Why Do We Virtualize Classrooms?

The most effective learning will contain both - virtual and classroom

In 2020, every organization that teaches, trains, or educates was forced to move all their classroom activities to the virtual space — or shut down. For businesses and schools, shutting down was not an option, and a great experiment in virtual learning accelerated.

Today, many instances of virtual learning have persisted beyond the time when they could have returned to their former in-person iterations. Organizations have found unique benefits in virtual learning: cost savings, widely available high-quality instruction, technical features that enable interaction and in-depth discussion, and better metrics for assessing participation and results.

These are all boons to education and corporate training, but where virtual learning has not been effective there is a common complaint: It is impossible to replicate the classroom environment.

Although the public first saw motion pictures as early as the 1890s, it was not until 1903s The Great Train Robbery that the medium started to hit its stride. The film’s tagline delivered, largely, because The Great Train Robbery was the first film to use now-standard practices like shooting on location, camera pans, and close-ups. Previously, movies used the standards for what actors and directors knew: the theater. 

Older movies were essentially stage plays captured on film, without the benefits that the medium of film offered to enhance the drama. In the world of virtual learning, we are in about 1902 — the technology to transform virtual learning exists, but organizations have largely yet to deploy it creatively. We are still virtualizing classrooms rather than building engaging virtual learning environments that offer richness and effectiveness beyond the classroom.

No. There are valid reasons why the classroom has been the standard for training and education for millennia: First, it was the only option available. Second: there are real benefits to students and teachers being together in person. We evolved “in person,” and there are subtle cues of body language, speech, and awareness that good educators can use to make classroom learning effective. Chance encounters between students, the opportunity to ask whispered clarifications to your neighbor, and discuss the session in the corridor afterward. This stuff still works.

These are among the few elements that produce the complaint that virtual classrooms can not replicate the true classroom environment, and the reason stage plays were not usurped by movies. We now have them both, and they provide different levels of engagement, context, and information.

It is easy to look back and see how moviemakers unlearned what they had learned and created a whole new art form. How can we begin projecting this lesson forward in the world of virtual training?

1. Use every feature we have already. eLearning platforms today enable break-out sessions controlled by the instructor, advanced gamification functionality, and in-training assessment and analysis. These features allow for a qualitatively different kind of engagement than the classroom setting, and anything that increases engagement is good.

2. Combine these features with access to the best instructors. One of the key advantages of virtual learning is the ability to connect the best instructors and best-designed courses with thousands of participants. Technical gadgets can only go so far — if the course material and instructor are poor, outcomes will be as well. Take advantage of the ability to expose your best instructors to a wide audience.

3. Take technical gadgets seriously. There is a lot of technology on the near horizon that will enable the virtual learning equivalent of Justus D. Barnes firing directly into the camera.

Virtual learning offers the possibility of taking participants into virtual spaces selected for their unique ability to contribute to learning effectiveness. Virtual reality and the Metaverse are two key technologies here, creating additional dimensions of engagement atop tailor-made learning environments.

For example, it is known that being in natural environments sets the brain up for calm, focus, and creativity. While an in-person lecture to thousands in the forest or mountains is impractical, it is replicable through VR and the Metaverse. Virtual retreats and off-sites can be set in beautiful virtual retreat centers built just for the occasion.

The “memory palace” is a perfect example of how creating engaging virtual environments can enhance learning. An ancient concept, the memory palace suggests visualizations of movement through spaces can enhance memory formation and retention. For example, knowledge of revenue accounting may be stored on the virtual green of hole five of your favorite golf course. VR and the metaverse offer the technology to make this difficult but effective memory technique accessible to everyone by presenting information in a dynamic, spatial context.

The Great Train Robbery was a hit because it maximized engagement within its medium. Even more than a century later, films have not usurped stage plays, just as virtual learning will never usurp the classroom. The most effective education will contain both.  By thinking creatively about the best ways to achieve engagement within the virtual learning medium, we have the opportunity to create something with novel kinds of effectiveness, rather than merely virtualize what is effective in person.

Glen D. Vondrick is the CEO of CoSo Cloud LLC. Glen joined ConnectSolutions Inc. as CRO in 2015, and then as CEO, he led the company through a successful acquisition by AASKI Technology Inc. in April 2017. Glen’s executive leadership experience includes 20+ years in the enterprise messaging and communications security space, including serving three other times as CEO of private venture-backed high technology companies.