For the past two years, we have encountered a whole new era of education. To prevent the spread of the sudden pandemic, people had to be isolated, and students could not go to school. Could you have ever imagined students not going to school? Nevertheless, education must go on. Education eventually found a way.

Although we are in the age of media literacy, conducting the entirety of classes online was unfamiliar to everyone. Yet, just like the saying “human beings are the animal of adaptation,” teachers and students have adapted to using virtual conference rooms in real-time and collaborating through shared documents. Now, some students say that online classes are more convenient than the traditional ones.

This year marked the end of a two-year shutdown for schools, which have begun welcoming back their students. Yet things have not returned to the way they once were. It seems that some teachers have concluded that it is more effective to meet online than to meet in-class. They began to adopt a hybrid teaching method of mixing online and face-to-face classes in the most effective way.

One of my major professors is an example of a teacher who actively implements this hybrid education method. He is in charge of the debate course for English education major students this semester. During his lecture, students are encouraged to access Google Classroom using their laptops or smartphones. Students are instructed to write down their opinions while listening to their classmates’ presentations and upload them online to the shared comment forum. He also makes his students meet on Google Meet online for an hour-a-week group discussion. In this way, students are able to share their opinions more freely, and the professor can supervise all group discussions at the same time by displaying multiple windows on his computer.

Some people still prefer traditional education methods and cannot understand why online methods should be used in class. Now that we have reached the cusp of an information-technology era, it would be a waste not to incorporate information technology into education. Blended learning, which combines traditional face-to-face classes and e-learning, is already considered the future of education. As the times change, the form of education changes as well. COVID-19 might have served as an opportunity for schools to accelerate such changes. Educators will have to constantly study to incorporate the shift of information technology to enhance their teaching.

| Kim Eun-ji Editor-in-chief