By Teo Jing Kai
The transformational landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic permeates all walks of our life, including the education domain. The attempt to contain the coronavirus has brought about a series of temporary measures, including school closures and home-based learning, impacting over 1.3 billion students around the world. Much has been written on how the pandemic nature has brought about excruciating learning challenges for both students and parents. But, how is like from the perspective of a teacher?
Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the transition towards bringing interactive learning from the classroom to home-based learning has presented its own set of challenges to teachers too. As the advent of increased technology permeates our day-to-day lives, the learning means and medium on how students acquire knowledge are also fundamentally changing. These challenging circumstances, including a lack of face-to-face interaction, nonetheless, open new opportunities for teachers to teach effectively — empathy-effective communication.
Empathy
Teaching in such uncertain and disruptive times augment additional stress on both teachers and students. The online mode of instruction presents a different learning atmosphere for students. As the boundaries between work and home blur into almost near homogeneity, this phenomenon necessitates the importance of establishing a motivation-driven learning environment. The learning environment should be one that prides in giving students the ability to control their environment setting and help to shape their motivation to learn.
Tip 1: Start with an introductory activity
The self-determination theory outlines that innate psychological needs shape student’s motivation, one of which is the need for relatedness. For students to internalise lesson content prescribed by teachers, it is vital that students feel connected to both their teacher and their peers, and that connection can start from something small.
Starting with an introductory activity at the start of the lesson allows the teacher to learn more about the interests and understand the student’s perspective. The adoption of a people-oriented approach enables the teacher to communicate that every individual is innately worthy regardless of their behaviour — unconditional positive regard. When students believe their teachers understand or empathise with them, they reported more significant interest in their learning. They also remain more engaged in classroom activities — behaviorally, cognitively, and emotionally. Such a small change will be critical for teachers to build a good rapport with students and foster a positive student-teacher relationship.
Effective
COVID-19 has brought about unprecedented disruptions in the education industry — ranging from the closure of schools, the adoption of online learning, and the inadequate knowledge of digital skills for both students and teachers. These rippling changes call for a critical analysis of how online learning technology can be useful in a post-COVID-19 era.
Tip 2: Use a mix of educational tools
In Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, the theory proposed that intelligence is composed of different dimension modalities. For a student to comprehend the lesson content presented, various forms of engagement can be used to promote effective learning. With home-based learning, a complementary mix of educational tools, physical and technology tools can be used.
Teachers should capitalise on presenting information differently by following the student’s preferred way of understanding knowledge. One way to develop visual-spatial intelligence among students is to design animated videos. The animated videos can help students to visualise and understand the characteristics of magnets. Using video-making tools such as Powtoon and interactive-quiz tools such as Quizizz or Kahoot, technology offers a visual-interactive experience for students to learn. Another dimension of intelligence is linguistic intelligence — this involves developing verbal acronyms while accounting for the meaning of words. Acronyms are a way for students to remember chunks of information.
Tip 3: Effective Questioning
With home-based learning, teachers now faced with an extraordinary task of engaging students across the virtual online platform. The challenge lies in attracting student’s attraction and encouraging them to remain engaged. A useful tool to promote involvement is to facilitate effective questioning via Bloom’s taxonomy and scaffolding.
To ensure learner’s engagement, teachers can start small by asking students questions relating to remember or understand. Starting with little task and achievements helps to scaffold the student’s conceptual understanding and confidence in answering questions. Higher-ordered questions such as analysing and evaluating can then be introduced to the student. One caveat presenting higher-ordered questions is that adequate teacher support should be provided to ensure that the student can complete the assignment and not feel overwhelmed or anxious about it.
Communication
Communication is a reciprocal appreciation between the relationship between a student and a teacher. For students, communicating feedback is a useful tool to provide students with information to understand if their method of constructing knowledge is accurate and valid. Feedback is closely interlinked with learning; it gives learners corrective information and indicates learners on their level of competence.
Tip 4: Feedback Input
Home-based learning may offer a different medium for feedback input to be shared compared to in-person lessons; however, home-based learning also presents new feedback opportunities. Online technology tools such as Mentimeter and Slido enables students to submit feedback anonymously, without the trace of their name. The anonymous feature may also encourage students to be frank and less afraid to share their ideas and thoughts with the teacher.
The online nature of learning has been dubbed by some educators of a “double-edged sword.” Researchers from different education institutions currently investigate the ongoing debate on the effectiveness of home-based learning. COVID-19 may have brought new challenges for the teacher to curate innovative ways to engage students; nevertheless, this pandemic also presents a new avenue for educators to expand the learning horizons of students and the education system. Educating may be an arduous journey, but it requires excellent care, dedication, and great responsibility.
