e-learning - week 6

I vaguely remembered i was introduced to e-learning in 2003, that was when i was in secondary 3. The decision for the use of an e-learning platform was merely because school has been closed for a period of 2 weeks? And that was all because of the SARS epidemic that took place then.

I guess during that time then, e-learning hasn't been very well conceptualised yet, or at least for me, it was the first time i have heard of something like that. And upon my first interaction with it, i really didn't like it, and i felt it was NOT user friendly. And if i didn't assume wrongly, even the teachers who were using it must not have liked it, as i remembered only one of our teacher assigned and uploaded work onto the platform. The rest probably didn't managed to figure out in time how to use it or found it too troublesome.

It was about another 2 years later that i gotta use it, intensively this time. And i did learn how to use it then, because it was a compulsory thing to in polytechnic. All our lecture and tutorial notes were uploaded there.So meaning if you didn't know how to access it, you can forget about passing your course. The other things we used it for were for online topic discussions which our lecturer gave us as assignments or extra work which could give us bonus points, or for some weekly quizzes. Although i feel that the platform and interface for elearning tools or blackboard(the elearning application's name) has become more user-friendly and easier to use, i don't really see much use for it, maybe perhaps it did contributed to the environment by being more environmental friendly because we no longer have to print out notes on papers. But other than that, so far, even as i use it in university today, the use of these tools were mainly for uploading of lecture notes.

Maybe it facilitates and aids in learning, in case we missed out some points that were being mentioned in class. Or maybe i did not see the big picture of it, or simply did not have the chance to experience it. Perhaps in the future if classes were conducted virtually, or if we could ask a virtual lecturer questions anonymously which feeling embarrased, it could really be more of a use. I've seen videos of lectures being conducted via online, but maybe it just isn't something that has taken off over here yet, probably because we lack the discipline needed for such convenience to take off.