Is online learning effective? The LearnED Talk spoke to students, parents and teachers to find out
Sravanthi Challapalli
“Eye pain, ear pain, back pain, sitting pain, no concentration” – this is how 12-year-old Ilakhya (name
changed) responds to a question on whether she likes going to school online. Initially, she thought it would be fun to do so but realised she would rather go back to the real classroom than slump in the divan or hunch over the dining table with a smartphone trying to make sense of what is happening in the class. She follows only the Maths class and tries to handle the other subjects on her own, reading the lessons a day before the exam.
Speak to some parents and teachers and it would seem that stories like Ilakhya’s are playing out all
over the world. Speak to some others, and find out that the children are adjusting and doing alright. But there are few stories where it’s not a struggle. There is 17-year-old Abhay (name changed) who studies at a residential school but now at home due to the pandemic, spends a lot of time watching TV and movies, as he had no access to them or to gadgets during school. Twins Sahiti and Itihas, Class IX students in Hyderabad, have not much of a challenge but miss the human contact that a regular school and classes gave them.
Focus on the pros ….
Soni Titus, who teaches Chemistry to Classes 6-11 in Life Valley International School, Kottayam,
says a few children who are determined, focused, organised and systematic are not affected. “They
prefer this style of teaching as more information is given to them.” In her school, teachers record their lectures and upload it on Google Drive. Soni can upload a lot of virtual experiments there. “A video contains much, much more information than a regular class of 40 minutes. The student’s notes are already given to them as a PPT, they can go back and hear the audio. In ordinary class, there’s no replay of the lecture,” she says.
If the student is a slow learner, technology enables them to go over the lecture or the demonstration
several times to grasp the concept. Also, having the children do the experiments themselves with materials easily available at home, she can guide them to observe, reflect and come to conclusions themselves rather than let the lesson be restricted to a onetime affair in the laboratory.
… but there’s no avoiding the cons
Rajshri Kanaiya, a Bangalore based teacher of Geography, says that in a standard classroom, students are willing to share and respond more. Concepts can be taught more thoroughly there. Online, technology plays spoilsport. This hurts the morale of the students and leads to frustration all around, she adds. Also, not all the students have access to sophisticated technology; some have pretty basic means, in which case, the teacher helps out by providing notes. She says that the students miss the co-curricular activities they were enjoying in school.
Both teachers say the children are losing out on the physical interaction that makes it easier to
communicate and provide reassurance.
“In regular school, we can take a break, chat with our friends, but here we’re always in front of the
computers,” says Itihas.
There are twenty-minute breaks between the classes that span five hours, but the lesson continues
to take up five to ten minutes, the children say.
On the teachers’ part, the bane of online classes is screen time. The children are playing games, chat
and are on social media for a long time. “I do get distracted now and then and text my friends,” says
Sahiti. Itihas adds that trust between students and teachers has suffered – in many cases, children
who are stuck in their villages due to the lockdown are genuinely unable to attend class due to network problems but teachers think they are playing truant.
Tech solutions below par: Study
Myths of Online Learning, a study released recently by Azim Premji University (APU), says most of the
digital or ICT (information and communications technology) learning options have proven to be “sub-optimal, pedagogically unsound and inadequate substitutes” for face-to-face interactions. “For school-going children, these have been particularly ineffective due to the deeply intimate nature of learning that is needed in the formative years of schooling,” it observes. The study was conducted among public schools serving over 80,000 students across 26 districts in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Uttarakhand and surveyed 1,522 teachers (1,522 schools) and 398 parents.
The lack of access to devices and infrastructure has led to several children being left out from the learning process. “Emerging evidence also reveals that the endorsement of online learning solutions is often closely tied to the influence of market-based solutions, commercialisation of education, and a lack of belief and investment in the professional capacity of teachers,” it notes.
According to this study, teachers believe the online method has failed to impart any real education.
Seventy per cent of teachers said they could not maintain eye contact with the children, over 90 per cent said there was no meaningful assessment of learning possible in an online class and over 50 per cent said the children were unable to complete assignments.
The digital divide is also a major factor. Almost 60 per cent of the children in these schools cannot access online learning opportunities, the study says. Many parents cannot afford a smartphone; some believe it is unsafe to give their children one. Siblings having to share a device, the difficulty in using apps for online learning and special-needs children being at a further disadvantage in these circumstances have also been pointed out.
Moreover, glitches in technology prevent a smooth teaching and learning experience. Most of the time goes in saying “Hello …, hello!” the study quotes teachers as saying. Attendance is a problem, textbooks are not available and the students are not doing maths exercises as someone should be there with them during that task.
Back to school?
The study adds that teachers wonder how to give individual attention to the children or teach each child in a way they will understand. Chennai-based Rachel/Divya, parent to 16-year-old Leah, says, “The teachers are doing their best but in live classes they get more personalised attention.” The children are also getting restless sitting cooped up inside for so long, she adds. And while the children seem to want to go back to school, the parents are not as ready. “Major missing” is how Sahiti describes the loss of school. Rachel says she will feel comfortable sending her daughter to school only sometime in mid-2021. Contrary to popular belief, the APU study found that almost 90 per cent of parents were keen to send their children to school with the necessary safeguards.
Rajshri, who has 27 years of teaching experience, says working online was a challenging experience for teachers too. Some older teachers have even quit their jobs as they could not do everything expected of them. In fact, this has been a problem elsewhere in the world too. For instance, there are several media reports that say since schools reopened a few months ago in the USA, teachers have been resigning and retiring citing the difficulties tied to remote learning, technology and health concerns.
Soni says the teacher is also at a disadvantage. She gets a break from chores for a few hours when she is in school, but online, she is expected to manage things on the home front as well. Preparing the lessons and the lectures also takes up a huge chunk of time.
S Krishna Prasad, Vice-Principal of Sree Narayana Public School (SNPS) in Elappully, Kerala, says that teachers have to engage the students’ attention. They cannot be “monotonous” or give elaborate explanations as attention spans are short. “They can give them the nutshell and ask them to come prepared to discuss it in the next class,” he says.
Despite everything, Rajshri does not think there is a gap in learning, as the teachers are available to the students at all times. What about tests? “We’ve left it purely at self-assessment, through multiple choice questions based on applications for higher order thinking skills and the average learner,” she says. Prasad of SNPS says evaluation of students based on online exams is unreliable as there is scope for copying and cheating. He recommends spot assessments through multiple choice questions, one-word answers and such.
Here’s another dimension to the issue: Itihas points out that when technology does not cooperate,
they sometimes lose half a mark for errors (of spelling, punctuation and such) that the gadgets or the fickle networks inflict on their test answers!
According to the APU study, the inadequacy of the digital modes adopted by some of the states has led state education departments to adopt more direct teaching-learning processes, with teachers visiting the families and school children, for example, Padhai Tuhar Para (education in your neighbourhood) scheme in Chhattisgarh; Hamara Ghar – Hamara Vidyalaya (our home – our school) in Madhya Pradesh and Vidyagama in Karnataka.
