Rationale
The conoravirus pandemic became global threat and thus
the Royal Government of Bhutan started teaching through the BBS. However, from
July 2020 online classes started based on the instruction of the Ministry of Education.
I am teaching Mathematics for Class I students of Changzamtog Middle Secondary
School under Thimphu Thromde. This blog is based online teaching experiences the
some chapters like Numbers to 100, 3-D shapes, Addition and subtraction
Strategies and Data and Probabilities. Initially teaching remotely or online was a challenge because it was so
difficult to pass the message to the students. This is not just about technical
delivery mechanism it was also logistical like some student did not have smart
phone and others were not used to using online platform like WeChat or Telegram.
There are several strategies to make the online teaching effective and some of
the methods I used are:
Strategies
used in eTeaching
In the absence of normal physical presence in the classroom, it
was necessary to establish a virtual presence at the very beginning of the
eLearning course. Online teachers need to be engaging and supporting student’s
right from the start and for the duration of the course, to maintain an
effective learning. Engage with
your learning community through online posts, forums or social media – when
people see teachers putting time into discussions and engagement. As an online teacher,
we have an opportunity to create a supportive online community for your
learners. The best way to achieve this is through encouraging teacher-to-student
engagement and interaction. Create an open forum or discussion board where
learners can post to request help and assistance from each other. Other
strategy is to provide feedback which is an essential component of all
effective of online learning environments. Further, our feedback should be
continuous during the eLearning process, with constructive feedback offered as
soon as possible so that students can clearly identify which behaviors or
skills need to be improved. The advantages and disadvantages of online teaching are:
Conveniences of eTeaching and Learning in comparison face-to-face
method
The most important
advantage of an online course is that your classroom and teacher are round the
clock, seven days a week because the material is available in the platform
anytime unless the content is deleted or moved. Students can see or access to
teaching notes, review assignments, take practice quizzes, discuss questions,
chat with fellow students and study any time you want. Besides, students can
learn any time they wish unlike face-to-face classroom method. This is
particularly useful for those whose health prevents them from making it to
campus on a regular basis. Children may take an interest in the online
environment. Parents may look over the shoulder of an online student while they
are surfing across the web. In short, everyone in the household gets involved
in learning, except for parents who are uneducated in Bhutanese context. Due
the virtual nature, many students come up with questions, in the face-to-face
teaching some students fear of feeling stupid. The online nature eliminates the
fear from the fellow students. In the online environment, no one is there
looking over your shoulder to tell you to go online and study. No one is there
to make you ask questions or post responses. The motivation to study in an
online course comes from students themselves.
Challenges faced while implanting eTeaching and Learning
One of the key challenges is that the online method is
more time consuming. We teachers spend more time in preparing lessons and in
evaluating assignments because everything needs to be conveyed in the text,
besides using the social media platforms. The situation in no different to students
- students spend more time studying and completing assignments in the online
environment than they will in an on-campus course. This is because it is text-based
and most thing has to be written although voice message can be exchanged. As
you can probably guess, typing is slower than speaking and it is very slow for
my class I students. In the same sense, reading your learning materials can
take more time than listening to an teacher deliver them. Further, conveying
principles of Mathematics by explaining words are quite complex. The other negative
side online teaching and learning is procrastination. There is no one to tell
you to get to class on time. There is no one to preach to you, beg with you, and
plead with you to stay on top of your coursework. Before students realize,
weeks have gone by, they haven't done any homework and it's time submission.
Delayed submission was more common to my students. An online-based course
demands that students develop personal time-management skills. Studying alone with
only the computer as your companion can be terrifying. Sometimes slow internet
can be an issued to upload larger documents.
Some
methods adopted to overcome challenges and difficulties
To reduce time consumption
while typing, I practice typing regularly to increase speech so that I save
time. Other important thing things that we need to smarten the way we prepare
lessons by selecting most critical aspects necessary to accomplish the lesson
objectives. These
days, we’re fortunate to have the technology to create virtual learning
environments that allow us to collaborate with fellow-teachers to critics and
sometimes share materials. As an online teacher, our feedback will help to
create an eLearning experience that is informative, engaging, and motivational
for the learner. The complex aspects in Mathematics like drawing bar graphs
could be improved by posting examples of graphs and by providing a short video
to demonstrate the method. Further, creating a blend of traditional online
learning styles with newer, more collaborative audio and visual tools like
pictures diagrams can be done address the different learning needs of the
students. Working with a mix of activities makes the content more interesting
and exciting, increasing student engagement with both the teacher and other
learners. Further, instead of providing the individual feedbacks, I collect all
the feedback points and produce a common sheet so that all students can view
the same feedback sheet. When I have larger file size to upload I do it late at
night or early in the morning when the internet traffic is at ease.
Concluding
remarks
In my future tasks, I
would make sure my eLearning
content can be easily accessed via smart-phones, laptops, and iPads to maximize
the learning process. I would upload materials a bit in advance so that
students have more time to explore. Recently, we shifted to Telegram from
Wechat because the Telegram is faster and can upload larger video files. I
would also develop more pictorial types of materials rather full of text to
make learning interesting for the kids. I would also start reminding for the
deadline of the work so that students get reminded and get on to the work.
