The Case for the Virtual Classroom - 0 views
-
“If you take a class, in our case, you’re very likely to meet 20 students from 20 countries,” Reshef says about University of the People. “We believe, by the way, that being exposed to 20 people from 20 cultures — the way they think, the way they function in the class — is as important, if not more, than the subject area itself.”
-
“We re-teach the same concepts again and again,” he said. “The teacher has no sense of who in his classroom is getting it, not getting it…and when you look at all of the successful innovations, it’s where you let the student assess his knowledge, understand where they are, and proceed at a pace where they’re actually seeing that they know something before they move on.”The Department of Education’s meta-analysis, which focused on older learners, supports this. Online learners who self-monitored understanding — by, for example, deciding when to move on to the next lesson — performed better.
-
The modest difference in performance between online and physical classroom learners in the meta-analysis, for instance, was larger for those students who learned through a blend of online and physical classroom conditions.
- ...2 more annotations...
-
The report warned that the results might not be caused by the medium itself because the students in blended learning conditions often had extra learning time and instructional elements.
-
Right now class time is typically used by a lecture. But if teachers move the lecture online for students to watch on their own time, they can use the class time to work on activities and interact with students.