Do you miss the online class for a few years？

Original serious demographic gossip group serious demographic gossip

Author | Wang Han Ph.D. student in sociology, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

Editor | Zhao Menghan Associate Professor, Population and Development Research Center, Renmin University of China

After the outbreak of COVID-19, all aspects of our lives have been greatly impacted, and education is also an area that has been deeply influenced and changed. Due to the demand of prevention and control, face-to-face teaching was forced to stop. In order to solve the teaching problems of all kinds of students, especially those in the basic education stage, an upsurge of online teaching has been set off around the world since 2020.

Our country has also responded quickly in developing online teaching. As early as January 29, 2020, the Ministry of Education issued a notice: advocating the use of online platforms to achieve "suspension of classes without stopping teaching and learning", so as to gradually restore the order of education and teaching. Subsequently, major universities, primary and secondary schools responded to the call and began to implement online teaching. Although offline teaching was also carried out during the slow epidemic, it was not until this year that offline campus teaching was basically completely restored. It should be said that the implementation of online teaching not only protects the health of teachers and students, but also minimizes the impact of the epidemic on teaching activities.

Of course, the emergence and application of anything new has a complicated impact. There are many difficulties and challenges, but it also brings innovation and hope. With the small series, we will sort out and summarize the influence and enlightenment brought to us by the online courses in the next three years in stages.

Chapter 1

Past lives of online class

As a new teaching method, Internet teaching has two main ways: live teaching and recorded teaching. Live teaching is the real-time classroom teaching and interaction with the help of the network platform, such as the popular Zoom abroad, the Tencent conference commonly used in domestic universities, and all kinds of nails that are collectively scored low by primary school students. Live teaching is equivalent to "moving" the classroom to the network platform. Recording and broadcasting teaching means uploading course videos and related materials made in advance on the network platform for learners to view and learn by themselves. The pioneer of recording and broadcasting teaching is the famous Coursera, and there are similar platforms in China, such as Netease Open Class and China University MOOC.

In fact, before the epidemic, Internet teaching had a broad audience in China, mainly concentrated in college students and adult self-learners. Online courses are widely used in all kinds of postgraduate entrance examinations, overseas examinations and civil service examinations, which makes large-scale training and teaching possible. When Xiao Bian was preparing to go abroad for the exam n years ago, he participated in the GRE full-course and braille class of an institution. At that time, YY voice platform was adopted for online teaching.

Compared with adult learners, students in the basic education stage had less opportunities to contact online teaching before the "online class tide". For basic education, classroom education is not only a form of imparting knowledge, but also an important place for students to make friends and complete socialization. Therefore, compared with the online teaching of graduate students like Xiaobian, students and teachers in primary and secondary schools have encountered many problems in the process of accepting online teaching.

Chapter 2

Difficulties and challenges in online courses

The first challenge that online classes bring to teachers and students in primary and secondary schools is the technical problem. First of all, in terms of network and equipment, some students can’t get a stable network connection due to economic constraints, or they don’t have computers at home. Many students use mobile devices to attend online classes, which may damage their eyesight because of the small screen. In terms of acceptance, primary school students’ acceptance is greater than that of high school students, which may be related to the complexity of the teaching content.

Teachers also have similar network and equipment problems, but what teachers reflect more is their unfamiliarity with teaching software and lack of live broadcast experience. How to organize teaching and interaction in virtual environment is a big challenge for teachers, especially for older teachers, who need to spend more time getting familiar with and applying new technologies. The research points out that most primary and secondary school teachers have negative emotions such as "nervousness and anxiety" when they just turn to online teaching. After using it for a period of time, with the improvement of teachers’ mastery of new technologies, their self-confidence in online teaching has also improved significantly. Technology-related problems are obvious in the initial stage of online course application. With the increase of familiarity, most of the problems have been solved.

Compared with technical problems, the quality of online teaching is the focus of attention. In a nationwide survey of online classes in primary and secondary schools, most parents said that they didn’t recognize the effect of their children’s learning. The main reason was that parents thought that their children’s autonomous learning ability was poor, and they could not effectively supervise and restrain their children because the teachers were not present. Common problems such as absent-mindedness, inattention in listening, and inattention in completing homework. On social media, Xiao Bian also saw a post. A teacher opened the teaching software to check the homework, only to find that the homework photos uploaded by the students were net maps, and all the students uploaded the same photo. What’s even more outrageous is that in order to avoid the teacher’s discovery, some students added different filters to the photos, and when they saw the students’ "Sao operation", the teacher also said that he was speechless.

The classroom in colleges and universities needs more interaction and discussion between teachers and students, while in online courses, teachers and students lack opportunities for face-to-face communication. The form of online teaching is like a "enough paper" for communication and interaction. Although it is only a thin layer, it is difficult to attract students to break it in class. Without asking to turn on the camera, many students are confused, lying down and listening to classes while walking, and the learning effect is naturally not good.

In addition, due to the differences of students’ family environment and family relationship, online teaching will amplify the influence of family background on students. Children from wealthy families will have a better learning environment and a better learning effect than children from low-income families. Therefore, how to improve the teaching quality of online teaching for students in compulsory education stage is a subject worth studying in the future.

Chapter 3

Surprises and opportunities brought by online courses

The popularity of online teaching has promoted the development of internet teaching technology, innovated teaching methods and promoted the development of various online teaching platforms and software. As a nail, the school-based function is convenient for teachers to check and correct homework and improve teaching efficiency. In the process of developing online courses, teachers have innovated teaching methods and accumulated teaching experience supported by new technologies.

Although some students are even more reluctant to participate in interaction in online classes, due to the absence of the Internet, some students who are usually silent in the classroom can participate in classroom interaction more actively after switching to the Internet platform, which is also a pleasant surprise in online teaching.

In the process of online teaching, parents’ participation in their children’s education has increased significantly. Due to the absence of teachers, parents assume the role of supervision and management of their children, which gives many parents who are usually busy with their work and less involved in their children’s studies an opportunity to get to know their children better. In the process of supervising and tutoring children’s homework, the interaction between parents and children has also increased significantly, which is helpful to improve family relations (of course, when the academic performance is not good, it will also have the opposite effect).

The popularity of online courses has also greatly enriched Internet educational resources. In the past, some teaching resources that were difficult to retrieve on the Internet can now be easily found on various platforms, which will help reduce the cost of education and give everyone a more equal opportunity to obtain educational resources. Some things that you used to have to take remedial classes can now be found on the Internet. At the same time, the online teaching resources have realized "paperless" teaching and learning, which is conducive to saving resources and protecting the environment.

More importantly, the popularity of online courses is a new opportunity for friends who are interested in lifelong learning and improve themselves through self-study. For example, on Coursera, you can hear courses from top universities in the world, such as Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley, and most of them are provided free of charge. If your English is not very good, there are many Chinese Coursera courses for you to choose from in Netease open class. The bridge of the internet allows many people who have no chance to study abroad to dream of famous schools. The popularity of online courses is a great boon for lifelong learners.

To sum up, although online education has encountered some difficulties and challenges in the initial stage of application, it is very valuable in the long run. Online teaching not only promotes the innovation of teaching technology, but also greatly enriches educational resources; It greatly reduces the cost of receiving education, is conducive to the popularization and sinking of knowledge, and improves the overall quality of the people. Therefore, in the future, as educators, we should pay more attention to the value of online education and focus on solving the problems found in the teaching process, so that online education can benefit a wider group.

References:

Pokhrel, S., & Chhetri, R. (2021). A literature review on impact of COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning. Higher education for the future, 8(1), 133-141.

Zhang Huirong, Zhu Yuqiong, Nianchuang, & Xiong Zhangxiao. (2020). Online teaching in primary and secondary schools under major epidemic: opportunities, challenges and countermeasures. Curriculum. Teaching methods, 40(5), 58-63.

Tang Xueping,&Li Chen. (2021). Analysis of public awareness of online teaching in primary and secondary schools during the COVID-19 epidemic. Distance education in China.

Zhang Binglin, Fu Rui,&Li Dingding. (2020). Rational Thinking on Webcast Teaching in Post-epidemic Period. Curriculum. Textbook. Teaching Method, 40(6), 73-80.

Original title: "Do you miss the online class for three years? 》

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