Final Requirement: Using concepts and theories in Module 1: The Changing Landscape of

Communication, compare your remote learning experience this semester with traditional face-to-face
classes before the COVID-19 pandemic. Explain the possible reasons and conditions for the
similarities and/or differences between the two settings .

Ready or Not

The notion of learning has painted an image of a setting in which a teacher or mentor instills
knowledge onto his/her students. This perspective of the traditional learning setting has been
normalized to an extent wherein anything outside of it is deemed unconventional or impractical.
Although other modes of delivery may not be entirely new to most people, someone who is
homeschooled or taking courses online would often encounter questions of whys and hows as it is an
undeniably unusual mode of delivery of educational instruction.
On the onset of the effect of the Corona Virus pandemic in the year 2020, adjustments had to
be made in almost every aspect of everyone’s daily living. In the continuing battle of containing the
virus, the number of infections and death rate continues to increase in a daily basis, causing drastic
changes in the lifestyles of people in the Philippines and the entire world. This forced even the
educational institutions to abandon the now-risky traditional classroom setting and adapt a more
feasible method of educational instruction delivery in distance learning. This proposition drew
concerns as, more than pursuing their education, people are actually more worried as to how to go on
about every single day with the global pandemic threatening their livelihood and safety. Nonetheless,
the Department of Education insisted that education above all, should carry on. In a statement by
DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones, “DepEd recognizes the challenges of the school year ahead, but if
we opted for an academic freeze, we would have lost many months of the children’s learning.”
(BusinessMirror Businessmirror.com) With the start of classes pushed through in October, the
University of the Philippines Visayas Tacloban College, along with numerous public and private
schools in the country, now caters to its first batch of distance learners from all over the country.
This sudden shift in the Philippines’ educational instruction delivery caused major drawbacks
for both the students and the teaching body. Although no concrete data have proven that remote
learning is in any way inferior or less effective than the traditional learning setting, it surely caused
and continues to cause unease for the leaners of the new normal due to its disparity from the
conventional classroom experience provided by the traditional learning setting. Students deem it
unfair for those being left behind by the demanding system and as such, the unrelenting call to end the
semester continues to overtake the trends of various social media platforms. With all that being said, it
would not be an exaggeration to say that the education system of the Philippines is simply
underprepared for this remote learning mode of instruction.
 The greatest burden is passed on to the learners who were so conditioned by learning in the
presence of an instructor. According to Bencheva, there are three types of learners according to their
learning preferences, this includes dependent learners, collaborative learners and autonomous learners
(63-67). She mentioned in the same article, “Different learners have different cognitive processes,
learning style preferences and past experiences that they apply when learning takes place. An
individual’s learning style will affect the manner in which information is processed during learning
and thinking, having a considerable effect on the learning effectiveness and efficiency.” (Bencheva
63-67) While this new learning setting may be advantageous to autonomous students who like to
study in their own pace, collaborative and dependent learners who are instruction and discussion
oriented are bound to often feel lost and alienated.
Where everything is new to both the teacher and the students, a problem is set to arise every
now and then, be it student-to-teacher miscommunication or purely connectivity issues. And although
some comfort is provided by having instructional references made almost readily available for
students’ consumption, intersubjectivity is being lost in transition. Communication which is shaped by
anticipated response now takes the form of the media model of communication, which according to
Ong in his book “Orality and Literacy”, is shaped otherwise (171-172). The absence of real audience
may have resulted in most media products to conform to chirographic conditioning (Ong 171-172). In
this shift of educational instruction delivery which is seemingly comparable to shifting from orality to
literary culture, most of what should have been learned by firsthand experience and discourse are now
remotely being learned through reading from books or watching online media.
The advent of convergent media products surely plays a huge role in the efficiency of
implementing this remote learning setting. The coming together of different media platforms in media
convergence provided students with the convenience of accessing necessary information through a
single device. Bunett and Marshall regarded this as the ground in which both traditional and new
media can interact and coexist (Nwammuo and Nwafor 56). Without convergent media technologies,
implementing remote learning can be hard or even impossible for some. Utilizing remote learning in a
setting where convergent media products are unavailable would be selectively beneficial and can put
more learners at a disadvantage.
Being a student in this new normal setting, my experience was not what I had expected it to
be. All throughout high school, I painted the image of being a college student in the university,
reading inside the university library, exploring the campus, and meeting schoolmates and friends on
off days. These simple pleasures are what the current setting has deprived us of, causing everything to
take a toll on our sociality and mental health. Keeping up with the academic pressure was already
quite the challenge in itself, but now I also had to find the balance in my personal life while keeping
my mentality in check. Additionally, it was especially hard due to the fact that being a dependent
learner myself, I had to teach myself the entire course content for every subject.
 While capability is no longer in question, feasibility and readiness for implementation is a
whole different concern. Not all students will have the means to support and sustain their education
which will demand hundreds of pesos every week for internet connectivity. And if education will
continue along this path, a lot more students will continue to be left behind and this defeats the
purpose of promoting free and accessible education for all.
Works Cited:

Bencheva, Nina. Learning Styles and E-Learning Face-to-Face to the Traditional Learning. 2010,
conf.uni-ruse.bg/bg/docs/cp10/3.2/3.2-11.pdf. pp. 63-67.

BusinessMirror. “A Look into Education's New Normal.” BusinessMirror, 1 Nov. 2020,

businessmirror.com.ph/2020/11/01/a-look-into-educations-new-normal/. Accessed January 04,
2021.

Nwammuo and Nwafor. Convergence of Traditional and New Media of Communication. Research
Gate. June 2019.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333616547_CONVERGENCE_OF_TRADITIONAL
_AND_NEW_MEDIA_OF_COMMUNICATION. Accessed January 04, 2021.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Taylor & Francis e-Library,
2005. pp. 8, 171-172.