Teaching Experience Under The New Normal
Online teaching and learning have become the new normal ever since the global pandemic hit. Teachers have had to adjust their teaching styles to adapt to the situation.
With almost half year experience in online teaching during this period, Esther (Fellow 2019-20) truly believes that teaching quality needs to be prioritized, and she strives to provide high-quality teaching through innovative means during her fellowship.
Esther (Fellow 2019-20), graduated with a major of Public Policy and Politics from the City University of Hong Kong, shared her reflections on online teaching.
Online Teaching Experience
Esther sent two video clips, each around 10-20 mins, followed by two tasks every week to the students. Her students used an e-learning platform called Edmodo to submit quizzes or assignments. The turn-in rate of quizzes and assignments sadly becomes the single obtainable standard for teachers to evaluate students’ efforts. Esther hoped to utlize Zoom as a follow-up tutorial for her to try out some more different teaching activities with them. “Unfortunately, during the weekly Zoom tutorial class, my attention is mostly occupied by switching shared screens, admitting late students in, muting noisy students, lowering constantly-raising hands.” Esther recalled her experience when conducting Zoom classes. She wished she could spend her time looking into each of their eyes and making sure they are not just 'being there'.
Educational Inequality in Virtual Classroom
Many teaching activities and skills are limited in the virtual classroom. Sending the same videos to students with diverse learning styles is not fair to those who learn better through other modalities; relying on a teacher's body language, engaging in class discussions, or playing with vocabulary cards. Sadly, things get even worse when it comes to SEN students who easily get distracted at home. Esther believed that no e-learning tool can replace face-to-face teaching. She also realized the importance of family support under the new normal. Parents play an essential role in the success of online teaching. From Esther's experience, those active and punctual students were those whose parents read all e-class messages and remind students of what is coming up.
Online teaching sparked Esther to rethink the essence of learning.
The Essence of Learning - What makes learning fun?
Esther tried her best to make her teaching video as 'fun' as possible. She tried to catch the eye of the students by putting in lots of cartoon gifs and special sound effects, even incorporating interactive theatre in her teaching. However, soon she realized teaching in a fun way should never, and can never outweigh the fun in learning itself. The motivation in learning should lie in the content, instead of the learning medium. Take this as an example. Esther taught the students to set rules for their everyday life when she was teaching modal verbs (can, cannot, must, mustn't). After all, it is about showing them the beauty of learning languages and applying the knowledge to daily life.
Reflection on prevailing online learning
With the online teaching experience, Esther noticed that students have to learn in a community, learn to interact, learn to observe others in a space called classroom. Such experience sometimes made her wonder 'Why am I still here giving out live lessons when there are so many resources and Youtube videos that provide better animations with better English speakers?’ It is the relationship with her students that made her different as a teacher instead of a content creator on other platforms. Esther strived to provide a safe and close friendly learning environment for her students. She always tried to create unique teaching materials for them instead of just using Youtube videos as her only teaching material. Online learning can be a good tool to bring in new elements in teaching and learning experience, but it can never replace physical learning which gives students a safe and friendly environment to interact with teachers and other students.