A Step-up or Step-down – Online Education

I am speaking with only about 4 weeks of experience in online teaching or other academic activities like project review of senior class students. Yes, I am bold to venture into critiquing the process of online learning. Let me be.

To start off, I grant that online teaching is a boon for edupreneurs (I have defined who they are in my earlier posts). The entrepreneurial part of it is as rewarding as it has been. What about the educating part of it? Let us take a more a detailed look at it.

We have universal tools like Zoom, Google Classroom (GCR), and others of limited range. Every one of them depends on both the teachers and the students having some fancy tools, beginning with the least fanciest of them all, an internet connection of some robustness and/or a mobile phone. But, it is not the hardware that creates problem, but the issue of connectivity. Within about one week of being on the job, I can cite at least two dozen instances of students complaining about their fragile internet connection.

Let us face it. Education in established schools and universities are on the rising curve of exclusiveness, while the demand is for more inclusiveness. I know one student, whose mother is employed in a big enough city where net connectivity is at least OK and COVID-19 is a real danger, but who has been banished to her grandparents’ homestead in an interior rural area in the cause of protecting the student from the scourge of COVID-19, where net connectivity is iffy at best.

I know that the student is sincere, despite having trouble attending scheduled GCR classes – she did near about the best in a course I had the opportunity to teach her in a classroom. The student, in a sense, is between a hard (her mother’s demand that she be safe) and a rock (the demand from the institution that she satisfy the rigours of educational demand) place. Do you pity her? Don’t. I know that she will find a way to not let herself down.

For my class, 121 students have signed up. The first two classes, I could see that about 90 students were plugged in (whether they were listening or not, I cannot answer either way). But, in the subsequent four classes, I have a dedicated set of 50 students, and no more, who attend the classes. I have tried to cajole the absentees through their peers. I have let those who attend know that the task is on their shoulders to make the absentees to come in during the scheduled times. Even if I say so myself, the subject is such that just reading from the class notes or text books is NOT going to help in their recognizing the nuances, much less understanding them.

What is not surprising is that the delivered lectures have to perforce be recorded and made available to the students. I understand the logic behind it – the lofty “no one left out” type of goal. I am all for it. Indeed, I have gone one step further: I have pre-recorded (with a voice-over) the lecture material and have made these available on GCR. But, I have no way of monitoring who are attending my classes and how many are availing that facility. Even if such a facility were to exist, I would end up doing more monitoring work than teaching. Tut, tut ...

The following is a personal shortcoming of mine. While I do not pin the blame on the system, I am not willing to shoulder all of the problems either. I have been told by my students that I am one of the few, possible the only one, who is more energetic at the end of the class than at its start! I tell them that I leave my students exhausted and harvest energy from that pool of exhaustion! They seem to accept my point. This is impossible for me to do as my exhortations to the students to participate more vigorously go unheeded; perhaps my shrill voice has some influence. Unfortunately, my voice cannot break now, at the age of nearly 66 years.

Part of the blame goes to their 12 years of training in the school system – “you raise doubts-cum-questions in class at your own risk.” I, and at least some of my colleagues, have tried to moderate this fear in students, but do not seem to have succeeded to any significant extent.

Teachers are to give one tutorial for every three lectures (for the course I am teaching). The submission date appears to be inviolable in the sense that a late submission would be tagged so. I am glad to inform you that a vast majority of my class has submitted the responses. Now, it is for me to see how much copying has gone on, even knowing that I have no way of substantiating my suspicions. The questions need thinking at a level the students have not been exposed to in the class – though it would be a small step for the students, if only they were attentive in the class. My students know this.

To summarize, online teaching is an opportunity to overcome the limitations of the situation obtained. I appreciate that. But, the vaunted net connectivity leaves much to be desired. The lack of face-to-face interaction does bother me but may be OK for most other teachers. I hold back any further comment on that. About class work, I will come back after I go through perhaps a couple of cycles.

Thanks for your attention.

Raghuram Ekambaram