The Benefits and Pitfalls of Teaching Online

One teacher in his classroom, teaching his students from his laptop

This academic year has been a tough one for students, with the anti-government protests disrupting classes for a few months, and then now the coronavirus. I feel especially for those transitioning from primary to secondary school, and those in university, who are struggling to learn under these stressful circumstances.

So far schools are closed until March 16, but it could be extended further...

My cousin who is a primary teacher on Hong Kong Island has had it pretty good -- he just creates assignments online and then his students have to complete them. I asked him if he had to mark their work and he said, well they can check the answers in the answer key... how are students supposed to learn from that?!

This has been a tough academic year for students in HK

I'm glad I'm not a student in his class...

Then I have a friend in her early 50s at the gym who teaches English at one of the universities and she was stressed out learning how to use the software to teach her students online in real time. She has over 30 years' experience teaching in a classroom, but not from a screen from her laptop.

She had to go to the university to teach her classes online because she doesn't have a good enough internet connection at home, and there are IT guys to help her out if she has a technical problem.

However, she found it frustrating that students wouldn't turn on their cameras on their laptops so that she could see all of them or get any reaction from them because they were too shy to ask questions or didn't care to.

It's hard for her to know if they understood what she was teaching them because they hardly gave her any feedback either by voice or in the chat box.

But another post secondary instructor at another local university told me getting feedback online can work if you know everyone in the class and gently tease the students to show themselves online.

Learning and teaching online has had its benefits and pitfalls

"Some of them are embarrassed that their flat looks messy so I tell them they can put up a virtual background behind them. I do that too," she told me, saying she likes to put up pictures of space with an alien poking its head behind her.

"During one of our classes, one of the student's mom popped her head into his room and demanded that he go downstairs right away to pick up some toilet paper! she said in Cantonese much to his embarrassment," she recalled. Everyone in the class laughed.

After teaching them for a bit she breaks them up into groups and as the instructor she can "sit in" on each group without them knowing she is here. She said that they are all talking among themselves excitedly because they haven't seen each other for a while and were craving conversations with their peers.
 However she admits teaching online only works for certain courses, and so she needs to have a backup plan just in case not everyone is on the same page because they were unable to download a software program so that ended that class prematurely.

Teaching online has become an interesting forced experiment to see if the teachers are able to use the technology to teach, and if the students are able to absorb their lessons without having to be in a physical classroom.

Perhaps schools and universities will look into further developing this area of teaching (to gain more income) depending on which courses, as some are more effective online than others. And for teachers, it's been an experience to be in front of the laptop and being "camera ready" as we say in the TV business -- looking professional -- at least from the waist up.