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Virtual classroom vs web-conference
Virtual classroom vs web-conference

What are the differences between a professional virtual classroom and a video-conferencing software?

Alexander Asher avatar
Written by Alexander Asher
Updated over a week ago

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS WITH WEB-CONFERENCING FOR THE TEACHER?

  1. A web-conference has not been designed for a teacher or for education. The primary user is a business executive vs a language teacher or private tutor.

  2. Using web-conferencing, a teacher has no whiteboard to embed lesson materials into. Meeting software depends heavily on screen-sharing which encourage a more passive 'lecture-style' class. This can make the class feel a little amateur, one-dimensional or boring for the student after a while.

  3. Teacher cannot choose the format of the class using a generic conferencing tool - e.g. class, conversation, white-board only, audio-only

  4. Teacher does not have control of the participants video, audio or annotations. This can lead to students causing some disruption by keeping their video/audio on/off.

  5. Teacher does not have visibility into the internet connection with conferencing. This means that if the student suddenly cuts out, the teacher is left guessing and wastes valuable time trying to problem-solve something only the student/internet provider can.

  6. The problems with relying on text chat. If the teacher asks the student to write something down...if this is done in the chat, then the teacher doesn't have an easy way of highlighting potential areas or mistakes. This is particularly important for spelling when learning a language or writing formulas for learning maths.

  7. Limitations of annotations using conference tools. If the student types on a shared screen e.g. the annotations are not related to the page and the student cannot actually edit the text, instead they need to clear it each time the underlying page changes. The teacher cannot delete it either which can be an issue and if the teacher doesn't encourage students to annotate on the page, students engage less in the class. 

In contrast...

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF A VIRTUAL CLASSROOM FOR THE TEACHER?

On LearnCube teachers have access to a professional, interactive, online whiteboard. 

Teachers can choose the format of the class and apply this to all students.

The tools are made to make online teacher fast, responsive and super easy.

LearnCube allows teachers to embed their lesson materials in the online whiteboard and they can change to different views to mix up the format of the class and keep students engaged.

When the lesson materials are embedded through the online whiteboard, students and teachers can easily annotate on the specific page. This means if the teacher changes the page and then returns to the same page, the annotations are saved there.  It also means the teacher and student can save the materials with their own annotations which is helpful for review.

When you share a screen, you typically are scrolling through the materials vs using pagination to get to the right page. This is an inferior experience for the teacher and learner.

Furthermore, on LearnCube it's very easy to switch between multiple whiteboards.  Teachers often keep one whiteboard for general notes, and another for showing the lesson materials. This also makes it easier for the student to save/download notes after the lesson rather than relying on the chat which is only text-based vs allowing for drawings/images, etc that help with learning.

Finally, LearnCube provides a lot better insight and controls for the teacher. The teacher can see clearly if there might be internet connection issues through the user interface rather than guessing or wasting time troubleshooting.  It also allows the teacher to enable/disable the students mic/audio through the interface.


WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS FOR THE SCHOOL OWNER IN USING A VIRTUAL CLASSROOM?

LearnCube provides an improved flow and better insights from the classes taken through the virtual classroom. 

Improved student experience:

As LearnCube does not require a download, the student can be easily directed and redirected to parts of your platform.

For example, when the session end on a web-conference, the student is left inside that web-conference platform rather than redirected back to your platform where a student might be asked for feedback or to purchase more classes.

Also, as LearnCube is a white-label product, your brand is promoted, not ours, and not some generic web-conferencing tool.

Better business insights:

LearnCube can provide easy, verifiable insights into classes. 

 It can enable your school to provide easy attendance records, issue logs for faster resolution and tracks important metrics like participation rates, etc.

We also have opportunities to track other important indications of a quality teaching: improved student retention, student talk time and student interactions on the whiteboard.

P.S. If you want to know how LearnCube compares to the rest, please view this Comparison guide here.

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