Effectiveness of ONLINE teaching during Covid 19

                                            Effectiveness of ONLINE Teaching

Sometime in the second week of March, state governments across the country began shutting down schools and colleges temporarily as a measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. It’s close to a month and there is no certainty when they will reopen. This is a crucial time for the education sector—board examinations, nursery school admissions, entrance tests of various universities and competitive examinations, among others, are all held during this period. As the days pass by with no immediate solution to stop the outbreak of Covid-19, school and university closures will not only have a short-term impact on the continuity of learning for more than 285 million young learners in India but also engender far-reaching economic and societal consequencesIn India, schools and colleges have been shut for over a month now to restrict the spread of Covid-19.
All educational institutions in the country will remain closed till 17 May, after Prime Minister Modi Tuesday extended the nationwide lockdown by 19 days.

This has affected academic activities at various levels, including the postponement of board exams, college exams and even entrance exams such as the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering and National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for medical, among others.

With this sudden shift away from the classroom in many parts of the globe, some are wondering whether the adoption of online learning will continue to persist post-pandemic, and how such a shift would impact the worldwide education market.
Even before COVID-19, there was already high growth and adoption in education technology, with global edtech investments reaching US$18.66 billion in 2019 and the overall market for online education projected to reach $350 Billion by 2025. Whether it is language apps, virtual tutoring, video conferencing tools, or online learning software, there has been a significant surge in usage since COVID-19.
If you are a teacher looking to move between schools during the coronavirus lockdown, how can you make the most of the online education experience with your new class? This is interesting new territory for many teachers. But there are thousands and thousands of teachers and pupils already learning remotely, in virtual schools – can they offer insights?
At a virtual school, lessons are delivered in line with each person’s personalised curriculum. Exactly as you would expect in a physical school space, pupils are taught how to interact with teachers, their peers and lesson content using whiteboard technology, quizzes, voice and video as well as receiving and sending assignment tasks. How should you introduce yourself to a new class, if you are meeting them online for the first time? If we consider how teachers deliver excellent classroom teaching practice in a physical space, how they prepare should not be approached any differently in an online environment.

“When you are teaching in a classroom, you can look at your students and get a sense of whether they are engaged or not. In online classes, teachers cannot control the environment—students can log off from the class. Teachers needed to completely reimagine their classes. They have to build in a lot of interactive elements to ensure that the students are engaged in the teaching learning process,”

“Students do not have the same attention span online as they would in a 30-minute class. In such case w should  introduce   new activities by using other tools on top of Online teachings like Microsoft Forms and document sharing, to get students to participate in the lesson and to collaborate. The teachers have used the virtual whiteboard in Online teachings as a handy tool,”

Parents too are echoing the sentiment. 

“Our children are facing frequent disruptions to their education, but by moving to Online teachings the school is ensuring they do not lose their momentum. One of the biggest benefits is that in these times of uncertainty, the children continue to follow their routine. They know they have to be ready by 8 AM and attend all classes like they would have done in school,” says Sayma Ansari, whose son studies in Grade 5 at the school. 

Other parents, like Bhavna G Bali, whose daughter studies in Grade 6, are also noticing a change in how children are collaborating with each other. 

“Our children are using tools to collaborate that I didn’t even know existed. I see my daughter and her classmates work on the same document on Online teachings where one person is typing on the document and others are giving their inputs. This enables them to work on projects irrespective of their location. Earlier they would create groups for projects depending on where students lived, Online teachings has helped break those barriers,” she says. 

“I see my daughter chatting with her classmates on Online teachings in the evening where they discuss their assignments and other projects. This is far better than other messaging apps because they continue to be in the school environment,” she adds.  

The school is taking virtual interactions and collaboration beyond the students as well. Apart from moving its classes to Online teachings, it conducts parent-teacher meetings on Online teachings. It is also considering recording classroom sessions so that absent students can revisit the class and teachers can also do self-assessment after the class is over.   

“We are considering how we can reconfigure learning for secondary students. Online teachings also gives us the opportunity to include students who are home-schooled for various reasons. I think it’s a paradigm shift in teaching and learning,”   

Flipped learning

“Flipped learning” is a term used to describe how teachers can provide material for pupils to learn outside of the classroom. Although this is traditionally considered homework or coursework and typically completed without the teacher, increasingly this approach to enhance learning outside of the classroom has been set and completed online. During lockdown, teachers will be focusing on core curriculum content, meeting the needs of vulnerable pupils as well as enhancing student engagement, mixing between activities, types of assignments and differentiation techniques to support a range of pupils. One factor that must be considered for teachers who are working remotely, is how they can mix online teaching and learning with traditional methods that would be used in the physical classroom. A good tip for teachers working online, especially from home, is to have a simple whiteboard behind the camera and teach just as you would in a physical classroom space. Doing this over a sustained period of time will definitely present a new challenge, but it’s possible with well-thought-out curriculum plans, and a simple range of equipment.

 

Flexibility and personalisation

Every student should be treated as an individual online as all teachers would in a physical space, and with teachers working remotely, they will need to learn how to use technology as well as adapt content to meet individual needs. If you are meeting your pupils for the first time, I would recommend sending them a survey, asking them to complete simple questions so that you can elicit initial information about their interests, abilities and hopes. You can then start to plan which interventions you will use in your lesson planning and delivery.
To help support increased teacher workload, my key recommendation would be that if teachers are able to connect with the pupils online, it is important to allow students to engage in a daily and weekly  review of their learning to support long-term memory. Often this manifests itself when a pupil says: “We’ve done this before!” But effective teachers will remind pupils that this is a retrieval practice exercise to assist with long-term retention.

Safeguarding and security

If you are joining a virtual school, then I would assume the various safeguarding procedures are already in place. However, if you now find yourself teaching pupils online for the first time, having never met them physically, you should double-check to ensure that your new school has considered data protection, child protection, internet security and the various online safeguarding procedures for teachers and pupils.

What does this mean for the future of learning?
While some believe that the unplanned and rapid move to online learning – with no training, insufficient bandwidth, and little preparation – will result in a poor user experience that is unconducive to sustained growth, others believe that a new hybrid model of education will emerge, with significant benefits. “I believe that the integration of information technology in education will be further accelerated and that online education will eventually become an integral component of school education


Suresh Kumar Dewangan