by Manel Dridi Akid

Created on: October 05, 2009

E-learning and the psychology of the learners: traditional vs virtual civilization course

Virtual learning is starkly replacing the 'real' universities, the 'human' teachers and the 'tangible' materials with digital and untouchable educational components: "There is an evolution from the bricks and mortar University to electronic-based university -from walls surrounded university to wires surrounded university - from human professors to digital professors from hard books to electronic books."( Alballooshi, Fawzi. Virtual Education: cases in learning and TeachingTechnologies)

The advocates of virtual university argue that it would provide access to that part of the population who would not be able to attend a physical campus for reasons such as distance, disability and need for flexibility. Students who want to attend traditional courses but for various reasons skipped some lectures, could catch up through the access of the lecture online: "A student who attended a classroom and missed a specific point in the lecture or completely missed a class due to some business or other obligation, may return to its video recording on the internet at his or her own convenience to recapture the missed knowledge." (A. Mirza. Finally Gaining Legitimacy in Saudi Arabia?)

In traditional lectures about foreign or even national civilization, students tend to be less ambitious than in other lectures. Studying about the past or current events attracts few learners who impetuously like the subject. Some of the students prefer a ready-made course given by the teacher that they will learn by heart for the day of the exam to be forgotten later. When students are given tutorials to be read and interpreted in class, few of them would find the link between the tutorials and the contexts. They would make various attempts guessing the implicit meaning, sometimes giving interesting interventions, sometimes irrelevant and sometimes funny ones. They will 'compete' to give the right answer to the teacher and to show their intelligence. Interaction involves a wide range of activities not only limited to exchanging ideas: "Interaction should include complex activities for students, such as engaging and reflecting, annotating, questioning, answering, pacing, elaborating discussing inquiring, problem solving, linking, constructing, analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing" (Patricia C Borstorff and S Keith Lowe, 2007)

By asking varied questions and showing different opinions, students would

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