E-Classroom and its potential.

    Potential can be defined as having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future. But how long in the future will COSTAATT students have to wait for E-Classroom to realize its full potential?

    The College quotes on their website that:

     “At COSTAATT, we are committed to the highest levels of quality in our classes and programmes. We are equally committed to embracing the best in technology to aid and improve classroom interaction and learning, as well as to expand access to our programmes of study to students who may not be able to attend classes at one of our campuses.

    The E-Classroom allows our lecturers to conduct lectures, manage student discussions, administer quizzes and examinations, and provide immediate feedback on performance to students, among many other capabilities, all via the Internet, and all very secure. Classes can be conducted either entirely online, or in any combination of online and in-class activities.”

    As students however, how many of us have benefitted from anything more than a one dimensional experience. How many students can safely say “Without E-classroom I would indeed be lost”? The E-classroom allows for online interaction however it is far from mandatory. For some of us, only five out of the thirty plus courses we did incorporated e-classroom. However, most of them just used it as an archive for information.

    E-classroom has a lot of potential to make most of our lives easier:

• Filing assignments- It is super easy to file your assignments on e-classroom. Just drag, drop and click save. You even get an e-mail telling you that it was filed in case you were worried that you did not do it properly. Also, there is a calendar that reminds you that you have an assignment due.

• Examinations- There is a timer that follows you wherever you go. Once you are in the examination you cannot go google your answers as it monitors what you do. (It's an exam so I'll take this invasion of privacy.... but only this time). Also depending on the lecturer it is extremely easy to get an A on multiple choice. For one of our classes, the lecturer set it up as for each answer you got wrong they minus .2 of the mark. Also, you could have kept going till you got the right answer. You do the Math and compare it to doing a multiple choice in class. You will smile.

• Student discussions- I don't know how long you have been in the system but there was once this lovely thing called "Class participation - 10%". Now that, for some, was a super easy 10%. It was also the boost some depended on to get a good grade. Then they removed it like all the other good things. Here is a way they can bring it back. Lectures can post a discussion topic on the forum and students would then be required to post feedback. If they do this about five times for the semester for the 10%, they would make a lot of people happy. Also they can make the discussion about info they post in e-classroom forcing the students to read it. How easy is that!!

• Information zone- One of our lectures uses e-classroom to post the slides he covered in class as well as additional information on the topic. Another lecturer e-mails us the same information. So every week we get about two or three e-mails from this lecturer. Wouldn't it be easier just to utilise e-classroom?

• Make-up classes-  Only this semester some of us were able to see this as a possibility. One of our lecturers used this as a way of facilitating a make up class instead of going through the painstaking ordeal of trying to figure out what day is convenient for people and the trying to find a classroom and all the usual torture that takes place. One semester two lectures were on the verge of battling over a classroom at City Campus. Instead of all this, why not just use e-classroom?

    It is also used at the verdict of individual lecturer. This, more often than not, results in neglect and underutilization. As one someone mentioned in our post on Facebook the underutilisation might be a result of a lack of tech savvy students as well as teachers simply not knowing how to use the site and not willing to learn. E-classroom should be used as an educational aid and not a depository of useless information that simply remains untouched to be unearthed at some unknown date as a fossil after the fact.

    We plead with the collegiate, lend us your ears as we indicate the fact that E-classroom is indeed the bastard child of COSTAATT. But we must ask ourselves the question is this the best approach in 2013 the age of Twitter, Facebook and total technological advancement ?