What is similar, and what are the differences between vct and a physical classroom?

For better or for worse, the virtual classroom in many ways resembles the traditional classroom: synchrony, the teacher as communicator, use of foils and black-/whiteboard as teaching aids, students who raise their hands, group sessions, communication between the teacher and the students and among the students, and so on (Driscoll 2001). These similarities make the transition from a traditional classroom to VCT less severe, apart from the technical requirements. Also, much of the traditional learning material can be used in the virtual classroom (Krogstie and Bygstad 2005).

The differences are not numerous, but it is important to be aware of them and take them into account. Especially visual communication constituted by body language disappears using technology as a medium in VCT, in particular when cameras are not used (compare the definition in Figure 1). What effect does this have on the learning environment, and how can the challenges be met?

The most important challenge of this learning technology is the limitations it poses for human contact; body language is no longer the central part of communication as it is in traditional classrooms. Non-verbal communication makes it possible for both the teacher and the students to influence the interaction between the parties in the communication situation. Signals sent out by the interlocutors may give unpredictability and new directions in the teaching situation, which an experienced teacher knows how to deal with and use. Non-verbal communication expresses the silent knowledge and the communication that are integrated in explicit and formal knowledge and communication. The teacher can direct the teaching situation by creating contact based on her/his interpretation of the signals sent out by the students, and will have full overview of the participants. This makes face-to-face situations unique. Students on their part know the traditional learning environment well enough to make conscious use of non-verbal communication; thus, spontaneity and continuous adaptation may take place and a dynamic learning situation is created.

This aspect of the teaching situation is not present in distance learning, whether synchronous or asynchronous, unless image transfer of the participants is used. In a way one can say that there is flexibility at the expense of body language – the use of electronics is a means to facilitate the participation of many people regardless of where they live. The challenge is then how to compensate for the missing body language and make VCT a good learning environment.

Information technology as a medium

The use of IT abstracts reality (Lahn 1998); the silent relations disappear. Thus, when communication takes place through the electronic medium, an extra learning barrier is created. All interaction must therefore be made explicit and visible, for example through the Centra Software system using icons to be clicked to signal hands raising or to express positive or negative reactions, and so on. When a student wishes to speak this must be made by clicking the hands-raising icon, after which the teacher allocates the use of a microphone. This extra barrier of the virtual classroom requires a conscious act on the part of the students to signal their wish to express themselves, by clicking an icon to perform an act that in the real classroom could be expressed through non-verbal communication. The virtual classroom loses the spontaneity that is one of the basic elements of the traditional classroom, which may lead to passivity and a lower learning output if we do not recognise the change and facilitate for it.

Measures to compensate for the disappearance of body language are basic conditions for a successful use of virtual classrooms. In order to enhance the possibilities of interactivity among participants in a VCT session, conscious pedagogical choices are necessary to overcome the barrier of technology. It is also necessary to analyse the way technology influences both pedagogy and forms of organisation such as time and resource planning (Fjuk 1998).