or the learning management system of their choice to help students navigate their new classroom setting.

Seeing everyone in our meeting today had to be the highlight of my week! It was nice to hear what you have all been up to, thank you to everyone that joined and made sure to follow our Virtual Classroom Expectations! ☺️👍🏻 pic.twitter.com/uqdfiqL4No — Ms. Medeiros (@msjmedeiros) May 29, 2020

4. Make Communication and Survey Tools Available

Open lines of communication are key to a virtual classroom, especially now that face-to-face conversations are limited. By providing accessible and consistent communication, teachers can keep parents and guardians informed on the latest school news or their student’s progress. This also lets educators check in on their students and  ensure their social and emotional needs are met .

Besides the standard phone calls, emails and text messages, educators can post class updates and schedule one-on-one meetings using their LMS to streamline all communications and reduce the need for any additional IT support.

MORE FROM EDTECH:   Adopt these best practices to improve parent communications.

It’s also important to gather feedback from students and their families to identify areas of improvement. With online surveys such as Google Forms and apps like Seesaw, Kahoot and  Microsoft’s Flipgrid , educators can ask questions about students’ online classroom experiences. They can also collect valuable data, such as what time students are doing their online schoolwork and how long it takes them to complete it, and use that data to adjust how they prepare and deliver their lessons.

Setting up a fully virtual classroom is no easy task, especially for educators who are unfamiliar with online tools. But being open to new ways of using technology for learning can bring teachers one step closer to making online learning more accessible, engaging and effective for all students.

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Online Classes Vs. Traditional Classes Essay

Online vs. in-person classes essay – introduction, online and traditional classes differences, works cited.

The article compares and contrasts online classes and traditional classes. Among the advantages of online classes are flexibility and convenience, while in-person classes offer a more structured learning environment. The author highlights that online lessons can be more cost-effective, although they lack support provided by live interactions. Overall, the online vs. traditional classes essay is very relevant today, and the choice depends on the individual student’s needs and preferences.

Modern technology has infiltrated the education sector and as a result, many college students now prefer taking online classes, as opposed to attending the traditional regular classes. This is because online classes are convenient for such students, and more so for those who have to both work and attend classes.

As such, online learning gives them the flexibility that they needed. In addition, online learning also gives an opportunity to students and professionals who would not have otherwise gone back to school to get the necessary qualifications. However, students who have enrolled for online learning do not benefit from the one-on-one interaction with their peers and teachers. The essay shall endeavor to examine the differences between online classes and the traditional classes, with a preference for the later.

Online classes mainly take place through the internet. As such, online classes lack the regular student teacher interaction that is common with traditional learning. On the other hand, learning in traditional classes involves direct interaction between the student and the instructors (Donovan, Mader and Shinsky 286).

This is beneficial to both the leaner and the instructors because both can be bale to establish a bond. In addition, student attending the traditional classroom often have to adhere to strict guidelines that have been established by the learning institution. As such, students have to adhere to the established time schedules. On the other hand, students attending online classes can learn at their own time and pace.

One advantage of the traditional classes over online classes is that students who are not disciplined enough may not be able to sail through successfully because there is nobody to push them around. With traditional classes however, there are rules to put them in check. As such, students attending traditional classes are more likely to be committed to their education (Donovan et al 286).

Another advantage of the traditional classes is all the doubts that students might be having regarding a given course content can be cleared by the instructor on the spot, unlike online learning whereby such explanations might not be as coherent as the student would have wished.

With the traditional classes, students are rarely provided with the course materials by their instructors, and they are therefore expected to take their own notes. This is important because they are likely to preserve such note and use them later on in their studies. In contrast, online students are provided with course materials in the form of video or audio texts (Sorenson and Johnson 116).

They can also download such course materials online. Such learning materials can be deleted or lost easily compared with handwritten class notes, and this is a risk. Although the basic requirements for a student attending online classes are comparatively les in comparison to students attending traditional classes, nonetheless, it is important to note that online students are also expected to be internet savvy because all learning takes place online.

This would be a disadvantage for the regular student; only that internet savvy is not a requirement. Students undertaking online learning are likely to be withdrawn because they hardly interact one-on-one with their fellow online students or even their instructors. The only form of interaction is online. As such, it becomes hard for them to develop a special bond with other students and instructors. With traditional learning however, students have the freedom to interact freely and this helps to strengthen their existing bond.

Online learning is convenient and has less basic requirements compared with traditional learning. It also allows learners who would have ordinarily not gone back to school to access an education. However, online students do not benefit from a close interaction with their peers and instructors as do their regular counterparts. Also, regular students can engage their instructors more easily and relatively faster in case they want to have certain sections of the course explained, unlike online students.

Donovan, Judy, Mader, Cynthia and Shinsky, John. Constructive student feedback: Online vs. traditional course evaluations. Journal of Interactive Online Learning , 5.3(2006): 284-292.

Sorenson, Lynn, and Johnson, Trav. Online Student Ratings of Instructions . San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2003. Print.

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Education  |  Mar 31 2020

Virtual Classroom: The Future of Distance Learning

A virtual classroom is an online space that shares many functions of a brick-and-mortar classroom. Through a variety of tools and features, a virtual learning space promotes engagement and collaboration. Virtual lessons can be integrated into a curriculum in a variety of ways ranging from supplementary to fully digitized learning. 

And teachers have found a surprising number of situations where a virtual learning environment is beneficial. The advantages of virtual classrooms range from their excellent interactivity to providing a comfortable and familiar learning paradigm.

So keep reading to learn more about virtual classrooms and what to look for in an effective distance learning tool.

Virtual classrooms are a popular solution to some of the main problems of distance learning. Many online courses focus on pre-recorded content that students study at their leisure, submit some standardized assessments, and move on. It’s convenient and easy to scale up, but it is missing something. A lot of online learning lacks human connection.

By contrast, a virtual classroom connects people. Teachers can interact with their students in real-time. Students can collaborate with peers. And the system is still scalable to educate an ever-growing number of digital natives who may want to supplement or replace traditional learning paradigms.

What Is a Virtual Classroom?

A virtual classroom is an online space that simulates a live classroom. Lessons are usually synchronous with the educator and the learners all appearing in an online space to interact in real-time. However, many virtual lessons include pre-recorded components depending on the needs of the educator or learner. Like real-world classrooms, virtual classrooms are flexible to the style and needs of all users. 

Want to learn more about synchronous education?  The Pros and Cons of Synchronous Distance Learning

A virtual classroom often includes the following features:

• Videoconferencing that facilitates communication with both the teacher and with peers.
• A digital whiteboard to offer real-time explanations and/or collaboration. 
• Instant messaging for low-bandwidth communication.
• Participation controls so that students can still “raise their hands” or otherwise participate in lessons.
• Sub-chats or group chats for students to collaborate in small groups online (sometimes also called breakout rooms.)

Want more on virtual classrooms? Check this out: Distance Learning & Virtual Classrooms: Where Learning Never Stops

Types of Virtual Classroom

As a flexible remote learning tool, virtual classrooms have a lot of variety in both form and function. A virtual classroom’s function in a curriculum can range from an optional supplementary resource to the whole education program. And given the vastly different needs of different groups, even virtual classrooms built on the same platform tend to be customized to the instructor’s needs.

It’s all up to the educator, and the way a virtual class works starts with the model for integrating e-learning into the course as a whole.

Enriched Virtual

An enriched virtual program is one that is mostly taught online with occasional offline components to augment the lessons. In many cases, the in-person component takes the form of one-on-one meetings with teachers or instructors for face-to-face assistance and personal connection. 

The rotation model of virtual classroom combines virtual learning with live, in-person lessons in a fixed schedule. The rotation model is typically reserved for single-subject classes at higher levels like high school or university.

This often works as part of a flipped classroom where students do their primary learning at home – usually online – and time in the classroom is reserved for review and reinforcement.

Fully Online Classroom

It’s all in the name. A fully online classroom is a virtual classroom that only exists on the Internet and does not include a real-life version. In this type of online learning, the virtual classroom represents the only time students and teachers will interact with each other directly, and many fully online courses are asynchronous and have no real-time interactions at all.

A flex model applied to distance learning usually involves a virtual classroom that remains open and available for students to visit on their own time. Students are encouraged to work digitally on their own or in small groups. The teacher will be available periodically, either online or in-person depending on the needs of a particular course.

The flex model is especially popular in trying to reach non-traditional learners that may not respond well to rigid structures but are still interested in learning. As the name suggests, the flex model provides a great deal of flexibility to how students opt to learn.

À La Carte Model

An à la carte model is one that combines a variety of digital teaching models and makes multiple channels available to students. This mix-and-match nature of these virtual classrooms can be up to the person or institution running the course, or it could be student-driven. 

This is by far the most flexible model, but it sacrifices structure and ease of setup for its flexibility. 

Why Are Virtual Classrooms Important?

Virtual classrooms fill a number of needs in education that have gone unaddressed for too long. Though technology in the classroom continues to evolve, we need to develop other learning channels. 

Here are just a few reasons why we need to develop and implement virtual learning online now and in the future:

• Educators can supplement existing classes with virtual lessons, especially as part of a flipped classroom or blended learning.
• Virtual education methods promote inclusive learning though accessibility to students who are differently-abled or unable to physically attend classes.
• Extend the reach of educational materials without sacrificing the interactivity or collaboration of synchronous lessons.
• Implementing a virtual learning infrastructure maintains educational continuity in the face of school closures, especially long-term closures.

“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”

Buckminster Fuller , author, inventor, architect, futurist

Advantages of a Virtual Classroom

Given the ever-growing need for innovation in education, educators and institutions need to be ready with solutions. This will inevitably mean picking increasing the availability of digital learning tools, including both distance learning and virtual classrooms. And as they assess the needs of their students, schools will have to take a good look at the best system for their desired learning outcomes.

So while virtual learning environments aren’t perfect for every situation, they have distinct advantages as an online synchronous learning system and overcome many challenges of distance learning .

High Interactivity

As previously mentioned, an effective virtual classroom will have multiple communication channels. This would include instant messaging, voice chat, and videoconferencing. Ideally, there would also be the ability for students and teachers to use shared workspaces to maintain engagement with the course materials. For example, there’s the option of video-assisted learning . 

Collaborative Learning

Related to interactivity is a virtual classroom’s ability to collaborate, and often in real-time. Through shared chats, files, and digital whiteboards, students can work together on solving problems and reinforcing course materials. And to simulate group work, breakout rooms allow students to work in pairs or small groups similar to group work in a physical classroom.

Student-Centered Teaching

One of the challenges of digital learning is the fact that pre-recorded materials naturally make lessons more teacher-centered. And while standardized teaching materials like texts and videos are convenient and easy to teach at scale, they are harder to adapt to individual students’ needs. A virtual classroom – especially a live one – has much of the agility and responsiveness of in-person education.

Content Variety

Just like an interactive whiteboard in the classroom, a virtual classroom can easily make use of a wide range of media to present, review, and reinforce educational materials. Through links, files, and embedded media, the teacher can tap into a wider range of educational content to more fully engage with students across a wider spectrum of interests and abilities. 

A Safe and Comfortable Learning Space

A classroom filled with warm and welcoming people is much better than an empty or automated space. This much is true whether it’s a brick-and-mortar room or a virtual space. Having both mentors and peers to interact with goes a long way to helping students open up and engage with virtual learning, especially in a format that closely emulates the real-world equivalent.

What to Look for in a Virtual Classroom

Certain functions are just necessary to make a virtual classroom work. Others are nice to have and may improve the user experience, but you can still run an effective lesson without these frills. Here’s a look at some of what you should look for in a virtual teaching environment.

This is the bare minimum for communication. Students should be able to write directly to their instructors and each other to ask questions, participate, and collaborate. And in some environments, text-based communications may be all you need. 

Being able to read the text at one’s own pace – or re-read as necessary – can go a long way to improving understanding and retention. But it is also limited in how much can be shared how quickly with easy misunderstandings based on tone or writing style.

Voice chat is faster than text and offers a more natural learning experience. It can also help connect participants to a real person on the other end of the line. For weaker connections, it isn’t as demanding as video. 

However, in a lot of ways voice chat is a compromise between messaging and videoconferencing. It provides more natural communication than messaging but lacks the visual cues of video or in-person communication.

Video Streaming

Videoconferencing has been around for a long while in the business space, but it’s designed to handle small groups of collaborators. Most classes are larger than video conferencing can handle, so video streaming is used to teach full classes of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of learners all at the same time. 

Video streaming to a virtual classroom is about as close as an educator is going to get to teaching in person. Most students will not be able to broadcast themselves under this system, but that results in the whole group getting a smoother online experience.

File Sharing

Though nearly every communication platform has some degree of file sharing, it’s extremely important for a virtual classroom to have an integrated, two-way sharing system. This could be through an integrated cloud storage system or baked into the virtual environment, but teachers need to have a way to share assignments and resources with students. And students need a way to submit their work to teachers directly within the learning environment.

Participation Management

Participation management refers to students’ ability to “raise their hands” or otherwise signal they would like to participate in a lesson. The system is an effective way to allow students to offer input, answer questions, and otherwise contribute to the class as a whole. And with the ability to switch students’ channels on and off, it gives the online teacher a classroom management superpower many educators wish for: the ability to silence disruptions.

The only downside to this system is that it does require the teacher (or a moderator’s) constant input to allow students to speak up. This can stifle some of the impromptu give-and-take discussions that pop up in lessons, but these can be brought up on other channels for later.

Digital Whiteboarding

A digital whiteboard is software the emulates a whiteboard. It allows for writing, drawing, and annotating just like the physical fixture, and it also allows teachers to import pre-made content, rich media, and custom software. Many virtual classrooms also make whiteboards available to students – either as a full class or in smaller collaborative groups. 

To get the most out of digital whiteboarding, it’s best to have a touchscreen device. The teacher should also seriously consider having a touch monitor available to facilitate lessons. Having the larger touchscreen more closely mimics the real thing (only with the addition of a wider range of available media).

Student Groups

For a complete virtual classroom, it is necessary for students to be able to work together in separate groups. Group work is an important part of exploring and reinforcing taught materials, so the online experience needs to include the necessary channels for collaboration. 

However, setting up how students interact with each other will depend very much on the capabilities of your virtual classroom solution. In some situations, it may be enough for them to simply share a digital whiteboard. In other cases, however, they may need to communicate more directly as part of a breakout room or virtual huddle with messaging, voice, or even video.

Collaborating online can be challenging for students, so be sure to check out these tips .

Integrations

In a digital learning environment, no system exists in a vacuum and no software performs every necessary function. A good virtual classroom will overcome its own limitations by supplementing its functionality with other services like Google Drive , Google Classroom , or Zoom . 

While adding integrations to a system increase complexity and require users to learn more systems, it does help keep the purpose-built software focused on what it does well. myViewBoard’s Classroom easily integrates with third-party applications to provide students, and teachers a seamless learning experience 

Final Thoughts

Distance learning is growing at an exponential rate, and it’s only primed to grow more. There’s no reason all education has to happen in the same physical space. A better-connected world means more flexibility for teachers and students alike. 

Imagine a world where learning happens not just in our schools, but as part of a live event, while traveling and exploring the world, and even from the comfort and safety of our own homes. A virtual classroom is an ideal way to get a real connection in real-time from anywhere in the world as yet another tool in the digital educator’s toolbox. 

Just getting started with online learning? Click here to learn more about distance education. Or see ViewSonic’s complete list of education solutions .

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Real Classrooms vs. Virtual Classrooms: Which Is Better?

Real classrooms vs. Virtual classroom s, if put into comparison, which is better? Which one should you choose? Such a dilemma has been going on for years and years now. However, it’s been quite important to reach an agreement now, with 2020 coming to an end.

The answer to the questions really depends on a lot of factors. We will try in this blog post to address each one of them and let you decide for yourself!

Despite the calls for restricting the use of technology and detoxifying it from our lives, the truth remains that edtech revolution and virtual learning mean more productivity, flexibility, and money in less time for online trainers and tutors…

Instead of working full time going from a center or educational institution, to give a class on your field of expertise, e.g., languages, science, or even communication skills, to another, you get to work while commuting, staying at home, or even having fun at the club with your kids.

So, Can Virtual Classroom Really Facilitate Learning? Yes, virtual classrooms may never completely replace real classrooms. But the keyword here is ‘completely,’ right? Real, warm, and authentic communication with students within the classroom can never be replaced. This may be the case.

However, how about after-school tutoring? This may not only be the case for those who are struggling within the class, who need a little bit more attention than other learners, or those who just feel more confident with an extra bit of tutoring.

And what about high schoolers and those of senior academic levels, from college to graduates, looking to upskill on the personal or professional side?

Real Classrooms vs. Virtual Classrooms regarding Teacher-Student Interaction aspect

1. learners aren’t expected to sit back and listen in virtual classrooms.

In contrast to real classrooms, learners in virtual classrooms aren’t expected to sit back and listen to their tutor. Active learning is used more. However, the main reason for this goes back to both the tutor and choosing the right virtual classroom software.

Only experienced tutors will be able to make use of the virtual classroom system and its various tools to make students more engaged. In fact, a recently published research on IEEE Xplore states that the following:

“teachers who succeed in engaging students in the online courses are characteristically young, excellent in technology management, good with interpersonal interactions and maintain a robust social presence; or they are experienced teachers proficient in the use of technology, very well trained in didactic techniques, and who competently manage transactional distances.”

Moreover, the most commonly used tools in education technology have been designed by experts in the same field. Some of the virtual classroom tools are as follows:

• Whiteboard tools
• Live presentation and session tools
• Asynchronous video (recorded videos) tools
• Screen sharing tools
• Quizzes and assessment tools

2. Learners and Online Trainers Have Better Control over Their Own Time

Unlike in traditional classrooms, virtual classrooms let you and your learners pick the time and date of your classes. This is not really the case in traditional classrooms.

“An increase in technological literacy among students, he said [Jesse Gipko, Dean of Academic Affairs at Belmont College], has been a boon both for flexibility in scheduling and in providing a more effective learning environment. More importantly, though, the more clearly defined expectations and deadlines allow students to learn at their own rate.”

Normally, class time would be limited to the time available in educational centers. In essence, all classrooms work around the educational center’s own schedule. With virtual learning, it’s the other way around.

3. Online Learning Inspires Self-Learning and Better Productivity

The number of tutors shifting to giving online courses is multiplying continuously. But more so is the number of learners opting to attend online classes.

Not only do they feel that online learning saves them a ton of energy as well as time, but many of them feel that it is a safer environment to be themselves and keep track of their lessons in their own way.

Fundamentally, this is called self-learning. In virtual classrooms, all lessons are recorded and detailed. All learning materials, FAQs, and assessments are online so there is structure and organization, inspiring more productivity.

The Center For Teaching And Learning, Columbia University, suggests the following framework to use in active learning:

• Introducing new knowledge and ideas to your learners by live sessions, live presentations, recorded videos, or learning materials using your preferred virtual classroom software.
• Asking your learners to discuss the previously introduced information with each other. This encourages student-centered learning, independence, and self-learning. This can be facilitated by live presentations and video conferencing tools offered by online course systems.
• Requiring your learners to examine and reflect on what they have studied. That could take 5-10 minutes of the class time. And it helps more engagement, productivity, and collaboration.

If you’re a tutor looking forward to trying a virtual classroom with all your needs in one place, StorkyApp is your window. Take your training to the next level with StorkyApp .

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How a Virtual Assistant Taught Me to Appreciate Busywork

A new category of apps promises to relieve parents of drudgery, with an assist from A.I. But a family’s grunt work is more human, and valuable, than it seems.

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By Amanda Hess

• Published April 24, 2024 Updated April 25, 2024

I recently downloaded a virtual assistant that promised to ease the burdens of modern parenthood. The app is called Yohana , and it offered to handle a pile of tasks on my behalf. It suggested enlisting a professional to wash my windows, scheduling a lesson with a “private sports coach” or planning a “stylish and sustainable” Earth Day party featuring décor, recipes, activities and party favors, none of which interested me. Finally it volunteered to produce a “chef-curated menu” for Passover.

Well, sure. I was already planning on attending a friend’s Seder, and at least this task did not involve Yohana siccing an expert on me or making me host an elaborate event. So, I agreed to the Passover idea. Yohana assigned the “to-do” to a faceless assistant identified only by a first name. The next day, she sent along a confusing list of menu options that included a recipe for ham mini quiches — a provocative choice.

Yohana is one of a growing crew of virtual-assistant apps that combine artificial intelligence and human labor to help parents manage their family lives. For $129 a month, Yohana promises to “offload joy-stealing tasks, improve your family’s well-being, and find more breathing room in your schedule.” Ohai ($26.99 a month), a text-based “A.I. household assistant,” wants to “lighten the mental load of Chief Household Officers,” and Milo ($40/month, with a wait list), an “A.I. co-pilot,” hopes to calm “every form of family chaos.”

These apps are styled like cutesy helpmeets, and their names — Yohana, Ohai, Milo — would be at home on a Brooklyn day care roster. Though pitched to “busy parents,” they implicitly target affluent working mothers who are struggling to manage household tasks on top of work and child care, and who might even be convinced to spend some (though not too much) extra cash to make them go away. But when I gave Yohana a spin, I found that I did not want to do the things she can manage, and that she cannot manage the things I want to do. She made me start to believe that the busywork I might delegate to a machine is actually more human, and valuable, than I realized.

Mothers have long been served fantasies about how robots will relieve the drudgery of housework. In the first episode of the animated sitcom “The Jetsons,” from 1962, Jane Jetson tires of pressing all the buttons that automatically cook and clean for her, so she buys Rosie the robot maid to run her smart house instead. In 1965, General Electric urged housewives to “Let a Mobile Maid Dishwasher give you priceless time for the wife-and-mother jobs that really count.”

And yet automation has failed to eliminate the burdens of those “wife-and-mother jobs.” In a culture that promotes ruthless competition and intensive mothering, a mother’s tasks (the ones that “really count”) are capable of expanding endlessly.

The feminist campaign to demand “wages for housework,” which also captured the maternal imagination in the 1960s and ’70s, represented the flip side of the automation fantasy. As Barbara Ehrenreich documented in her 2000 essay “Maid to Order,” that campaign dissolved as professional women instead opted to pay other women to clean their houses for them, often under lousy conditions. Now a modern wealthy mother can have it all: She can use her phone to command a robot-esque “assistant” to hire a human cleaner on her behalf, without having to actually look anyone in the face.

In their brand copy, these apps speak of lifting loads — “mental loads,” “invisible loads.” They suggest that the central challenge of parenthood is bureaucratic. Families should be “about love, not logistics,” Milo says.

But in a bid to banish bureaucracy, these services add layer upon layer. They suggest we hire more helpers, schedule more activities, plan more events. (An Earth Day party with recyclable décor? No. Private sports coaching? Absolutely not!) When I signed up for Ohai, it texted me every morning, asking if it could add a workout to my schedule.

I don’t need help scheduling more things to do; I need to do less. Often these services suggest that users throw money at that problem (which is not very helpful if one of your problems is that you do not have enough money). The apps transform parents from workers into consumers, translating our to-do lists into shopping lists. Somebody is still performing our “joy-stealing” tasks, and it may be a call center worker or one of the many other invisible laborers who make artificial intelligence systems seem to run automatically.

The boundary between the human and the artificial is slippery; Yohana emphasizes that it employs “actual humans (not A.I. chatbots) that can do the grunt work,” though according to Forbes, those humans are using generative A.I . to assist them with our tasks. When these services style themselves as “worker bees,” “secret helpers” or “fairy godmothers,” they lean on the iconography of fantasy to obscure the grimmer reality of farming out your “grunt work” to an anonymized labor force.

The work that these services hope to eradicate (or at least obscure) is feminized. It’s “women’s work,” and indeed, most of my Yohana helpers had feminine first names. One of the most helpful things a virtual assistant can do is assign family burdens more equitably among its members, a duty commonly demeaned as “nagging.”

Last year, Meghan Verena Joyce, the chief executive of another task delegation service, Duckbill, argued that “with its capabilities for efficiency and customization,” artificial intelligence “could play a crucial role in easing the societal and economic burdens that disproportionately affect women.”

In an illustration on Yohana’s website, a typical user is portrayed as a bespectacled woman who wears a baby in a sling, anchors a square of wrapping paper under a foot, balances a bowl of dog food on a lifted leg, stirs a pot with one hand and types on a computer with the other. She resembles Rosie from the Jetsons, each mechanical limb firing autonomously in order to labor more efficiently. We are familiar with A.I. helpers, like Apple’s Siri, which are modeled after feminine stereotypes, but here it feels as if the opposite is happening: A mother has been recast as a robotic being, her work dismissed as rote and easily outsourced.

In the few weeks that I spent as a virtual-assistant taskmaster, I realized that much of the busywork claimed by the apps is actually quite personal, often rewarding and occasionally transformative.

For instance, when I asked Yohana where I could shop locally for a child’s birthday party, it spat out links to Amazon toys instead. And when I asked if it could find a worker-owned cooperative cleaning service (there are many in New York City ), it did not; instead it linked me to the profile of an app, Quicklyn, hosted on another app, Thumbtack. An app can suggest a volunteer opportunity that welcomes children, but it can’t do what my neighbor did, which was add me to the WhatsApp group organizing mutual aid for the nearby migrant shelter. It can direct me to a national database of registered caregivers but not to the teenage babysitter who lives three floors above me.

When I alerted my Yohana assistants to some of these issues — the Passover ham, the Amazon links — they dutifully fixed them, though it’s hard to imagine a worse use of my time than reforming the stranger I’d hired to fix my life through my phone. These services may be able to plug users into corporate-mediated experiences, but no amount of machine learning can simulate neighborhood bonds. “Grunt work” can be central to building community, but only if you do it yourself.

Amanda Hess is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times, covering the intersection of internet and pop culture. More about Amanda Hess

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