Wonders of a virtual campus

TODAY, I would like to share a journey into my favourite movie, Ready Player One, and my experience in teaching in a virtual classroom during the two-year Covid-19 pandemic. This journey will have serious implications for the nature of teaching, campus design and the accreditation process.

I discovered two important things about teaching when the country was in lockdown. One was, I liked it!

I have never been much of a tech person and always have a delayed reaction of about a year after every one else has bought the latest mobile phone and the smartest phone, I never used PowerPoint, and I still don’t have Instagram or Twitter accounts.

But when the pandemic hit, I had to learn how to use the Zoom platform to teach and I began to enjoy it. I also found two meaningful things that would change the way education could be taught in the future.

The first thing is that I could get up close and personal with any one of my students. Previously, I had to lecture in a large class with students sitting in rows from the front to the far back. If I called on a student from my position up front, I couldn’t see the student’s face and expression.

But, gleefully, I found I could call on any student on display on my computer screen and have a personal one on one conversation with him or her. This is important to me because I want to give all my students individual importance and attention.

Thus, with the Internet, I could have private discussions with individual students or individual groups while all the other students are muted. This cannot happen in face to face classes as there is too much background chatter.

In a virtual classroom, everyone is in front. No one is in the back row.

The reverse is true, too: Every student had a personal, up close view of my face and expressions. My lectures not only contain information but also my perspective and attitude on the issues raised.

I have always said that in any philosophical issue, there is no correct answer, only a response that is framed within a chosen perspective. The students can see my body language and my facial expressions within the constructed framework that I build up for the lecture.

And, of course, there is also the added advantage that a recorded lecture can be downloaded.

A second major point about virtual lectures is the ability to interact with many different personalities around the world without any expense if need be.

Cross-cultural and international discussions are most meaningful and valuable with speakers coming from vastly different academic backgrounds and with differing political and cultural perspectives, too. Virtual lectures, forums and seminars are invaluable in this regard.

With the freedom afforded by these meeting platforms, teaching and education have entered a new era. And the first question that comes to mind is, do we even need a physical campus anymore? The next question is, do we really need geographically-constrained accreditation of teaching institutions?

Let’s deal with the architecture issue first. Whether there will be a physical campus in the future depends entirely on the question of whether there is benefit in physical meetings.

Humans are social beings and the need to interact in person is built in. But perhaps the future classroom could present virtual physical interaction with holographic projections in a Star Trek-type “holodeck” to replace what we are accustomed to now.

In architecture, space and form as well as technology is an artistic process of a dialogue within oneself as well as with others. I do not see any need for campus architecture at all if we were to realise the world of Ready Player One.

In the 2018 movie, characters attend a virtual campus by sending an avatar into a virtual school to interact with virtual friends (and even a closer-than-friends friend).

Perhaps the future campus will be a small 1ha site with a few buildings spread out in several places on the planet that students could get to easily from where they are in different parts of the world.

Thus, future students would truly be global – politically, this might signal an opportunity that has been lost through isolated bigotry, religious extremism and the bogeyman of different races.

What then of accreditation? Are we to be subjected to archaic and primitive accreditation limited in geographical scope? Or is new education about policing a global commentary and not so much an evaluation.

In place would be commentary from many global experts that can be accessed by parents or agencies of governments and the private sector to help decide what type of education they want for their children or officers.

Finally, I would like to say that I enjoyed the virtual classes and would definitely enjoy a Ready Player One type of virtual university. As an ageing academic, when my thoughts are sharper and more wisdom frames my thinking with long-term musings and experience, the virtual platform would save my body from the aches and pains of having to travel to attend seminars and continue my own education.

The virtual world also prevents me from getting infected by any disease while at the same time allowing me to get up close and personal with each of my students and making my teaching more accessible.

Why did it take a dangerous virus to show humans that such an educational method can revolutionise society as a whole, I cannot for the life of me fathom.

But human nature likes standardisation, likes tradition and likes the comforting bounds of identity, so a revolution offering a new generation a borderless world with a common agenda seems to be too much for the common Homo sapien.

But now that we all have had a taste of the future, why are our roads to campuses clogged by traffic again? With so many big campuses around, and with blind obedience to an outdated accreditation philosophical construct, I suppose it is too difficult to embrace, much less imagine the future.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.