The advent of the Internet in the last decade has transformed the landscape of distance education. High-end Internet technologies including electronic messaging such as listservers and newsgroups, Web applications and synchronous group conferencing have become an integral part of the delivery of distance education (Stilborne & Williams, 1996, p. 1). In 1997, a U.S. Department of Study estimated that approximately 90 percent of higher education institutions with 10,000 or more students would provide distance education in the 1998 school year (in Danesh, Mandviwalla, & Liu, p. 1). For many educational institutions, the Internet is a cost-effective way of delivering education to hundreds and thousands of students, which transcends the limitations of space and time.
In spite of the convenience and the cost-effectiveness of Internet education, there are both advantages and disadvantages in the utilization of Internet-based education. The focus of this paper is to compare the pros and cons of virtual classroom and traditional classrooms in the classroom settings, as it affect the activity of classroom discussions. Critics of Internet learning have particularly highlighted inadequacy of the lack of face-to-face contact of virtual classrooms, in comparison with traditional classrooms (Aase, 2000). Yet proponents of virtual classrooms have illuminated the possible advantages of the lack of face-to-face contact in the online setting (Ellis & Longmire, 1999; Kok & Brown, 1998). In the remainder of this paper, the pros and cons of both types of classrooms will be considered in greater detail.
As stated earlier, proponents of traditional classroom highlight the importance of face-to-face contact that occurs in a traditional classroom. Through the direct face-to-face interactions between professors and peers, students are able to experience a full sense of community (Aase, 2000). Even more importantly, students will be better a...