The value of face-to-face learning

Face-to-face learning as most educators and parents understand, is an instructional method where lists of subject matters and learning materials are taught “live” to individuals or a group of students. This allows personal and hands-on interaction between a mentor and a learner who also benefits from a wider scope of reciprocal action and influence from fellow scholars. This is essentially a teacher-paced method of education that tends to diversify among the customs and traditions of different countries that agree to administer it at the same time in a certain place.

It is usually misconstrued as a traditional or conventional option of transmitting lessons through dominant recitation and memorization. The teacher communicates knowledge, skills, and attitudes with the enforced norms of behavior that involve basic practices, in a setting that maybe with less or no interaction at all. The teacher listens to student’s presentation and thereafter gives inputs to help enrich and master the assigned tasks. At the end of the module or unit, a written or oral examination would be conducted.

Online learning on the other hand, is a type of learning that takes place over the usually-flickering internet. It requires more discipline, determination, and self-motivation to accomplish a task which is to specifically to finish a module or course. The instructors are considered as facilitators who assist students to understand online materials and lessons. There is the opportunity for virtual discussions among students, teachers and even parents in a flexible direction towards E-learning. This is beyond classroom since classes may be conducted at home, in coffee shops or in libraries.

The present pandemic forces us to employ the blended learning which is a mixture of online learning and classroom learning with the needed presence of face-to-face communication. There are learning tasks, resources, and support. Everything goes virtual in order to follow health protocols like social distancing. But the scenario becomes incomplete because of the absence of the actual human factor or touch in organizing and guiding the students with their performance in particular, and in their studies in general. And the offshoot goes to some allegations that some parents are taking over in order to uplift their own children's class standing.

With individual uniqueness and academic balance in mind, we cannot also deny the need for meaningful learning that identifies a better method in a certain time and for a certain group of learners in an atmosphere of being physically together. We can also deal with incidental learning that can crop up anytime knowing that both the teacher and the students can exhibit various body language, facial expressions, dramatic displays, and even emotional outbursts. Many things are naturally real that cannot be read by technology.

After COVID, we still wish for the face-to-face teaching in which the teacher holds a large grouping for orientation, demonstration, reminders and follow-ups; speakers, lecturers and reviewers with their outstanding, memorable and lively speeches; coaches with their routine huddles for game strategies and assessment and for the college and graduate school professors with their comprehensive sharing that at times include corny jokes.

Bahala’g corny basta joke…hehehe.

Lito Gador Tampus

Moalboal, Cebu