Online education has always been very popular courtesy of the growing demand for English as a second language. For over 20 years now, businesses have been rolling out English as second language lessons online.
But online teaching poses quite a few challenges. Let’s talk about some of these challenges.
Passive students
Having a passive student in the class can be quite a challenge. A teacher would rather have an over-energetic student than a passive student. The ‘energy’ of such a student, when channelled well, can make it a good learning experience.
A passive, uncommunicative student on the other hand is far more challenging. The passive student usually has a confidence issue having a fear of being exposed in front of the teacher or fellow classmates (in a group lesson). The best way of getting such a student to open up is to get him/her to talk about his favourite sport, food etc., expressing himself/herself in short sentences – ‘ I like football’, I like ice cream’ etc.
Differential abilities in group lessons
Group lessons and virtual classrooms have become quite common. A challenge in such lessons is the differential abilities of students. Getting all students to be on the ‘same page’ can be quite daunting. Differential abilities can be best handled by a ‘differential speed’ of instruction.
Isolation
Learning alone from home can be lonely. The excitement and buzz of being in a classroom are clearly missing which negatively impacts the student’s interest to learn. A few ways of handling this is creating group activities like role plays, using pictures, realia and TPR (Total Physical response).
Lack of motivation & interest
A corollary to the earlier point is lack of interest & motivation largely due to the student being alone with plenty of distractions in his/her home environment. This can be addressed by using feature-rich custom-built learning platforms that support graphics, pictures, videos, etc. all of which make for an engaging learning experience for the student.
Technology
Technology is both a boon and a curse. It’s a boon obviously because it allows long-distance learning. It can be a curse because the reliability of network connections can be a serious impediment to learning. Additionally, some of the ESL service providers deliver instruction on their own proprietary learning platforms which are resource hungry &require basic threshold upload/download speeds which are not always available in all parts of the world.
Conclusion
These challenges notwithstanding, long-distance learning is here to stay. It had gained sufficient momentum on its own because of geographically dispersed students. And now with COVID 19 upon us, the dictates of the ‘new normal’ compel us to come up with innovative ways to effectively address these challenges.
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