Campus Engagement Challenge: The Role of Virtual Learning In Universities Around The World by @swaylee

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Greetings Everyone,
We decided to bring the engagement home to campus connect and do it in our own way and I am in full support of this so I would be presenting my entry for this week's engagement which talks about the roles of virtual learning in the university today. I would be utilizing a set of questions to place more suspense in the post and to get my message across. This post is sure to be an interesting one so do well to keep reading and enjoy the post.

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Will virtual learning shape education and Learning the way we know it?

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Before starting this question, I have noticed a misconception and misunderstanding by people of two words "e-learning and virtual learning" I would start by clearing this misunderstanding before I proceed with this post. E-learning is more like a self done activity where you go online a learn from articles, posts and other things. Virtual Learning on the other hand is a situation where there is a tutor, lector or lecturer present and addressing another or more. Virtual Learning can be inform of online seminars, lectures and they are often live and over video calls.

Now moving on with the main question, I believe virtual learning would definitely shape the concept and scope of education and here is why.

✓ Virtual Learning would about more flexibility when it comes to learning. One can be part of the learning process as far as there is internet connection and a smart phone instead of having to transport themselves from far and wide to partake in the learning process.

✓ Virtual Learning would make students to study amongst themselves more often. Students would be able to create study groups online and teach interested people from the knowledge they already have. This would also help students understand better as they themselves know how to teach it to the understanding of their fellow students.

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Do you think your university will incorporate virtual learning into its curriculum?/ State the reason for the answer

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As much as it's very sad to say but I got to say the truth that my university would not incorporate virtual learning for the mean time or not anytime soon. Here is why I say so

✓ The students are very lazy and the university knows this so they prioritize class attendance to get all the students out of their homes. Attendance and presence during lectures is taken really serious in my school so they wouldn't want anything that would make students to stay home.

✓ Surprising as it may seem not everyone has access to phones and laptops and those who once had as the rate if theft in my university is extreme. If we were to have virtual classes wouldn't be able to reach everyone especially with the addition of the fact that there is always power outage so no electricity to charge our devices.

✓ Divided attention of students during the online classroom. We all know that phones are a major source of distraction amongst students especially due to the presence of social media that's why In a physical classroom, the use of phones are prohibited but if the class was virtual, the student might get distracted by the slightest things.

✓ Ease of cheating during virtual quizzes and examinations. I personally witnessed this during the COVID-19 pandemic where private university students during their virtual examinations, brought the questions to our group chats so we would help them answer them. They could also easily browse the answers online since they are under no one's supervision.

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Do you think such a move will be plausible?

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Yes I totally think the inclusion and use of virtual learning in my school curriculum is a reasonable and probable thing to do because

✓ It brings about non-stop learning. During lectures, whether one is abroad, hospitalized, grounded or even under lockdown they can easily be part of the learning process and wouldn't miss out on a single lecture as it would be available to them via the virtual classroom. The lockdown took almost a year from us while private universities pushed forward, we were put on pause.

✓ It solves a major problems and lecturers have in common. This is the problem of willingness and ability to come to class. Attimes we wake up and the strength or willingness to leave their bed and prepare for class but virtual learning would solve this problem undoubtedly hence the overall amount of students who attend classes would greatly increase.

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Have you had any experience with virtual learning, if yes kindly indicate when and how?

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I have had numerous experiences with virtual learning but not necessarily school learning all the time but we are learning something. Let me add a picture of one of my most beneficial discord virtual learning meetings.

source

I happen to be there but I lost the screenshot. It happened around 9 months ago when we were taught about Steemit, the kinds of posts accepted on Steemit and so much more to newbies like me at the time. We were allowed to ask questions and our tutor @whitestallion answered us to the best of his ability.

It was a really nice experience because that was the day I started making use of the discord application. I learnt alot that day and so did alot of us. The app makes things easy as it offer the ability to switch between audio only, video only and video with audio. It is easy to use and understand.

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Conclusion

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Virtual Learning and E-learning are very essential and needed in collaboration with physical learning to attain maximum and pure knowledge. It might have it's ups and downs but virtual learning would definitely speed up and ease up the learning process and I would love for my university to add it to their curriculum, it mustn't be all the time but atleast from time to time.

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