Comparing online mode of teaching to traditional mode: An analysis

 (With focus mainly on architecture course)

March 2020, everywhere corona is spreading and government announces a strict lockdown. A lockdown which kept on extending for many more months and it was even longer in the education field that institutions have not yet reopened again. In certain places they did open for a brief period but again due to advent of the second wave now everything has moved back to online mode completely in academics.

When the lockdown was announced, among many there, I was one for sure who was not so well versed with the online class setup etc. All of a sudden these things cropped up and at first it was difficult to even digest it was possible to teach in this mode especially teaching architecture. No way was I convinced that online was a mode of teaching at all but when there was no other way the whole teaching fraternity, I would say, embraced this under compulsion due to existing conditions. I think everyone is doing what they can within their capacities to fill the gap left by physical contact classes. After being into this online teaching mode for almost a year we have gained some experience on this mode. I thought it’s high time we compare and see how these two modes weigh. I am going to do this based on certain parameters.

 

Time Consumption:

The biggest factor that online classes fare well is the point of time consumption, mainly the travel time. In present day conditions, the time taken to travel to your work place is high. In today’s context we see a lot of employees and students traveling to their higher educational institutions. This long travel time is the most unproductive time and online mode has helped in using this time which otherwise would be considered a waste.  On the other hand is the fatigue which one gets in traveling long distances. Online mode does score heavily in this front.

 

Control of class:

During a physical lecture all your students are in front of you and as a faculty one can see what is happening in front of them. As a faculty a class having around 40 students is comparatively easy to manage physically which is usually the case in architecture institutes. During class my personal experience is that we can see the students easily. Hence it becomes easy to identify when some students feel disinterested or feel bored in class by just seeing the facial reactions. Personally this helps me in changing the way I take class. Usually I call out names of students who I feel are not concentrating which triggers them to focus or I may give an example from a movie but related to architecture just to bring back students interest in class. Sometimes even cracking a joke in relation to a topic or a life experience also brings back class to life. All the above is done by seeing the student directly whereas in online class students just switch off the camera and we don’t know what happens and hence things possible in traditional mode of class are not possible here.

The other major thing in control of class, in one does not know if the student is sitting throughout the lecture. Since the government had some regulations on not compelling the students to attend etc it was not possible to make students switch on the camera. Due to this it was like speaking to your computers and not to class. May be if the conditions improve and if there is a possibility of making students keeping the camera on then the faculty may get more control.

 

Design and Studio based Courses:

In architectural design course and other studio based courses like building material & construction or Building services, the mode changes from less of lecturing to more of discussions, drafting and working on sheets and models. So this mode requires constant discussions to happen between student and teacher. Not only is that enough, there needs to be discussions between students also. Sometimes we witness that a subject explained by a friend reaches the student better than the teacher. Though the features like screen share etc make it easy to discuss design and drawings I personally felt the discussions that happened over a printed paper with pencils and markers were more fluent. The faculty could easily draw on the sheet with proper flow and at the same time the suggestions get recorded for future reference. Though in online mode there are provisions for saving the suggestions etc, but the free flow in which physical discussions happen could not happen in the online mode.

In design discussions at various stages it considered better to work with models. While working with models is still possible but the way corrections can be told in model by removing a part and adding it somewhere in the same model to improve it is not possible in online mode, again because of the constraints that the reviewer will not be able to touch the model.

The other important aspect which has to be discussed is the amount of print outs which are taken in an architectural college. Every  student start using the computers from around second year and later all design studios design drawings are submitted as printouts, except in early stage of design where student works manually. The number of printouts can reduce drastically in online mode since all presentations become digital online presentations, helping in saving paper. On the contrary, students not taking printouts and working on computer screen may miss out on understanding the scale of drawings and may end up not representing all the details properly.

 

Connectivity

Connectivity plays an important role in online classes. Sitting in a city with good high speed connectivity helped a lot, but on the other side some students attending online classes from a rural back ground could not get that level of connectivity and hence more often got disconnected.

The other thing which I feel is more important for successfully running online classes is self-discipline from student’s side. This I am saying based on my experience where whenever we ask a question to prompt students, we will see some students just saying, I was not able to hear or they will leave the class and say internet got cut. Here self-discipline becomes very crucial aspect for smooth conduct of classes, though this point is not directly connected with connectivity, I thought since students use bad connectivity as an escape route for not answering any questions raised by the faculty it ought to be discussed here.

 

Teacher Student connect:

A teacher is required to teach, no doubt, but the job does not end there. A good teacher is one who looks into other requirements of students with empathy, understands them properly and tries to help them when in need. To understand student needs, sometimes it will be seen from students behavior that if they are facing some personal issues and in certain times the teacher is required to find this out. More often it is the later method that helps since students may not easily express their condition openly for different reasons. So the teacher has to somehow try to bring that out and mostly I have seen this is possible through informal chats with students after class hours, or in canteen, or even in corridors etc.

Many a times these kinds of informal discussions usually help some students to understand concepts better, more than in classroom or studios. A student may feel shy to ask a doubt in front of his friends but the same student may feel better in an informal setting. This informal connect is something I personally felt is missing in the online mode. 

 

Site Visits, hands on training, guest lectures:

Unfortunately in this aspect the online classes won’t be of any help. The most important aspect of an architecture course is visiting sites and buildings to learn about them and experience them to understand them better. Every semester every architecture college organizes some visits to the sites. Like I did already mention this cannot be substituted in online classes.

There is an advantage though. Earlier, we could not think very easily about a leading architect giving lecture easily. A lot of things like money, dates, travel, stay etc many times made organizing a lecture a very lengthy process and most of the times many things get cancelled. Online meeting modes have surely made it easy to make an architect sitting in one corner of the world to speak to students sitting in another corner.

 

Overall work atmosphere:

In architectural studios the overall work atmosphere is what pulls the students through the rigorous submissions and deadlines. Most of the times I have seen personally, some students motivate others and sometimes some students get motivated by seeing other student’s works. This all happens when they meet and share ideas. Unfortunately this kind of meeting and sharing does not happen in online studios; this in spite of all students being able to see all other students work, but nothing substitutes the physical meeting.

The other most important thing that I see missing in work culture is the end semester expo kind of an atmosphere. During end semester final VIVA VOCE examinations the students are in full go and put up their sheets for display in full vigor. Anyone present there can feel the healthy competition between students to make their class work to be presented that day to look better than others and at the same time it is when the whole college gets an energetic atmosphere. Seniors go the junior classes and vice versa. Unfortunately the online classes won’t substitute this.

 

The way forward:

Experiencing the online mode and the traditional teaching method, I see both have their own positives and negatives. A way forward will be for all the universities in India to deliberate, discuss and decide a mode which is mixed way, which is an amalgamation of online and traditional method. A program where students could be offered the flexibility to attend 60 percent of their classes through online with 40 percent offline can be thought off. These are not strict numbers which I am proposing here these can vary. For example a design studio can make it compulsory for students to discuss with their teacher once in 4 classes physically and other times the discussion could be through a virtual meeting.

All said and done I am not sure if this method of online teaching will suit all geographies, social and economic strata of our country. If anyone is thinking of going this way they should assure for sure that all students (from rich to poor, rural to urban) have access to good internet connectivity, without which any mode of online, either full or partial like proposed here, will be a failure.