Opportunities for Improving the Learning/Teaching Experience in a Virtual Online Environment

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered unprecedented adoption of online education in universities and digital technologies are increasingly becoming an essential part of the learning and teaching experience. From within an ongoing pandemic 'lockdown', this study investigates the current landscape of online education with a focus on the learning and teaching experience in virtual classrooms compared to physical classrooms. We found that instructors typically combine multiple technologies to create a holistic learning experience for students. The benefits of virtual classrooms included self-paced learning, increased opportunities to gain procedural knowledge, diversified communication channels, and greater opportunities for learning analytics. Compared to physical classrooms, the drawbacks of virtual classrooms included the lack of both timely access to all information through a single interface and natural interpersonal interaction. Based on our findings we recommend instructors to remain flexible when selecting technologies and to adapt the level of offline learning to fit their students' learning styles and abilities. We also identified opportunities for virtual reality technology to mitigate the drawbacks of online education by helping to translate in-class experience to virtual spaces.