The Virtual And Physical Classroom

Online computer courses/degrees are becoming more frequent as technology improves and the availability of technology is greater. This article “Read-only participants: a case for student communication in online classes” (Nagel, Blignaut, Cronje 2007) analyzes data from several studies and suggests that active participation, as opposed to non-active participation, is directly correlated to student achievement.

As an individual responsible for training or educating adult learners your feedback from those students or participants is sometimes lacking. In a training environment many participants treat them very loosely because there are no consequential test following the training and most times there is very debriefing from direct supervision; instead meeting notes tend to follow for reference. The location of those notes tend to be the most important information to the participants. In contrast, the lecture hall in an educational setting tends to have a greater percentage of engaged attendants. Students tend to participate more due to sense that is actually a part of their grade. Dr. Geis did admit that online does have less engagement than the traditional classroom but still greater than a corporate training session. In the en it was concluded that personal interaction has more engagement; however, students have a much greater retention and expectation from teaching or training.

Their primary findings was that participation and communication is certainly a requirement for successful completion of online courses. When instructors are involved and encourage students to participate it motivates students to not give up or drop the class. They were able to classify students into different categories, and they found these types of students in the online class:

With informational technology such as laptops, tablets, kindles, and iPads being more and more prominent in education like high school and college, it opens many doors to new possibilities of learning. Now it obviously has some negative outcomes like bullying and students being unable to acquire certain technology for school, but these negative situations all have solutions to make them positive. Informational technology lets students connect with teachers in new ways outside of just the classroom.

The article "Read-only participants: a case for student communication in online learning" by L. Nagel, A.S. Blignaut and J.C. Cronje, appears in Interactive Learning Environments. The article asserts that communication and active participation in online class increases the chance of the student’s success in an online class. Immediate feedback from peers and instructors and social interaction built into the online discussions contribute to learning (Collins, A., Brown, J.S., & Holum, A., 1991).

From this study, results of both success and failure were discovered and documented. From the aspect of success, the following results were found: First, classes that had online discussion helped students that would normally be introverts in a traditional class, to be active in discussions. Second, this type of class helped to improve

This journal will be useful because it shows that students can have interpersonal relationships with their teachers and their peers in a virtual classroom.

Technology is a part of everyday life and being integrated into more and more fields every day. Computers and the Internet are used in every aspect of our daily lives. With that being said online learning has become more and more prevalent. Most colleges and university have an online learning presence in order to extend the university reach and to help better serve the students who can’t make it into a physical classroom. In this article, Read Only Participants: Communication in online classes, authors Nagel, Blignaut, and Cronj (2009) takes on the argument that participation is a key reason for a student to be successful in the class.

In Alia Wong’s “Digitals Natives, Yet Strangers to the Web,” Wong discusses the motives behind Reuben Loewy’s Living Online Lab as technology is misshapen into education and immobilizing students from thinking critically. In other words, technology is creeping itself into a student’s learning environment causing a mayhem as educators incorrectly incorporate them alongside given curriculums and set expectations that students are technology-born prodigies.

Online Education is rapidly developing and many people wonder what determines the success rate of the students. One of the questions asked by many researchers is whether or not there is a correlation between student communication and participation for success. Nagel, Blignaut and Cronje (2009) wanted to specifically examine how online participation such as answering discussion questions and engaging in collaborative behavior helps the entire learning environment succeed.

It is no secret that technology plays a critical role in our society. In fact, it has become one of the most used items in the world, starting from personal computers and ending in smartphones, thus it was only a matter of time when educational institutions would start to utilize these gadgets in order to improve the overall state of current education. According to a U.S Department of Education (UDE, n.d) report, all 48 states, including the District of Columbia are now offering online education. Additionally, the report states that these schools operate on all kinds of scales, including state scale, district scale and charter scale, thus it would safe to assume that the whole state of current education in the United States is large and the whole approach is clearly technology based. However, despite the

However, advocates of classroom learning believe the online method isolates the students from one another as well as their professor minimizing the overall value of taking the course. They also claim that students learn better when working together with their instructor and their fellow classmates. Students learn better when they are given the opportunity to ask questions, join in class discussions, and they move the process of learning forward through their participation. Face-to-face advocates firmly believe that this kind of interaction is not possible over the Internet; and for many types of education, e-learning will never meet the potential of live human interaction in the classroom. An article in the New York Times titled, “Second Thoughts on Online Education,” backs up the points made above. A recent research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, comes to the conclusion; “A rush to online education

Technology is changing every aspect in our lives, even the way we learn. Online classes are a rapidly growing trend it today’s society. Online classes are a cost-effective substitute for traditional courses and more convenient for many, so more schools and universities are offering this option. Due to the increase in online course enrollment, people are questioning if students truly learn something from online classes because it’s not a traditional learning environment. Online classes are just, if not more, effective as traditional classes because grades have increased and online discussions provide students with the chance to interact through networking while earning a degree for less than what it would cost to enroll at the same university.

E-Learning is trying to provide a more individualized, self-paced, self-directed learning experience (Clark). A survey by a Sociology Professor at CSU-Northridge showed that students in his virtual class performed 20% better than students in his traditional class (Clark). On the other hand, issues concerned with E-Learning includes the fact that students may not be as motivated since, another survey found out that only 66% of the students involved with E-Learning earned credit with a passing grade for their classes (Washington

Despite these benefits, there are also some serious detriments to use of online teaching. There is possible dehumanisation from continued use of online teaching meaning that the repetitive nature of connecting to the Internet to do work can lead to people being seen more as automatons than people. The lack of face-to-face contact that occurs with the increase in users of online teaching can be seen as leading to a deficiency of in-group experiences (Demirdjian 2002). Other drawbacks of online teaching relate directly to the technological aspects and lack of contact. Teachers cannot rely on classroom theatrics to get ideas across to students, sometimes the curriculum needed cannot be found or used online and computer crashes can prevent students from accessing