Week 5: E-Learning.

In this past week of COM125, we discussed the phenomenon known as e-learning, or electronic learning.

The term e-learning is not a new one to me. I have encountered it since I was in Primary 2, when computer classes were incorporated into our curriculum. I remember my first e-learning activity was a typing assignment, which required us to completely copy and type out a story with as little typing errors as possible. This was during the age when computers were not as prevalent as they are now. Back then, I didn't realise the potential it had back then, because i had thought the platform I was using was terrible. It had a badly designed user-interface and semi-redundant purpose, which was the typing assignment.

Since then, I have encountered e-learning in many aspects of my life, such as completing assignments in secondary school and downloading lecture slides in polytechnic. The most surprising encounter has to be when I was serving my National Service. During my Basic Military Training, I was required to watch educational combat videos and complete e-learning quizes based on those videos. That was when I realised how popular e-learning was to most sectors in Singapore.

Even today, studying in SIM-UB means that I have to utilise the university's e-learning blackboard platform UBLearns on a daily basis. I was also surprised to learn that this semester, I was allocated NTR109, a module that is completely online and I haven't even met the lecturer in person.

The potential for e-learning is vast. Other than online lectures and the standard usage of e-learning platforms that we have come to know as commonplace, I feel that the concept can be expanded on. Ever since I could remember, I have heard in the local news of primary schools adopted e-learning tools to better engage and educate students.

Perhaps, in the not-so-faraway future, we can have online lessons where the lecturer livestreams himself to the class and we don't have to turn up.