What do students should be taught when working online to avoid problems?

In a previous post, we discussed some issues the student and teacher may face during the online learning process. In this post let us try to find a solution to these issues so we make students avoid facing any problem as much as possible while online learning. In order not to allow the student to isolated, the teachers should employ many virtual group activities during the session and encourage the students to show themselves by their cameras. The teacher should also pay more attention and effort to keep the student engaged in their lesson by conducting more meaningful and interesting classroom activities and utilizing more formative assessments and questions to keep the students motivated and on-task.

Are There Things that we Do Today That were not Able to Do a Year Ago?

Who could imagine executing things that someone was not able to do in the near past? Were you able as a university student, for example, to schedule and manage your sessions and activities in a way that works for you? Were you able not to be obliged to avoid your lesser and fun activities because of your sessions at school or university? It was students' dream to get lessons at home lying down or even eating their sandwich or drinking some drink. One of the fundamental changes that took place in human life and especially nowadays is freedom feeling. Online the individual can buy, experience, relate and deal with anyone or anything he/she desires, so the person more than any time is the master of his/her life.

 Challenges you Face When Learning/Teaching Online

Like any new thing you use first in your life, online teaching and learning are still a fresh style that can make teachers and students face many challenges when dealing with it. The biggest challenge is defeating to loneliness and isolation feelings of the students. That all can happen because of a lack of real interaction that takes place in the ordinary classroom. Another challenge is how to keep the student engaged in online classroom activities. One of the common challenges both teacher and student face especially in third world countries like Lebanon is internet and connectivity issues. The teacher also could come upon some difficulties of classroom organizing and time management. 

Tools That Can be Used in Online Assessment

Assessment is an essential part of teaching since it is the tool that enables the teacher to diagnose students' needs and the level of comprehending what they learned. Teachers do not have to ignore assessing their students during their teaching process and that applies to online learning too. Because of the different conditions of online teaching, teachers can not use typical assessing tools. One of the most common online assessing tools is the forms that include subjective and objective questions such as Google Forms and even questionnaires prepared by PollEverywhere. Teachers can also use online games to evaluate students' understanding like the games prepared by Wordwall and Kahoot. The instructor must not forget to implement formative assessments by asking the students different questions during the online sessions as well as assigning them assignments and participation questions as homework.

 How to be a digital citizen

Our life is developing faster than ever, every day you hear fresh news and got shocked how the world is not as it was yesterday. The digital world has conquered human life in a terrible way but is that a blessing or a curse for us?. You think or talk about some thoughts or desires then suddenly you find them after a while on your social media pages as advertisements or whatsoever. Your pictures, messages, and all that concern your personal life are now being saved on different clouds and drives. Your money is expected to be electronic in the near future. Even there are many theories that claim that the minds and thoughts of humans will be digitalized by plating particular chips inside our bodies people will not be masters of their decisions anymore. We are not sure about the truth of such claims, so we can not agree nor disagree with similar thoughts because everything these days is possible to happen. After all, which question should we ask? how to be or how to protect ourselves from being a digital citizen?

 Integrating Technology into Teaching

Many studies have shown that technology integration in education improves student's learning progress and results. Technology is so necessary for today’s students to obtain this century skills as well as it helps the teachers in scheduling, coordinating, tracking, and data collecting much more easily than using other traditional tools. Integrating technology into teaching encourages collaboration, improves engagement, and could help to make the learning process more student-centered. Tons of new educational tools and application is being invented for different purposes and to cover all needs of the teacher and student. Therefore, instructors must always keep themselves updated, for what you know at this hour is much less than it will be at the next hour.  

Integrating Technology into Teaching

No one can deny that the teaching and learning process has completely changed to become more interactive and constructivist. Everybody these days can get any kind of knowledge that he/she needs so easily anywhere or at any time. The whiteboard, the teacher, or even the textbook are not anymore exclusive sources of information. Moreover, everyone now can contribute to the global knowledge-building operation. Such a wide cooperative and rapid development learning style needs effective tools that function as a needed platform for such a revolution. Modern technology is the one that filled this gap. Examples of these tools are high-speed internet connections, computers, the web, laptops, smartphones, different educational applications, etc. This kind of technology has widened the horizon of cooperative learning style and set the student free from being limited inside a particular educational institutional setting. Nowadays, we were obliged to forsake our schools and universities because of the pandemic and it would be impossible to continue the learning process Without the availability of this modern technology that can provide the learner with different sources of knowledge as shown in the image above.

A Powerful Tool "The Positive Reinforcer"

It is one of the strongest tools the teacher can use to succeed in his/her classroom. It is the reinforcer. The reinforcer in general is a stimulus that increases the likelihood of a particular behavior reoccurs. Whereas the term positive indicates the addition of this stimuli to the student's environment after the desirable behavior. In other words, it rewards that behavior so it is more likely to be repeated. Examples of positive reinforcers are verbal praise or compliment, toy, edible thing, break, having a trip, game, extra grades, tokens, or anything valuable for the student. In this context, we should be careful not to use destructive reinforcers which reinforces the target behavior, but it has other side effects as well. The other important point is that we should not confuse positive reinforcers with bribery. An example of bribery is when we offer the student a reward for behaving later. Such behavior consequences will never work with the student. The Last point that I want to mention is that it would be ideal if we provide the student with unexpected reinforcers.

Classroom Terror

I watched this video for the first time many years ago when I had not started studying in the education field yet. At that time I considered the behavior of the teacher in the video as an accepted reaction when it happens in one of the developed countries of East Asia where the rules are so sacred. However now after I started my MA in Educational Management, I cannot accept such behavior of any teacher anymore because it simply terrorizes the students in order to keep them under control instead of creating a healthy learning environment and a true way of classroom management. It would be way better if the teacher instead applied the regulations of the institution in such a case and explained what was wrong with the student’s behavior. If the teacher had done that, she would not have lost neither her relationship with the students nor the warm classroom environment.