Chess Virtual School
About a decade later, things improved somewhat. I worked in a college that used a Learning Management System called Blackboard. The college emphasised 70% on coursework and 30% on final exams which I really liked as this forces the student to be more consistent throughout the course instead of just booking up for one final exam. For the first time I saw how effective an e-learning system like Blackboard can be. Instead of the traditional written quiz/exercise/coursework I made most of the pop quizzes and weekly tests in electronic form. It was the same content only that the students were in front of the computer to answer the questions. Of course the benefits were plenty. One of which is that I do not have to grade the answers. Everything was automatic. Another advantage was the students received the results immediately instead of waiting for the next day. Anyway what I wanted to say is that I think the time is suitable now to have chess learning systems that make use of today’s technology. That’s one of the reasons I started Maribelajar.com - to create learning systems that can support virtual learning. Sadly back then people were not that receptive to the idea of learning online. They prefer to have face-to-face time with their instructor/teacher. Anyway, today I see that this perception has changed. There are even Universities in Malaysia that run all their courses completely via distance learning without face-to-face time with their lecturer (not directly anyway). What I hope is to be able to build a good and practical site that can support virtual chess lessons soon. If I can make money out of such a system is great too but that’s not the main focus. It’s a dream of mine to see e-learning applied successfully to chess. Chess can really benefit from this as it bridges the geographical gap of students and chess coaches that are far away from each other.
Back in 1997 I was a programming lecturer and very interested in teaching using computers particularly via the internet. I experimented with tutoring my students by giving extra notes and exercises via email. Even in practical classes I wrote computer quizzes which I made my students take after a lesson. They would answer the questions after a short lesson and I would immediately gauge how much they understood from the lesson. I’d sit on another computer and see the results in real time. The e-learning via email part wasn’t much of a success as back then the students were not that computer savvy.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment