Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, all schools across Ontario have chosen to re-open. Most high schools are only open every other day or for half-days, but many students and parents are troubled nonetheless. Our only alternative is online learning, which many people are concerned about since it was haphazardly implemented for most of the second semester of the 2019-2020 school year. Yet school boards have opted for either fully online classes and a hybrid of in-class and online. So what needs to happen in order for online learning to be as effective as in-class learning?
Student Motivation
The first main problem with online learning last year was that the work was mostly optional, since marks assignments could not lower your mark for the class. This meant that if you were happy with your marks going into March Break, you were able to stop doing any work, without it affecting your mark at all.
Another reason many students stopped working is because of how it was distributed. For the most part, the work for the day or even for the whole week was posted in the mornings on a Google Classroom and students would just have to hop on, read some documents or watch pre-recorded videos, and then complete worksheets. This approach to schoolwork is boring for most, and so many students decided not to do it.
Limited real-time communication between teachers and students is also an issue. This was partially resolved by around May or June when many teachers started holding face-to-face meetings, but these were often just for checking in, only happened a few times a week, and most students didn’t feel the need to attend as not a lot was covered during these times.
For online learning to work this year, and for students to feel motivated to participate and do the work, the majority, if not all of online learning will have to be done through video calls, so that kids can watch/participate in lessons live, instead of just reading instructions posted on a Google Classroom.
Attendance and accountability
In addition, to create accountability, attendance should be taken the same way as in-person school, so that kids will have to attend. This does, however, bring up the question of how to ensure that the kids are staying at their computers and are actively paying attention.
In the previous school year, the teachers who chose to do video calls with their classes were given very specific instructions. The children were not allowed to have their cameras on. So even if a student was logged in to the meeting, there was no way to tell whether they were staying at their computer or simply turning it on and then doing something else. The only way to make sure kids stay at their computers is to have them turn on their cameras. However many parents have a problem with this, related to privacy concerns.
So another method to ensure attendance would be by active participation. Teachers could constantly ask questions to the kids and have them answer, either verbally or in a chat, although this would massively slow the lesson down because waiting for each kid to participate will take a very long time.
Technological issues
The next problem is that not every student has a computer or internet access at home, so many relied on working at school or a library. But neither of those are viable options any more. So to ensure equity, school boards would have to provide computers and ways to access the internet for any student who needs it. But this would come at a very large cost; although many schools have many available laptops that they could distribute to students who need them, it would be difficult to keep track of all the computers, ensuring that everyone has one, and making sure they all work.
There is another problem, however, which wasn’t seen in last year’s online learning effort due to the lack of video calls: the technological aspect. Almost everyone who has participated in online activities, notably video calls, online video games, or even just using a slow computer should be familiar with lag. Lag is the term for when there is a noticeable delay between a user’s inputs and their outputs. Examples of this are when video games freeze or the frame rate slows down, or in video calls when a person’s resolution drops or their voice cuts in and out. On small scales it isn’t usually too bad. But have 30 people connect to each other on a video call, and any small issue will be magnified.
On a larger scale, millions of students and teachers across the province all using the same program, will inevitably slow servers down. An example of this is when the Toronto Blue Jays made it to the ALCS, or the semi-finals, in 2016. Because many of the games took place in the afternoon, during the school day, many teachers decided to put on the games on the projectors in the classrooms. Almost all of them were using the same site to stream the games, and because of all of the unexpected traffic, the websites were suffering from huge lag and crashing frequently for the entire series. The same thing will likely happen with video calls for schools if the servers of whatever program is used, whether it will be Zoom, Google Meet, etc. In addition, many students and teachers are using outdated computer hardware or software, which means that the programs will not be able to run as well on their computer, and this will inevitably increase lag.
All of these problems are concerning to parents and students because if not resolved, the quality of online learning will be subpar compared to learning done in class. There are, however, solutions to some of these problems. Firstly, marks have to count; if marks don’t count for anything, then students won’t try as hard. Next, teachers should be available throughout the whole school day for communication. If students have questions or concerns, they should not be restricted to asking them during a class in front of everybody. They should be able to send an email at a different time other than during lessons, and still have their question answered.
Despite hopes that online learning would be very similar to in-class learning, as it stands right now, it is very far from it. The school boards will surely need to see how it works throughout the year as COVID-19 numbers fluctuate, and adapt accordingly.
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