The University of Mauritius has a long history of more than 40 years since it was established in 1965. The concept of distance education emerged in the 1990s and the Centre for Distance Learning was established in 1993. The impetus came from the need to adopt a new teaching, and learning approach in certain modules, due to the inadequacy of the conventional method to fulfil the expectations of both “the students and the Faculty members”. In this endeavour, the University of Mauritius was backed financially, and also in terms of expertise (through the Laurentian University, Canada), by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). In 2004 a number of 45-hour learning units were currently offered using print-based distance learning mode at the University of Mauritius via the Centre for Distance Learning (CDL). It has to be noted that at the CDL, "DE" is used to refer to the use of a mixed mode approach, where there is more frequent interaction between the tutor and the student and where the clientele consists mainly of on-campus students. It is only quite recently that the concept has been extended to a number of ‘off-campus’ students.
From DE to e-Learning
In 2001, to catch the eLearning bandwagon, the VCILT was created in bid to modernize the distance education concept by fully utilizing the possibilities offered by IT-enabled networked systems and the Internet. The vision and mission statement of the centre, after nearly 10 years of operation has not changed. But whether it has been able to achieve its mission or at least part of it, is an open question. Whether eLearning can be considered as a successful initiative at the University is also a debatable question. One certainty is that it has surely brought in some non-negligible innovations in the teaching and learning landscape. Inevitably, as any innovative practices, it has brought its share of disruption in the traditional university setting, what I call constructive-disruptive technologies. Well for sure, that’s an oxymoron. As any innovative practice would have to face, the eLearning initiative at the University of Mauritius had to face much more resistance than initially expected and the VCILT has had over the years to fight a battle to justify its existence in a traditional university setting.
Coming back to the vision and mission statement of the VCILT, I shall allow myself to quote it here:
Fuzzy Issues & Terminologies
As anyone can see, the statements above had all a very close tie with respect to the University’s overall strategic directions. To be frank, even today I cannot figure out why the term telelearning was included in that mission statement. A quick search on Google, telelearning is defined as “education via a computer and telephone connection; also called distance learning; also written tele-education“
One such truth is that nowadays most educational researchers and reflective practitioners would tell you that the teacher has no place in the educational process, but the facilitator has an even more important role than the learner himself! A nice anecdote for this is that provided by the research of a certain Professor Mitra, who I met briefly in the World Innovation Summit for Education in November 2009 in Doha. One of his research titled “can kids teach themselves?” which left the audience in a state which I cannot find the words right now, addressed the fact that students, if provided with the right tool and facilitation will definitely learn and develop competencies much more than is expected from them. His project about leaving a computer in a remote village in India, (where students hardly have access to any modern technology) was simply amazing. When he came back after a few months, the computer was not broken, but the kids had “mastered” using the computer to play games or do any other interesting things on it.
Coming back to the distance education issue, let us take the case of a student who, in the late 1990s, just finished the Higher School Certificate, and enrolls with an institution like the UNISA where the course was offered on distance education through high-quality self learning manuals. A series of assignments were planned for each course, which the student would do and send to the tutor, thousands of miles away. After a few months, the assignment would be returned by post with comments. If the student had trouble understanding something, he/she would either look for someone locally to help or would address a letter to the tutor who lived somewhere in South Africa. The student would then sit back and wait patiently for the response. This is to my view called distance learning or distance education.
With advances in technology and the emergence of the world-wide web, the internet provided for an alternative medium of delivery of course content which was far more rapid and efficient, but only for those who can afford the associated costs. Alternative modes of delivery have always existed in the past. For instance, instead of writing a letter to a tutor, those who could afford it would have made a long-distance call to the person, or simply send a fax at that time or send the mail through rapid services such a FEDEX, DHL and others. With the internet, those who could afford access to a computer would just need to click a button and the message would go. This is basically what telelearning meant in the mission statement of the centre. Unfortunately, telelearning is not and cannot be eLearning if we by the definition quoted above. Either the term was wrongly used, or the one wrote used it had another meaning in mind or it was simply there because the very basic aim was to convert all the printed material that existed already in the Centre for Distance Learning into digital format to be disseminated through the Web.
Regarding the telelearning-distance learning issue, the web can be seen as either a new medium to deliver contents, or a mode of delivery based on improved teacher-learner communication or most interestingly as a new paradigm for teaching and learning. Over the years a number of institutions cropped up, which we usually call in our jargon as “mushroom” institutions (they keep on growing as mushrooms) which represented more and more foreign universities. Students enrolled on courses offered by these foreign universities through those institutions and then attended classes regularly until the end of their courses. Those institutions operate principally as profit making businesses, and having at some point in time been quite involved with them, I found out that the interests of the students were not the priority of their priorities. In a recent workshop organized at the University of Mauritius in the context of a European funded project on distributed education, the VCILT organized in collaboration with the WGDEOL a workshop on capacity-building for ODL practitioners in the SADC countries. In one of the presentations about the state of ODL practice in Mauritius, apart from the ‘ODL’ experiences of the University of Mauritius, the Mauritius College of the Air, the Mauritius Institute of Education but more bizarrely those ‘mushroom’ institutions were portrayed as distance education providers. What I personally noted in those presentations is that most of those institutions through their presenters had an erroneous understanding of the distance education concept, at least from my perspective.
When people talk about distance education in Mauritius, they confuse it either with the number of Mauritians involved in following distance education courses, or the number of Mauritians following courses at institutions who have got franchise agreements to offer courses of other institutions or universities in Mauritius. If were to give it a genuine thought, would a student attending an institution five times a week, sitting in a classroom and listening to the lecture being delivered by some subject matter experts be called a distance education student just because the institution he is attending is offering a franchise course? Distance education is also very often associated with self-learning. But self-learning does not happen only in distance education contexts. Self-learning is a learning approach that depends on the learning preferences of a particular student. We can say in general terms, that it is a type of ‘learning style’ and nothing more. Self-learning is a concept that highlights the quantum and extent of effort a learner is prepared to put in his or her learning process.
Global Learning – the world is a small village, isn’t it? Then where does the “distance” come from?
In fact, researchers like Shale for instance, in 1991 in his work titled “Towards new conceptualization of distance education” published in the American Journal of Distance Education argues that the paradox that exists in distance education is that it is a phenomenon that has proved its existence but has not yet been able to define itself. This paradox, according to a number of authors is the result of laying focus on the term “distance” more than the term “education”. Distance education is primarily and above all an educational process. The irony for a country like Mauritius is that while the focus is still on the term distance, Mauritius is so small that it seems a joke to talk about distance education in the 21st century especially with respect to local institutions. In Mauritius for instance, a course manual has never been sent by post to a student. Instead practically all students have made the journey to the University to collect the manual. A much better term to use would be flexible distributed learning and/or lifelong learning in that case as many of the students preferring this modality would be working students aspiring for career progress and who have for instance social, professional and family responsibilities that make it difficult for them to attend classes even beyond regular normal working hours. Distance education is basically characterized by the separation of teacher and learner, usually in both time and space. This separation fosters noncontiguous communication (communication that occurs between the learner and teacher from a distance), which has to be mediated. Mediated communication is an important feature in distance education. On the other hand, this argument is however quite contradictory as it assumes that face-to-face communication in traditional learning environments in not mediated. From a scientific perspective, sound cannot travel without the presence of air (that is a medium). Therefore technically speaking any type of communication needs to have some form of mediation. Nowadays, it is possible to overcome the teacher-student distance problem by a combination of educational methods and interactive technologies. For instance, two-way communication can be mediated by tools like audio and video conferencing as well as computer-supported conferencing. Let us take the concept of video-conferencing for instance. When two persons (or more) are engaged in a video-conference they will most probably be in different locations but their conversations will take place in real-time. Furthermore the comparison of distance education is often made to face-to-face classroom teaching. However, when you have access to technologies such as video-conferencing, you are in fact in a face-to-face conversation with the only difference being that for the other end, you are ‘virtually’ present. If a virtual presence, in real-time is allowing two or more individuals to ‘recreate’ the traditional environment, the ‘distance’ concept as it is defined in the term distance education, no longer holds! Interestingly the question that has to be answered now is that whether a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a distance education environment especially if it incorporates such advanced mediating instruments like video-conference tools and other advanced interactive facilities for promoting the teacher-learner relationship and communication.
From DE to e-Learning
In 2001, to catch the eLearning bandwagon, the VCILT was created in bid to modernize the distance education concept by fully utilizing the possibilities offered by IT-enabled networked systems and the Internet. The vision and mission statement of the centre, after nearly 10 years of operation has not changed. But whether it has been able to achieve its mission or at least part of it, is an open question. Whether eLearning can be considered as a successful initiative at the University is also a debatable question. One certainty is that it has surely brought in some non-negligible innovations in the teaching and learning landscape. Inevitably, as any innovative practices, it has brought its share of disruption in the traditional university setting, what I call constructive-disruptive technologies. Well for sure, that’s an oxymoron. As any innovative practice would have to face, the eLearning initiative at the University of Mauritius had to face much more resistance than initially expected and the VCILT has had over the years to fight a battle to justify its existence in a traditional university setting.
Coming back to the vision and mission statement of the VCILT, I shall allow myself to quote it here:
- Promote innovative teaching and learning practices through the use of distance and flexible learning technologies.
- Experiment with new educational delivery systems.
- Establish a partnership with the academic staff to help them meet teaching and learning requirements which attains user satisfaction.
- Be forward looking and thus supporting a leadership role in the development of telelearning.
- Be a leading edge, high quality provider of on-line web-based education and telelearning.
- Provide means to develop an international standing.
- Help the university become a leading institution.
- Increase student intake and access to the university.
Fuzzy Issues & Terminologies
As anyone can see, the statements above had all a very close tie with respect to the University’s overall strategic directions. To be frank, even today I cannot figure out why the term telelearning was included in that mission statement. A quick search on Google, telelearning is defined as “education via a computer and telephone connection; also called distance learning; also written tele-education“
One such truth is that nowadays most educational researchers and reflective practitioners would tell you that the teacher has no place in the educational process, but the facilitator has an even more important role than the learner himself! A nice anecdote for this is that provided by the research of a certain Professor Mitra, who I met briefly in the World Innovation Summit for Education in November 2009 in Doha. One of his research titled “can kids teach themselves?” which left the audience in a state which I cannot find the words right now, addressed the fact that students, if provided with the right tool and facilitation will definitely learn and develop competencies much more than is expected from them. His project about leaving a computer in a remote village in India, (where students hardly have access to any modern technology) was simply amazing. When he came back after a few months, the computer was not broken, but the kids had “mastered” using the computer to play games or do any other interesting things on it.
Coming back to the distance education issue, let us take the case of a student who, in the late 1990s, just finished the Higher School Certificate, and enrolls with an institution like the UNISA where the course was offered on distance education through high-quality self learning manuals. A series of assignments were planned for each course, which the student would do and send to the tutor, thousands of miles away. After a few months, the assignment would be returned by post with comments. If the student had trouble understanding something, he/she would either look for someone locally to help or would address a letter to the tutor who lived somewhere in South Africa. The student would then sit back and wait patiently for the response. This is to my view called distance learning or distance education.
With advances in technology and the emergence of the world-wide web, the internet provided for an alternative medium of delivery of course content which was far more rapid and efficient, but only for those who can afford the associated costs. Alternative modes of delivery have always existed in the past. For instance, instead of writing a letter to a tutor, those who could afford it would have made a long-distance call to the person, or simply send a fax at that time or send the mail through rapid services such a FEDEX, DHL and others. With the internet, those who could afford access to a computer would just need to click a button and the message would go. This is basically what telelearning meant in the mission statement of the centre. Unfortunately, telelearning is not and cannot be eLearning if we by the definition quoted above. Either the term was wrongly used, or the one wrote used it had another meaning in mind or it was simply there because the very basic aim was to convert all the printed material that existed already in the Centre for Distance Learning into digital format to be disseminated through the Web.
Regarding the telelearning-distance learning issue, the web can be seen as either a new medium to deliver contents, or a mode of delivery based on improved teacher-learner communication or most interestingly as a new paradigm for teaching and learning. Over the years a number of institutions cropped up, which we usually call in our jargon as “mushroom” institutions (they keep on growing as mushrooms) which represented more and more foreign universities. Students enrolled on courses offered by these foreign universities through those institutions and then attended classes regularly until the end of their courses. Those institutions operate principally as profit making businesses, and having at some point in time been quite involved with them, I found out that the interests of the students were not the priority of their priorities. In a recent workshop organized at the University of Mauritius in the context of a European funded project on distributed education, the VCILT organized in collaboration with the WGDEOL a workshop on capacity-building for ODL practitioners in the SADC countries. In one of the presentations about the state of ODL practice in Mauritius, apart from the ‘ODL’ experiences of the University of Mauritius, the Mauritius College of the Air, the Mauritius Institute of Education but more bizarrely those ‘mushroom’ institutions were portrayed as distance education providers. What I personally noted in those presentations is that most of those institutions through their presenters had an erroneous understanding of the distance education concept, at least from my perspective.
When people talk about distance education in Mauritius, they confuse it either with the number of Mauritians involved in following distance education courses, or the number of Mauritians following courses at institutions who have got franchise agreements to offer courses of other institutions or universities in Mauritius. If were to give it a genuine thought, would a student attending an institution five times a week, sitting in a classroom and listening to the lecture being delivered by some subject matter experts be called a distance education student just because the institution he is attending is offering a franchise course? Distance education is also very often associated with self-learning. But self-learning does not happen only in distance education contexts. Self-learning is a learning approach that depends on the learning preferences of a particular student. We can say in general terms, that it is a type of ‘learning style’ and nothing more. Self-learning is a concept that highlights the quantum and extent of effort a learner is prepared to put in his or her learning process.
Global Learning – the world is a small village, isn’t it? Then where does the “distance” come from?
In fact, researchers like Shale for instance, in 1991 in his work titled “Towards new conceptualization of distance education” published in the American Journal of Distance Education argues that the paradox that exists in distance education is that it is a phenomenon that has proved its existence but has not yet been able to define itself. This paradox, according to a number of authors is the result of laying focus on the term “distance” more than the term “education”. Distance education is primarily and above all an educational process. The irony for a country like Mauritius is that while the focus is still on the term distance, Mauritius is so small that it seems a joke to talk about distance education in the 21st century especially with respect to local institutions. In Mauritius for instance, a course manual has never been sent by post to a student. Instead practically all students have made the journey to the University to collect the manual. A much better term to use would be flexible distributed learning and/or lifelong learning in that case as many of the students preferring this modality would be working students aspiring for career progress and who have for instance social, professional and family responsibilities that make it difficult for them to attend classes even beyond regular normal working hours. Distance education is basically characterized by the separation of teacher and learner, usually in both time and space. This separation fosters noncontiguous communication (communication that occurs between the learner and teacher from a distance), which has to be mediated. Mediated communication is an important feature in distance education. On the other hand, this argument is however quite contradictory as it assumes that face-to-face communication in traditional learning environments in not mediated. From a scientific perspective, sound cannot travel without the presence of air (that is a medium). Therefore technically speaking any type of communication needs to have some form of mediation. Nowadays, it is possible to overcome the teacher-student distance problem by a combination of educational methods and interactive technologies. For instance, two-way communication can be mediated by tools like audio and video conferencing as well as computer-supported conferencing. Let us take the concept of video-conferencing for instance. When two persons (or more) are engaged in a video-conference they will most probably be in different locations but their conversations will take place in real-time. Furthermore the comparison of distance education is often made to face-to-face classroom teaching. However, when you have access to technologies such as video-conferencing, you are in fact in a face-to-face conversation with the only difference being that for the other end, you are ‘virtually’ present. If a virtual presence, in real-time is allowing two or more individuals to ‘recreate’ the traditional environment, the ‘distance’ concept as it is defined in the term distance education, no longer holds! Interestingly the question that has to be answered now is that whether a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a distance education environment especially if it incorporates such advanced mediating instruments like video-conference tools and other advanced interactive facilities for promoting the teacher-learner relationship and communication.
Distance education has created a major shift in how educators and students think about teaching and learning. By allowing students to learn in more convenient locations and often at more convenient times, distance education opens educational opportunity to previously unreached populations. It also enables more people to extend the period of their education from a limited number of schooling years to a lifelong learning process. In addition, it changes power and authority relationships between teachers and learners, often encouraging more equal and open communication than occurs in conventional educational settings. Because distance education enables institutions to reach students all over the world, learners gain increased opportunities to experience other cultures and enriches their educational experience.
ReplyDeleteOf course kids can teach themselves, but only if they are provided with the necessary tools. But in the case of distance learning, I think that there would be a lack of social and human contact compared to a traditional school. Since the 1990s a lot of changes have occurred in the field of distance learning. Long ago, most people studying through distance learning had to wait for months to receive a response from tutors in case of misunderstanding. Only, those who had fax or internet could afford to do their tasks faster. Fortunately, the computer nowadays is accessible to a larger range of people, as their way of life has improved. Thus, more people can afford a Personal Computer; communication is faster and easier thanks to the internet and the e-mail. Distance learning has greatly facilitated the work of those who have family or work responsibilities, and those who cannot attend a normal class.
ReplyDeleteOf course kids can teach themselves, but only if they are provided with the necessary tools. But in the case of distance learning, I think that there would be a lack of social and human contact compared to a traditional school. Since the 1990s a lot of changes have occurred in the field of distance learning. Long ago, most people studying through distance learning had to wait for months to receive a response from tutors in case of misunderstanding. Only, those who had fax or internet could afford to do their tasks faster. Fortunately, the computer nowadays is accessible to a larger range of people, as their way of life has improved. Thus, more people can afford a Personal Computer; communication is faster and easier thanks to the internet and the e-mail. Distance learning has greatly facilitated the work of those who have family or work responsibilities, and who cannot attend a normal class.
ReplyDeleteOf course kids can teach themselves, but only if they are provided with the necessary tools. But in the case of distance learning, I think that there would be a lack of social and human contact compared to a traditional school. Since the 1990s a lot of changes have occurred in the field of distance learning. Long ago, most people studying through distance learning had to wait for months to receive a response from tutors in case of misunderstanding. Only, those who had fax or internet could afford to do their tasks faster. Fortunately, the computer nowadays is accessible to a larger range of people, as their way of life has improved. Thus, more people can afford a Personal Computer; communication is faster and easier thanks to the internet and the e-mail. Distance learning has greatly facilitated the work of those who have family or work responsibilities, and who cannot attend a normal class.
ReplyDeleteLike no other training form, e-learning promises to provide a single experience that accommodates the three distinct learning styles of auditory learners, visual learners, and kinesthetic learners. Other unique opportunities created by the advent and development of e-learning are more efficient training of a globally dispersed audience; and reduced publishing and distribution costs as Web-based training becomes a standard. E-learning also offers individualized instruction, and is self-paced. Therefore, e-learning is inclusive of a maximum number of participants with a maximum range of learning styles, preferences, and needs.
ReplyDeleteThe advantages are such that those who choose to ignore E-learning will find themselves falling behind those who make use of it.
Click the URL below to watch videos concerning eLearning Benefits:
Video 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccS5L1ko45A&feature=related
Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w5Lj2YlU7M&feature=related
Cheers!
Krush
Hello friends!
ReplyDelete@ Neeloofer_I totally agree with you saying that eLearning reduce the gap between the lecturer and the student, which is obviously not the case with normal or distant learning. Whereby there is still hesitation, shyness, and fear. These situations are easily overcome when you’re not really in front of that person.
@ E. Radegonde, it’s true to say that more people can get access to a personal computer nowadays. But there are still majorities who can’t, and unfortunately this would be a serious drawback to eLearning when it will take over a big part of the educational system.
Regarding the drawback I was talking about, I got 3 precise points, regarding why eLearning won't excel over other training techniques, and these are:
ReplyDelete1. Technology issues of the learners are most commonly technophobia and unavailability of required technologies.
2. Portability of training has become the strength of e-learning with the proliferation of network linking points, notebook computers, PDAs, and mobile phones, but still does not rival that of printed workbooks or reference material.
3. Reduced social and cultural interaction can be a drawback. The impersonality, suppression of communication mechanisms such as body language, and elimination of peer-to-peer learning that are part of this potential disadvantage are lessening with advances in communications technologies.
I think that distance education mostly e-learning is both a good option and a bad one depending on the point of view. Students that feel more comfortable following a course at home would definitely approve the e-learning option but there are some cases where some children feel the need to have a teacher in a classroom. Recently i went to see a job where one must work at home. It made me remember the fact that I am doing a module having the same concept. Learn while staying at home. No hassle for transport and no need to spend a lot of money in clothing.
ReplyDelete@swit-devil
ReplyDeleteusually a situation of hesitation,shyness and fear should not exist between a student a lecturer.We are all at the university to learn and hesitation to ask questions will lead to nowhere.I am doing a BSC human resource management.On my first day at the university i was hesitating to ask questions but as soon as i notices that by not asking questions i was the one at loss. furthermore for me it is better to explain face to face rather than using mails or chat etc...Facial expressions are important and i don't think smileys can replace it.
Taking into consideration of the mission and vision of the VCILT, I think that it is well defined and elaborate where students and teachers interact and exchange their views on the differing educational aspects. Nowadays, facilitators are viewed to be more “in” which is definitely beneficial for the sustainability of the various organizations where time is a precious asset, and where people would not want to loose time in well defined institutions to just to gather knowledge, where they could have access to it in a different way and also where it is advantageous at the same time to all.
ReplyDeleteFrom DE to eLearning
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, eLearning is becoming more and more useful at the University of Mauritius. By transforming the vision and mission of VCILT into an “open question”, i.e by asking if VCILT is really doing its job or not, would be somewhat doubting its potential, since it has really disrupted the traditional university setting. So, I think we should be satisfied with it and make the best use of it, instead of evaluating its capacity.
Global Learning – the world is a small village, isn’t it? Then where does the “distance” come from?
ReplyDeleteIts good that here they are taking Mauritius as an example since it coincides with the article's title, but what about countries like India, China, Canada, Russia, etc. In these countries, the word "distance" would be significant if taken literally. Sounds nice to say that "the world is a small village", but everyone should know that this small village is made up of "big countries". But, by the use of the Internet and other related technologies, the word “distance” would no longer mean anything.
Virtual education is now part of the planning agenda of most organizations concerned with education and training. The quality of distance learning has greatly improved in the past few years, as both students and educators have become more comfortable with the technology. One more significant factor that drives the tremendous success of distance learning is better learning and gripping of technological advancements. Distance learning started with the usage of instructional radio and television.The advance of technologies put forward the video tapes, video conferencing and web conferencing. I agree that this type of learning stimulates interaction between the teachers and the students. Also this helps the learner to have a better understanding of the technological advancements. Some who are not much aware of the computer applications gain good amount of knowledge regarding the same. From my personal opinion this type of learning is much more effective as it is quick and can help at any time to communicate with teachers about any query, for example assignment, whenever we come across any problem, we can seek the help of our teacher easily through the forums available or chat logs, or even mails. All the factors claim that distance learning offers both academic and technological benefits. This helps in boosting the self-confidence of the learning and also helps in improve his or her potential in all ways. However, thanks to the most modern technology and the Internet, that has made the distance education even easier and comfortable.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mohammed Ashfaq
What was once considered a special form of education using nontraditional delivery systems, is now becoming an important concept in mainstream education. Concepts such as networked learning, connected learning spaces, flexible learning systems have enlarged the scope and changed the nature of earlier distance education models. Virtual education courses; Web-based and web-enhanced courses are appearing in traditional programs that are now racing to join the “anytime, anyplace” educational feeding frenzy.
Distance education meets the needs of students who might otherwise be unable to attend on-campus classes, due to distance or time constraints. Because students are not confined to a classroom for a certain number of hours on a given day, they can approach their coursework with flexibility and complete lessons when it suits their schedule. It allows students to choose from a wider pool of academic institutions for their ongoing learning. Another benefit of distance learning to students is the ability to do interactive teamwork between groups. They have the opportunity to correspond with others from different backgrounds and to hear from a variety of speakers from around the world. They also have access to experts and tremendous volume of online databases, which are also distance learning benefits. Instead of searching for hours through library stacks, students can use online search engines to find countless experts' articles and research databases within seconds.
ReplyDelete@Mohammad Ashfaq
ReplyDeleteYou are totally right when you said that no hassle for transport. Financial benefits of distance learning exist as well. Without the need to leave your home to spend a semester or a year in a distant city, you can substantially save on transportation, housing,clothing and food costs. It goes without saying that you can keep your full or part-time job, too, when you matriculate to a distance learning institution.
Distance education is learning from a certain distance as the name itself says, in fact it can consist of many people from different country learning the same course getting the same notes and the same assignments. It is a very useful mean for people who cannot afford to travel long distances or working at the same time. Students can discuss their point of views with other student who could be from another group, exchange their ideas, and get help from other people around the world that are responsible for the course, otherwise there are tremendous volume of online database that could be of great help to them. Besides, the advent of technologies has already lead to globalisation, so we just have to take profit out of it and follow nowadays trend.
ReplyDelete@Mohammad Ashfaq
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, online there is no true impression, u might get confused when trying to replace it by a smiley or don’t have the proper smiley to express what you really feel. And concerning the shyness and hesitation part, it is obvious one will always lack behind if the latter cannot fight against it. The only one who will be able to get you out of it is yourself otherwise it will be a great problem when you will have to do a presentations or later on in your life.