Implementation: online teaching

Our second session was on teaching in a virtual environment. Prior to the start of our program in OAMK, I had another brief opportunity to get familiar with online teaching. A year ago I went through a training “How to teach online” of the biggest online English language school in Russia, which is the leader of online language teaching in all countries of the post Soviet space, including Belarus.  The training I got from there largely acquainted me with the principles of online teaching in the field of TEFL. The company developed their own software that is very user friendly and interactive.  The communication between teacher and students happens on the platform through the chat window, whiteboard application, with webcam always turned on, as justified by the company, to allow a student feel the presence and support of a teacher at all times, and for a teacher to see the student’s body language and see when he is really confused and struggling in order to step in. All the exercises (reading, listening, speaking, etc.) are on the platform. When a student does a restricted practice exercise (written exercise), the mistakes are detected by the platform, which promotes prompt self-correction. The company is very strict with TTT (Teacher Talking Time), the teacher is not supposed to talk more than is needed to give instructions to a student and clarify and direct, when student encounters problems, therefore the teacher is a facilitator of the learning process, not the jar that fills the mug.  The teachers in the company belong to two teams: planning team and teaching team. The lesson plans for all the topics and lessons are prepared by the planning team and uploaded onto the platform. The teaching team may use the already prepared plans and own materials depending on the needs and requests of students, which makes it very student-focused. The experience from that school showed me that the online teaching and learning can be very activating, effective, and student focused. Moreover it can be very convenient as students learn from the comfort of their homes without the need to make a commute after a long day at work or school.

When we were preparing our session on the topic of methods used in virtual environment, my contribution was about the methods used in a classroom and how they can or cannot be used in a virtual environment, what methods can be used in synchronised and unsynchronized teaching. When preparing, I couldn’t help but thinking about my short experience in the aforementioned online language school, what we are doing now in Adobe Connect and the methods researched and compared within the context of the vocational and higher education. When we participate in our teaching sessions, whatever information I receive I try to connect to my professional field. Not all methods that can be used in vocational education in a virtual classroom, as our AC classrooms for example, can be used in a virtual language teaching context. Lecture or webinar, for example, cannot be used in teaching a language, because, in the contemporary at least language teaching methodology, a teacher cannot do lectures or lengthy presentations on the language simply because students do not by all means benefit from language presentations, but only from the opportunities to play with the language, practice it.

3 weeks ago I myself participated in a Finnish language workshop, where the teacher chose a lecture format for 3-hour presentation on the topic of verb rections. At the end of the lecture the students were given names of the exercise books, which we could obtain from amazon to practice the material from the lecture. Have I learned how to use any of the dozens of rections presented in the lecture in my speech or writing during these 3 hours? – No. I left the classroom with more confusion about the rections than I came in with. Therefore, my strong belief is that, the appropriate way of presenting new language material would be by presenting context and examples, facilitating students’ guided discovery of the underlying theoretical rules and providing abundant opportunities for practice. A teacher in a classroom facilitates the students’ language and meaning discoveries, not simply transmits the theory.

If we explore online group teaching, contemporary vocational methods and language teaching methods have a lot in common. Group work methods are preferred in facilitating the active learning and therefore deeper approaches to learning. Pair and group work are essential in CLT and CLL (communicative language teaching and communicative language learning). It is rather challenging to implement group working methods online that ideally require physical movement or being all present in one physical space, for example learning cafe, presentation walk. However, there are certain methods that can be used successfully online, as project-based learning, inquiry learning, participants teach, discussions, stimulating writing assignments, mind maps. For the latter two we can, for example, send students to use web tools such as Padlet or coggle or mindmup, etc. Before we use any digital tool to implement a method we need to plan our lesson taking into consideration whether the students are familiar with the tool and if they are not, how much time it can take from the lesson to familiarize them with it, especially in virtual setting, when we cant be physically there to demonstrate efficiently where to go and what to do.

 In order to work in a virtual environment a teacher should be digitally literate and knowledgeable. We need to know and be ready to use a variety of tools that are available and know what tool will suit best to accompany the method we use in achievement of the set learning outcomes. In the digital age or, as team Bastu pointed it out, experience age we live in, its not so easy to keep track of the new tools and apps that are constantly appearing. However, the teacher should aspire to regularly update their knowledge and in the very least try to use the most successful and widely used tools, as for example, in language teaching Facebook, WhattsApp, Twitter, Quizzlet, Kahoot are nowadays preferred and used by teachers worldwide.

As it was discussed during Bastu presentation, virtual learning has certain challenges compared to traditional contact teaching. First of all, teachers still prefer traditional classroom settings and are more prepared to work within classroom setting. In my Cambridge university training this past summer we had 18 trainee teachers. When our tutors asked us, whether we would like to work in a classroom setting in the future or online, none of the trainee teachers answered, that they would like to work online. The major challenge, I guess, its very hard to help and guide the student in a virtual setting, when he is struggling. Without the webcam, the teacher would be completely lost in reading the body language of the students, facial expressions that could tell us that the student is stuck and needs us. Second of all, on the other hand, virtual setting takes away a lot from teacher’s rapport as well, our students cannot feel to the same extent the support and guidance and encouragement in the same way they can feel it in the contact teaching. Its harder to be out there forour students. Thirdly, being in front of a computer and speaking into a microphone takes away that social component we are exposed to in a classroom when sitting at the table talking to the person/people around us. Social context for many people is crucial component in studying. For example, in the current context I’m teaching in, with most students being quite recent immigrants, certain people do not come to learn the language primarily but come to class to communicate and be around other people and not be home alone. Virtual teaching and learning will probably never be able to cover for that missing aspect, as there are people who simply need people. Especially if we talk about students from collectivist cultures, with people closely dependent on group effort and collaboration, as contrasted to individualistic cultures, where people would rather prefer to work home alone at the computer.  Also we need to keep in mind, that virtual learning and online course design is mostly possible in the developed countries. In the third world countries the possibilities of virtual learning are not rather tangible. 

However, if we do live in developed society as Finland and plan to build our teaching careers here, we need to be aware that virtual classroom is the future of learning and be prepared to face the demands of it, which includes making our virtual classrooms safe to study in, which was the topic of Owl team’s presentation. Working in an online environment we need to always keep in mind cyber ethics, cyber safety and security. As professionals we need to participate in various webinars, seminars and workshops organized by the institutions we work at or external bodies in order to keep ourselves updated on the new trends, regulations and safety issues in virtual environment. We need to educate our students about cyber hygiene, how to stay safe in the internet, how to manage problems that might arise in a virtual setting, how to wisely use and store personal information on the internet, so its not violated. We need to also promote equality in our virtual learning space, which means that we cannot discriminate against our students’ preferences for online tools and platforms we use, we need to democratically approach the choice of methods and tools for learning, taking into account students’ views and preferences.  As teachers we need to be fully prepared to handle the situations of cyber bullying just as much as we need to do it in the actual classroom. We need to be law obedient when creating and using the materials in our virtual classrooms with the regard to copyright laws, seeking permission from and acknowledging the authors whose visual work we might use for own educational purposes.

One of the major advantages of online learning and teaching is that it gives unlimited opportunities for distance learning and teaching. We as teachers can teach from the comfort of our homes in Oulu students from China for example  or anywhere else in the world. Taking courses online saves travelling expenses and time and adds comfort of studying or teaching at home. Online teaching in the field of English teaching is getting more and more popular. The TEFL job hunting websites are full of job postings of private online language schools for example in Russia, China and the US. After a busy day in the office people don’t want to commute for 2 hours to another side of Moscow or Shanghai for a 45 min English lesson, they’d rather open their laptops and have this 45 min session from their homes. The teaching and learning of the future will be carried out in the way that suits the students’ needs and lifestyle most, and most likely it will take place in a digital space.

Finding information for this session was not difficult. There’s plenty of information on teaching methods everywhere. The more challenging part was to decide what traditional methods can work online and what can’t. The members of our group made a common effort to brainstorm on this and come up with the final product we presented in our presentation. However, this session was the one that wreaked havoc within our group. The conflict arose since one team member was not committed to work as a team member and contribute in the same way as the others did. It resulted for this team member being voted out from the team. It was a sour experience, however, there was a silver lining to it, as after that we sat down with all the members and created the list of rules everyone had to follow precisely from that moment on. That list of rules made our teamwork more efficient and the group effort more productive and organized.

Main points to take away:

• The virtual classroom is the present and future of education. It can promote a´ctive learning and be student focused just as much as the actual classroom.

• Virtual setting has its pros and cons. The main is that the learning is possible without depending on time and place. Programs can be flexible, and students can work when its suits their schedules best.
  The main con for me is that virtual setting removes the important social and communication aspect from learning, the advantages of everyone being and working together in the same space, and for the teacher the opportunity to realise when a student really needs guidance and help.

• Most of the methods that are used in the contact teaching can be used in the online teaching apart from those that require physical movement and being present physically in certain space. Lecture is the one method I personally cannot use teaching language online or in a class.

• When we teach online we need to provide safety for our students, educate them about virtual security and communicate the laws and regulations used in the online space.

• In order to meet the societal demand as teachers we need to constantly educate and develop ourselves to remain digitally literate and know the tools that are used and are appearing in the field of education.