How to Overcome Online Teaching Challenges?

Isn’t everything going online these days? You name it, you have it. Right from the books, medicine, food, shelter – everything (literally everything) can be bought, sold or subscribed online. 90s was good for me. It really worked well. Back then, the internet was just an option. It wasn’t a barrier really. Guess I’m still an old school.

I never liked the idea of teaching over the internet. I am a middle-school teacher who has taught for more than 15 years. Throughout my life, I used a whiteboard and a marker. Do you expect me to change overnight? I’m trying to change my perception though. It took me time to figure the right way.

I’ll share my views on “How to Overcome Online Teaching Challenges” here:

Verbal Agreements

I encourage the idea of classroom teaching. There isn’t any comparison around. In one word, it is legit.

I understand technology is literally killing barriers. Teaching a kid 70 km away from school wasn’t possible earlier. The Internet made education accessible to everyone – in several different formats. It is cost-effective, comes handy, and above all has only a few limitations.

The first shortfall in online tutoring is that:

You aren’t aware of anything around you. The ability to control the environment isn’t an option with online tutoring. For someone like me, who has always been into a classroom of 45 odd kids, the online classroom would appear like a grave layout.

What to do now?

Well, I devised my own way here. Today, I keep asking for verbal agreements while teaching. This ensures that kids’ understanding is in tune with my expectations. They respond more and remain active throughout the session. Student engagement in online learning is an important step to transfer knowledge successfully.

In Time Buffer

This style of teaching completely relies on the Internet. There is nothing much which can be done here.

Ask students to join in at least 15 minutes before the classes begin. The internet won’t work at times or some random student may be facing audio issues. An in-time buffer is very helpful. It helps to quickly resolve small issues that we face in online tutoring. Also read, The Changing Trends in Teaching Strategies.

Explanatory Presentation

I still remember those old golden days of my middle-school teaching. The joy of checking those colorful chart papers, handmade presentations, and models remains uncrowned for me.

There is a reason why we ask students to write. Psychology says you remember more if you hand-write things. Today handwritten assignments are getting replaced with classroom PPTs and word documents. This secular posthumous practice is completely debatable. There are further issues too.

We used to offer assignment-help face-to-face. How can a tutor providing online assignment help ever read the non-verbal cues that reveal whether a student has really understood the concept or not?

As a matter of fact, technology is disrupting education. You can’t particularly blame anyone for this. It comes across as a challenge for someone who has been involved in the organic way of tutoring.

Initially, I used to get baffled but today I feel that the present situation can be easily overlooked.

I encourage students to present their assignments before submitting. So far, it has helped me resolve their problems in time.

Supervision & Evaluation

If you remember your old school days, our teachers used to evaluate results and share feedback on a one-to-one basis with us. One-to-one feedback drives response. It has always helped teachers in concluding the evaluation of the student.

It isn’t possible online. This is a bane at educator’s end too.

Don’t despair yourself. Rather than criticizing the whole system, I found a way to deal with it.

I share a detailed feedback card with every student over the email. The performance evaluation card is broken down into the strengths, weakness, opportunity, and threats (SWOT Analysis) for the pupil. I critically analyze every aspect of his/her performance. However, it remains just a feedback until the student actually acts upon it and improves. Do you want to know How can Teachers improve the Educational Motivation of Students? Click here.

Bad Links

This can be really embarrassing at times. Offline classroom teaching never demanded such activities in the first place.

It is a good practice to open and check the URLs before sending them to any student. Post sharing the email, demand an acknowledgment from the student. It will certify the email delivery.

Today, every school/college is adopting the online way of tutoring because of its sequential benefits. Early educators would have wondered that online teaching will be much laid-back and easy in comparison. It isn’t the case at all. It is very prompt, professional and organized.

Online education is coherent. A lot of developments are going across the world to make it more adaptive. What do you think about online tutoring? Share your opinions with us in the Comments section.

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