Distance teaching has become a necessity that no teacher or institute can avoid. There was no other option during the Covid lockdown, but many parents plan to teach their kids online even after the pandemic is over. The schools will one day start again, but the distance learning programs are no longer limited to just higher education.
Educational institutes and teachers have to adapt to the changes and must come up with new ways to provide online education. While many educators find it no problem to teach over the internet, many find this task almost impossible. This difference is due to the level of effort and interaction each subject requires. For example, it won’t be much difficult to teach history over a video call. However, many courses like mathematics, communication skills, and basics of writing require communication too difficult for remote teaching.
Mathematics
Mathematics is one subject that is loved and most hated by students. It not only requires the teacher to explain some complex concepts, but students also have to practice it before they can fully understand them. The teacher usually has to pay attention to each student and take questions while solving problems to clear their confusion. If students are very young, the teacher will have to go to each student and see how they are doing.
He will have to make sure that everyone understands the subject and is able to solve similar problems without any help. This makes mathematics one of the most difficult subjects to teach remotely, but not impossible. There are math workbooks for distance learning that make classes more interactive and practical. These sheets also encourage students to practice at home and make it easy for the teacher to measure their performance.
Communication Skills
How can one teach communication skills when he can’t even communicate properly? The biggest drawback of distance learning is the lack of communication and interaction. Teachers can’t look out for each student as they do in the classroom. They interact with each student separately to see how they are performing.
There have even been surveys where most students voted language and communication subjects to be most difficult to learn online. Teachers have to speak and get students to speak, write and get students to write to teach such subjects. They even have to pay attention to their accent and pronunciation. Furthermore, figures of speech and idioms make it more challenging.
Basics of Writing
Basics of writing are taught to first and second grade kids and adults who are learning a foreign language. This is also one of the biggest challenge for teachers in remote learning as it requires constant attention for each student.
When the teacher introduces a new word, phrase, or sentence the students have to write it following all grammatical rules. Many of them will mistakes and the teacher has to check, correct, and explain it right away before moving forward. Even if students have electronic writing pads, it won’t be easy to check everyone’s work one by one.
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