Reflection on online teaching.
March 6th became the alarming sound where teaching
and learning turned away from its usual class. The closing of school and
letting the children at the mercy of their parents for learning during the
COVID-19 pandemic is an emergency response to contain the spread of the
corona-virus. Normal teaching shifted to virtual learning, where every one of us
is new to system especially for primary classes. The primary aim is to quickly
provide temporary, reliable access to instruction and support their learning
during a crisis, not to re-create a robust educational ecosystem. Although it’s not ideal to continue with
online learning for the country like Bhutan but pandemic made us compulsory for
such type of learning. With much deliberation during staff meeting and
consultation with parents came to a conclusion of using We-chat for teaching and
learning.
Simple survey verbally found We-chat, the means of
communication for the parents. Things are much tougher with varied family
background and literacy of parents. In the latter scenario, it's hard to
measure how more than a small fraction of the students reacting to us, and also
hard to manage a discussion. Students not having smart phones and affordability
of data became a concern and above all parents’ guidance is a concern for a teacher
like me. The pressure from ministry seems like a dictator’s order, wanting a
child to get through but on the other hand, tracing the child is difficult for
us. Once students are in group, constant change of phone made us hell like job.
Unlike the normal
class room, Virtual Classroom is accessible for them 24 hours a day. Time
efficiency is another strength brought by the online learning format for our
children. Asynchronous communication through online conferencing programs
allows the professional juggling work, family, and study schedules to
participate in class discussions. There is no question about doing the work;
just do it at the times that are more convenient. Students can access their
courses at any time of day or night. Further, they have continuous access to
lectures, course materials, and class discussions. This is particularly
convenient for those students who may need to reread a lecture or take more
time to reflect on some material before moving on with their assigned work. The students can have more control over their learning process in
an online learning environment and time makes them more effective for learning.
With abundances of time and
freedom, learning still becomes a question and authenticate of the work is
still unknown. Every month we travel to every individual in a community for
validation of the work and face to face interaction with students. The work
that I have provided seems more like that of a copy past for most and for some
there seems lot of learning taking place. The moment I interreact with some
feels like teaching and assigning some additional questions.
Teaching thought videos and
short clips didn’t work for most of the students, so the option left for me is
through image and some description verbally. Effectiveness
of video may be enormous however attributable to monetary and poor network in
some places made us handicap.
The moment we post our lesson online, we
get hold of a spark off comments form a few students however anticipating days
and a few to the extent of calling loses our interest too.
Nevertheless, the lesson that we have learnt during this pandemic
is beyond our thoughts and imagination. I taught my students how to use gadgets
in a smarter way for educational purpose and learning in the absent of teacher.
An online instructor
must be able to compensate for lack of physical presence by creating a
supportive environment in the Virtual Classroom, wherein students feel
comfortable participating and especially where students know that their
instructor is accessible. Failure to do this can alienate the class both from
each other and from the instructor. However, even if a teacher is competent
enough to create a comfortable virtual environment in which the class can
operate, nevertheless
the shortage of physical presence at an organization can be a limitation for an
online application.
As we move from place to place, many a
times we found that the correction that we did on online never have been
effective. There are so many excuses of net problem, phone memory and parents
at one station and child in another location. Nonetheless I am satisfied
because I was able to monitor and do on time correction. Face to face feedback
interaction is one of the satisfying works ever did in the last two months. The
most and touching feedback from my students is lack of gadgets, where they have
more than one child sharing phone with their parents. Many a times parents are
out of station and even they are there, it is disturbing with calls. As an effective
measure, door to door correction and feedback on the spot gradually improved a
lot. Every child does their work on time and with integrity.
