In today’s world, a lot of people are already accustomed to the use of the internet to satisfy their wants and quench their thirst for candid information. Gone are those era when you want to learn a skill and need a master or need someone to coach you to perfection. Virtual Learning has made it easy for one to get life changing lessons and trainings just by using the suitable social media or specified websites to follow, register, subscribe and like. On a daily basis people get to acquire skills by keying into a virtual program. Virtual learning is a learning experience that is enhanced through utilizing computers and/or the internet both outside and inside the facilities of the educational organization. The instruction most commonly takes place in an online environment.
We have come to that age where information and communication Technology has indeed made the world a global village, making the world a little globe for interactivity, hypertextuality and multimediality and by so doing breaking the barriers of time and space and making one doing something very tasking and delicate just at ones convenience. Virtual Learning is all about using the internet to gain knowledge.
The coronavirus Pandemic really enforced the use of virtual Learning. In past, people used virtual Learning to do all sorts of things, but little or no one was aware that Virtual learning could actually be used to stage educational environments, to hold classes, write exams from ones comfort and get to pass out educational realated programs through online interactions. During the cause of the lockdown, a lot of educational institutions accross the globe welcomed the new idea of Online classes, telecommunication, teleconferencing, teleprompting,etc.
E learning as it’s fondly called is not just done with the internet. To get a more suitable environment for learning online, software applications were also created and fastened into the online market for users and subscribers to download and make use of. Examples of such apps are Zoom, Microsoft Teams,Telegram, etc. The sales of this apps are done online giving the manufacturer an avenue to generate income from each app downloaded in his sphere.
However, after getting the public opinion of the masses, it is said that a lot of people are clamouring on the reduction in the use of virtual Learning because it has the tendency of killing jobs and making people unemployed. The argument has been based on the durability of these virtual media. Sighting the case of the coronavirus Pandemic, seeing what has happened during that time, seeing the way a lot of people were left unemployed, jobless and left unattended to just because these apparatus was moving on a supersonic speed to tarnishing to workforce of humanity, one can comfortably agree to this because anything that has an advantage must have a disadvantage.
Moreover, there is always a need to strike a balance in everything done. Seeing the rate at which virtual learning has metamorphosed in these years, one can say that in few more years to come, virtual Learning would have upgraded to the extent of Autonomy, that there would not be need for teachers or lecturers to give instructions anymore because the apps will be embellished with smart Artificial intelligence otherwise called robots that will carry out the work of the lecturers, that is to say that, Robotics will be imputed into the virtual tools. In future,Gone will be those days when an app will be present but need a lecturer to command from his own end, it will then be a state where the app will lecture the students because the whole lectures has already been premeditated by the programmer when creating the software codes of the application. If this happens, what will be the gate of all these lecturers that depend on the pay of lecture to get daily bread? What will also be the fate of the students that will graduate from schools with the ambitions to lecture but will not get the opportunity to lecture?
On the part of the students, it will keep their attention on the net at every point of their education which can be very distracting. A student might be having an online class and all of a sudden gets notified of another online activity in a pop up notifier (This can be game, movie, an interesting chat with another person or something somewhat eye-catching), which will send the student clicking on the notification to quench their thirst for curiosity. When a students falls into this temptation, the student is said to be distracted. It will not just stop at distracting the students, it will also end up making them lack human critical thinking because students will not want to stress their brains to give accurate reasonings when they simply have an intelligent software ready to think for them whenever they feel like thinking.
In addition, Government and private institutions will have no need to make use of human intelligence, effort and power because human power will be considered unstable because human beings have time for everything, Human beings are expensive to maintain, Human beings eat, human beings get tired and will need rest whereas the virtual learning and robotics as a whole do not need sleep, will not get tired, will not eat, time saving, energy saving and will certainly satisfy a lot of people at the same time without any law of diminishing returns.
In conclusion, to see that this virtual learning is curtailed, people are advised to embrace physical activities inorder to keep creating the bond amongst human beings. Government agencies should give restrictions to the use of Virtual learning In the halls of academics, they should encourage more of physical classes now that the Corona virus era seem to be under control. They should ensure that virtual learning in schools should be used only when necessary, it should come when there is no option inorder to slow down the negative rising pace of E learning.
Finally, an adage goes “A stitch in time save nine”, meaning that if you stitch your clothes as early as you notice the tear, it will save you nine more stitches in future. Hence, it’s all about knowing the problem and identifying it, that is the first solution to the problem. It is now left for us to do the right thing now to save nine folds later.
