The Virtual Classroom Today

The Virtual University experience can be accurately summed up in the following excerpt:

"A post-secondary educational environment, delivered electronically through a communications medium, which mimics a real-world post-secondary environment in every aspect, resulting in an educational experience equivalent to one normally received by attending the same university in the physical world." Lush, G.(2010), The Virtual University: Issues for administrators, p. 1, 2010

Virtual education is now very commonplace and one can quickly refer to simple internet search enquirers to obtain several names of online virtual course providers. Notwithstanding that online virtual classrooms and virtual education can be costly, particularly if you are a disadvantaged student in a developing or third world country, they may also be unreliable if a vetting process of the teacher isn't rigorously adopted into any academic administrative system of the online school. Students looking for reliable online teachers should check this prior to instructing an online teacher.

Of course, there are very excellent online schools and even online freelance teachers who do provide an excellent service and who adopt into their teaching program a feedback system whereby the student is fully aware of their progress and can plan according to that feedback. Teacher credentials are even offered to the student to give some form of confidence to them prior to taking up study. However, usually, the student will rely on the name and reputation of the online school and won’t worry too much about the teacher, particularly if the teacher has a strong and convincing personality, regardless of whether or not the teacher has good online teaching experience and appropriate academic skills for the job.

The emergence of online virtual classrooms is now increasingly being used by the professional student and especially in subjects like English conversation and specific target language learning, for example, law, medicine, business and many other technical and professional subjects where the student is focused on a target language, most likely English, according to their chosen profession or field of expertise. After all, time is money and it’s easier for a student to study from a notebook, personal computer and even other mobile devices like an i phone with internet capability than it is to spend several hours travelling to a school.

Indeed, developments in virtual classroom technology allow the student to sit in classrooms with other students who may be in other countries and access virtual classroom facilities to aid study. This excellent method really does free time up for the student and still allow the student to interact with others and share ideas for study and progress.

Generally, online virtual classrooms are a present day reality and as we see more and more students opting for virtual courses, we will also see more and more unscrupulous and unqualified teachers use the online phenomenon to take advantage of this development to make quick money. Be warned! Check credentials, teaching certificates and appropriate qualifications.

For more information on target language teaching and virtual classroom studying contact Antony.