Teaching-Learning Practice during COVID-19 Phase

Regular Classroom teaching has been under a complete lock-stock-and- barrel following the aggressive outbreak of COVID-19 all across the globe. Like rest of the countries of the world, India too is reeling under the effect of a complete lock-down.

Education sector has seen a surge of online platforms with YouTube being the most chosen platforms among the teachers and educational institutions. Other platforms being used extensively by teachers in exchanging assignments and Study materials are Google Classrooms, School-owned apps & Whatsapp. For live classes Zoom and Google Meet are also in the fray. Now let’s discuss the efficacy of using such tools in facilitating curriculum transaction.

Unlike the Regular classroom, live classes are not very effective, esp in the context of rural and semi-urban localities as these places still bear the brunt of awfully slow internet speed.

Buffering, breaking of teacher’s voice, disruption of the stream time and again are some of the deterrents, which students of such localities are encountering much to their utter annoyance and grievances.

Metros and big cities have relatively much better outcome in so far as live streaming of classes is concerned.

Two-way interaction between a teacher and a students has suffered a setback with online mode of teaching with internet speed being one of the bottlenecks on the way.

Students are texting their queries live to teachers and teachers in –turn are responding to such text queries. This is how the curriculum transaction is going on with the help of YouTube, Google Meet and Zoom. With a better internet speed, the online streaming could have been carried out in disruption-fee manner.

Suggestions

1. Video lectures on YouTube is the best way out. Students can be instructed to text their queries on the video made and on the next video teachers can focus on such text-based queries from students’ end. One video lecture on the content and the next video lecture can be uploaded on the doubts of students.

2. In so far as giving assignments and study materials in the form of text is concerned, Google Classroom is second to none. Unlike Whatsapp, there are very few distractions on Google classroom. All the assignments and study materials are stored systematically according to date and time of assignment given to students. Therefore, teachers can take recourse to this platform as a viable alternative option to Whatsapp, which is all cluttered and unsystematic.

3. In order to boost the interactive skills of students from home-only classes, teachers can ask students to make small podcast on given topics and post them as per the schedule of different teachers. This will ensure that in addition to writing exercise, students can also have some space to resort to speaking activities in order to give fillip to their communication skills.

Verbal communication skills play a pivotal role in so far as cracking interviews of SSC, UPSC, IELTS and TOEFL exams are concerned. Therefore, school must earmark sufficient space for inter-personal oral communication activities in their school calendar.

During COVID phase, they can make a podcast of interviews of their parents, siblings, make documentary on current issues with their own voice-overs or simply make an oral presentation on some topics from social science, science and literature. The point I am trying to highlight here is that they should have some space in their daily timetable for verbal presentation of their syllabus.

To cap it all, Lock-down has completely changed the mode of dissemination of knowledge from face-to-face mode to virtual platform. If the practice continues for another two-months or so, it might produce some couch-potatoes among the students who will fall prey to onscreen addiction and consequently invite some health hazards like poor eye sight, obesity, insomnia and so on. So let us pray to the Almighty God that we tide over this crisis at the earliest and come back to our regular mode of classroom education so that in addition to academics , they will have also some space for physical movement and socializing. Not will their academics, but their interactive skills, physical fitness, leadership skills, skills in games and sports, music and dance will also get shot in arms in regular school education.