In early 2019, the world was confronted by the covid-19 pandemic which ravaged nations of the world and crippled even first world economies. In order to adjust to this emerging global challenge, it became expedient to adopt a new way of living, interaction, communication and socialization since the major means of spread of the pandemic is from person to person. The hitherto termed ‘new normal’ way of living has to be adopted in all spheres of life in order to kick-start socioeconomic activities which is necessary in revamping the economies of the world. The idea of reducing physical contact informed this paper. The purpose of this research is to subject students to both virtual and physical classes and assess the impact of the two techniques. A Technical Drawing class of 82 students was subjected to physical and virtual classes for a semester; topics were selected at random and taught either physically or virtually. The physical classes are our conventional board and marker teaching and demonstration modules, while the virtual teaching involved video simulations and demonstrations shared with students through WhatsApp and Xender applications. Seven examination questions were set for the students to attempt any five, three of which were from the virtual classes while four were questions derived from physical classes. The results showed that the percentage maximum attempt for questions derived from the physical classes was 57.3%. On the other hand, all the questions derived from the virtual classes had highly appreciable percentage attempts of 98.9%, 92.7% and 76.8 respectively. It was therefore concluded that virtual teaching techniques can readily be integrated side by side with our contemporary physical teaching methods in order to improve on the quality of learning and towards adhering to reduced physical contact, which will alleviate the menace of covid-19 that has hitherto became a global challenge. It was therefore recommended among others that there is no better time than now to adopt virtual teaching methods in order to enhance improved quality of learning in thewake of emerging global challenges that confront us.

Keywords : Virtual class, physical class, global challenge, learning.