INDEPTH: ONLINE LECTURES - THE NEW MEDIUM

ONLINE LECTURES – THE NEW MEDIUM

With numerous eligibility and entrance tests coming up, innumerous coaching classes have begun in the city. With 12 hour long classes to extensive crash courses and exclusive designed curriculum and syllabus for students, there has been an increase in online lectures held for children in these coaching centres. Many of the centres have branches in the city as well as outside the city spread all over India. “Usually it does happen that a teacher is famous for a particular subject and students prefer their lectures on few chapters. That’s when we use online lectures the most where the teacher is live recorded and shown to students in the other branches creating a live virtual interactive atmosphere with students gaining the utmost benefit” says Nirmal Biswal, head of the Gurukul Classes Aurangabad.

Online lectures are a breakthrough from traditional teaching and beneficial as complex diagrams and charts can be shown and concepts can be visualized for students to comprehend. “Students come in with aims to crack JEE-advance, GATE, NEET, AIEEE, NATA etc and preparation for this requires students to understand concepts crystal clear, that’s why along with best professors we show our students lectures from Youtube or online study material available from other sites and companies” says Sanjay G. from Aakash institute from Aurangabad. Aakash institute has started to provide two services in online education system – Aakash iTutor and Aakash Live. Aakash iTutor provides aakash institute’s study material and notes while Aakash Live is live online interactive classes with top faculty of Aakash.

Although the trend to have classes equipped with online lectures increased in the city, some students stick to traditional teaching. “it’s more comfortable attending a traditional class than an online class cause we can ask questions right then and there and gives us the feeling of one on one interaction” say Asila and Lakshaya students of 12^th grade attending coaching classes. This does raise a debate whether traditional teaching is better or online teaching should replace the traditional soon, but we cannot hide the fact that online lectures and e-classes are on a rise in the city as well.