Nowadays, universities tend to give online lectures, making traditional teaching remain less popular. While this prevailing method has undeniable benefits, I believe the drawbacks, including the potential indiscipline of students and the lack of environment for self-developing, are far more significant.
On the one hand, the introduction of online courses has certain merits. Typically, it allows students to reduce time and energy for travelling since many of them live far from school. Furthermore, by utilizing slides incorporated diverse illustrations and supplementary tools, lectures appear to be more vivid and understandable. This taps into the pupils’ curiosity and willingness to engage, enhancing the efficiency of teaching. For example, a lesson-related animated video would garner greater attention from the learners because of its novelty, compared to a long speech which might be considered tedious.
On the other hand, there are significant drawbacks arising from the lack of face-to-face contact. One of which is the students’ loss of concentration without the teachers’ timely management. Pupils may do something else, such as scrolling their phones or enjoying a meal, while having the cameras turned off. This will greatly affect their performance in academic achievements. Moreover, studying via screens equals to having no proper environment to learn practical skills and cultivate essential sentiments, since universities stimulate small communities with different personas and realistic situations. This is observed in numerous Vietnamese students who have higher chances of success in collective tasks, thanks to group skills cultivated through projects at schools.
In conclusion, I side with the perspective that replacing offline teaching with online lessons brings more downsides than advantages. Though this approach saves time for travelling and enhances the visual of the lessons, it causes distraction in students and reduces their opportunities to boost maturity in a practical environment.