Around the world, mainly smart working and home working represent two key responses that people and organizations prompted to give continuity to their services, while respecting social distancing. Among many jobs, teaching trusts on web platforms, but they are just means, though they offer some tools for engaging students, such as quiz apps, video recording, sharing files and channels for discussions.
Looking at educational issue, e-learning and distance learning are two differents contexts where teaching occurs. The first can be added to traditional education too, especially for training people in organizational contexts. Distance learning may work for teaching at the university, since students are skilled enough to be committed to understanding arguments and taking exams. However, interactions, labs, q&a sessions are challenging given the tendency of the means to be asynchronous.
Besides commenting my slides and journal articles, I mostly give them cases and papers to study at home, so to use their analysis as a base for discussion during the following lectures. Mainly, this can be done with master students. Also, some students, most of the time undergraduate, watch the recorded video of the lectures afterwards. No matter the content of the lecture, mainly watching videos and cutting the interactions, including taking notes, reduces the effectiveness of attending. This habit may be caused by a "youtube" alike interactions with everything is a video of a person speaking and commenting slides and by a inherent feature of the means itself. Platforms allows to "pause" attending (turning off mic and cam or the sound) due to an incoming email, a facebook message, a call and whatever is happening at home. Things that normally we completely "freeze" when attending classes, watching movies at the cinema and so on. In fact, attending requires a more focused and demanding engagement.
What I'm asking is the following.
How to increase interactions and effectiveness of distance education in the context of University, where the tradition is being physically present in the same room and the whole course is designed in that way? What kind of methodologies can be adopted to sustain interactions and discourage a "youtube" alike mindset.
The key factor is that of engagement. There should be that reason that makes the students always want to come to the platform. Hypermedia is key. Reward mechanisms, grading. The quality of the content. Internationalization of the platform. There should be regular update of content.
The key factor is blended teaching and learning. That means to effectively and flexibly combine both online and offline methods. It's a good trend to be sustained regardless Covid-19 pandemic situation.
I think the coronavirus will change the face of education more than any other event because we as educators have needed to prepare and use materials designed to be delivered online. The virus and the lockdown introduced a certain amount of quality to the previous quantity. It has introduced a vast number of students and teachers to the possibilities of online learning but also maybe some of the difficulties as well.
I am hoping to look at the engagement by students in the various platforms we have used and the response to encouragement and warnings given to students. This will include cataloguing thousands of individual student interactions but it should show which activities produce the greater amount of engagement.
On my side, the experience was really positive and gave me the opportunity to begin a reflection on my teaching (Italian language) and how to help students for a better learning. Students were really very collaborative and engaged. A sort of new discipline has been installed, but also a new complicity. I had the impression that each one entered the universe of the other: the classmates into the world of the teacher and vice versa. I quickly understood that the first need of my students was a clear structure of the courses, more than in a traditional course. Moreover, I encouraged a lot the autonomous learning and I transformed my lessons into much more interactive lessons. If you are interested, please listen about my teaching here (but it's in French). https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2541864049464050. Thank-you very much. I will be glad to continue our exchange.
I am teaching English to undergraduates at English Education Program. I have been online for the past two weeks and I found it very challenging to post learning materials online. Materials that are traditionally discussed face to face in the classrooms have to be supplemented with elaborate explanations as if it were for regular class meetings. This takes a lot more time and self reflection, wondering whether the students could understand. I do not have the confidence to use Zoom or other video apps because I do not get the 'feel' talking through the apps.
Sabina Gola Thanks for answering and sharing! Mine experience is positive positive too. I cannot share videos of my lecture outside my university due to Microsoft Teams privacy policy. I just noticed a sort of tendency when classes involves a high number of students.
One of the measures urgently needed is making use of modern technologies appropriately. Video Conferencing is paramount here, it will offer the most interactive, motivating learning atmosphere. Webinar via wares like zoom will help monitor the student sitting for exam at his his/her convinied place for quality purposes. The lecturer will only send extra guiding notes in soft copy via email or group app like WhatsApp or messenger. Let distance learning remain distance where the learner and the lecturer are separated by distance and interactions are via e- devices and not the traditional printed materials.
I have developed a teaching methodology to continue my university classes with my students using common, free and user friendly App´s and plataform to implement a virtual classroom, taking into consideration that some of them, do not have a good internet band width nor a good hardware specs in their PC´s and mobile´s. These easy access technological tools engage and allow all my students to actively participate in the virtual classrom where we have text and voice chat, videoconference, access to youtube videos, teacher-students-teacher interaction and student-student interactions to perform some presentations and to participate in discussion forums as well as taking quiz and exams .As I am teaching Power Electronics where practices are part of the teaching activities, real time streaming is being used during distance learning classes to mitigate the lack of these practices through some simulation programs. This metodology has engaged all my students to punctually connect and activelly participate in all the classes since the first one. For my students and myself, this present stay-at-home order in Mexico during this pandemic situation, did not actually afeccted our teaching and learning activities, on the contrary, attendance, active participation and effectiveness of the virtual classroom classes have been better that during the regular classroom classes.
I have decided shot time to a student present again about my teaching by slide online. It focuses create combine student passive learning and an active learning environment.
I agree with Gary Stobbs that this situation is causing educators to interrogate their delivery and the impact has the potential to be far reaching. What I am finding is that even the traditional view of on-line learning to be delivered in short chunks with a mixture of flipped learning, asynchronous and synchronous delivery and short lectures is being challenged - we have had students opting into full day delivery/ conference style events; conferences are still going ahead and outside of the sector shows are being envisaged as online. And we are using John Keller's 2009 ARCS model of motivation (Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction) to engage students into this new style of learning.
I have found many of the same problems as Helena Knapton in that we are using a mixture of asynchronous, synchronous and blended learning plus a significant amount of materials that would have been used in class as additional materials for 'homework'. The amount of teaching and learning materials is more than we have ever had but seems to be overloading both the students and teachers. Motivation and feedback have been affected by the sheer volume of stuff. Trying to adapt materials to the needs of online delivery has not been effective in my opinion. Too much stuff on too many platforms without enough explanation or planning in a too shorter time.
Helena Knapton thanks for your reply. Is ARCS model for the purpose of assessment or rather does it frame motivation so to prescribe techniques that can be used to engage students?
I have continued my training for students online. Of course, I did the theoretical training through adobe connect software wia using slides. I must say that it has not been without problems. One of the problems with students' incompatibility with virtual learning is the problems with Internet speeds and sometimes disconnections. But it has been a good experience for me and my students.
It is better to use apps that make lectures and students comfortable to teach and learn. Students have less interest in challenging apps therefore it is better for the university ICT department to create new apps where slides and vidoes and even audios can be uploaded to be downloaded by students at their convenience. It require the hardwork of the university's department.
Dear Dr. Behrooz Rezaei
Very analytical contribution
For the first time, we are witnessing a massive transition of education systems to online learning. Many problems appeared at once. First of all, teachers of schools, technical schools, colleges, and universities turned out to be unprepared. We need to investigate the consequences of such a transition.
https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions
You may wish to have a look at our work at VKN NIMHANS in India. We have started a elearning program on "Mental Health and Psychosocial issues in COVID19"
Course outline, details and time frame is available https://vkn.nimhansdigitalacademy.in/COVIDe-learningOutlineR2
Vincenzo Vignieri I have found ARCS useful to frame the learning in a way that the students are enticed to engage. They will engage if there is something that will make them think/ gain their attention at the start, they will investigate further or engage in the activity further if they see how it is relevant, either to their lives or their studies (although the distinction is quite artificial), that students can achieve this - but not too easily - and so their confidence grows and the combination is meant to achieve satisfaction.
Dear Vincenzo Vignieri, Great Discussion. I completely agree all the discussion above your question. I also think that Online Education/ Distance Education is more suitable for University students than high school/secondary school students. However, what I believe from my observations is that high school/secondary school, even primary school students can adopt to distance learning technology faster than university students, since they are born in technology. The question.. How can we improve interactions and discourage a "youtube" alike mindset is just doing what YouTube does not. Students can not communicate with YouTube videos, they have to listen, that is the only possibility . However in Online Courses, if we improve interactivity, by asking a background knowledge in our course or a second time, the communication will be more alive for students than just talking by yourself.
Dear Vincenzo
I think the methods and effectiveness depends on matching the crowd with the teacher . In any case having an introductory interactive session where in all are prodded for introducing themselves ; in other words an interactive self introductory session will help . Students should be encouraged to ask doubts in between class using unmute options. Also the class size should be limited to around twenty five to thirty .
It has to be a mix of approaches - collaboration sessions for synchronous communications and discussion forums of asynchronous. What I like about collaboration sessions is that when I explain some concepts or demonstrate prac work, students type their questions in the chat panel. So on one hand they don't interrupt me and I can answer the question when I see fit and on the other hand I know immediately what concept is not clear and needs additional clarification.
Discussion forum is good because often students answer questions of other students - saves our time and shows us who mastered concepts and has confidence. we also post answers to ensure we point out mistakes or enrich correct answers.
I also like using padlet.com where students post their ideas anonymously so they are less shy and not worried that there is a name attached to the incorrect answer. And I comment on all ideas, why they are correct or incorrect.
I agree with you. These forms of learning complement each other. We use bbb2. This is also convenient. But in a pandemic, we cannot use blended learning. Teachers conduct all classes remotely.
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