What are students missing in virtual learning?

There is a lot that students are missing out in virtual learning from their endless gossips to eating the lunches in the first period. There are definitely some advantages as the classes have become more

1. Student Centered — Lot of distractions have been reduced in the online classes and the students are getting the focus in the class.

2. Project Based — They are expected to do a lot of work by themselves, they have less instructions and more freedom to go about their assignments.

3. Self Management- They are learning to self manage of lot of things by themselves as they do not have a companion to learn from like in a usual classroom.

There are at the same time a lot of things that are missing but there are possible ways in which teachers and students can work together to fill the gaps.

Socialisation- I often wonder if socialisation can ever be replaced by the online education, specially kids who do not have siblings to talk and play. Parents need to come up with family games to give them that experience and also teachers can plan activities that connect students like complete a story game, working on the white board together, sharing and seeing others work as well.

Workload — The workload can be given to students keeping in mind they have other subjects to do and they need a lot of motivation to sit for long hours doing a lot of homework.

Fatigue — Fatigue is quiet expected as students need to sit in one place for long hours and missing on the friendly exchanges that students generally have in class. So they need to be checked on now and then and instead of asking them to do their homework they should be understood and encouraged.

Mental Health and Well being — If mental health and well being is taken care then everything will fall in place in eventually, the students need to be active users with communication.

Citizenship — There should be sessions in class to listen to others, discuss issues and give opinion. discuss topics around wastage, pollution, food etc.

Emotional Intelligence- Students need to be taught how to manage their emotion, discussing their emotions through activities. Students draw or write about feelings, they express their needs in class.

Co-operation — Teaching co-operation by waiting for other students to join the class, waiting as other students respond. If possible making groups through zoom and encouraging peer to peer sharing.

Health and Well being — Teacher and students needs emotional support, there are high chances where some students would have got dis-connected, they are unable to cope up. They are bored and feel lost. Here Self managing tricks can come handy. Teach students to use mind maps to identify the gaps, this helps students to build self awareness. One pager activity where students can summarize what is taught or in a they write about a given topic.

Familiarity — Students need to get the sense of familiarity, they need teachers to interact, ask questions, compliment them and create that safe environment where they can speak openly. Its more about something where students can relate not just watch videos.

Community: Reproducing the real environment is not possible but creating an organic environment is important for kids to communicate, share ideas in a common platform. Teachers can build an organic support network to discuss and share ideas. Texting is also a good idea to have a platform to talk to each other it removes the hassle of setting up your computer. In Japan there is a culture of meeting the colleagues in the morning where people share there how their day would like, the managers shares some important information. Which can be easily replicated through texting in whats app or other messaging tool.

Access to education- for all is the most important thing, educational technology is not just toys for rich people it should be available to all. Internet not being accessible to all the communities can create a huge gap in children’s education. We should try to reach out to those communities in whatever way possible and offer help. Mobiles are the easiest available gadget and that can be used extensively to reach out to marginalised communities.