Experiences of using ICT for online teaching-learning

 

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.