Common Challenges of Teachers in Online Teaching & How to Avoid Them
Teaching, a noble profession, comes with a responsibility and duty towards students. Having said that, COVID-19 has forced teaching institutions to go on online platforms for teaching, leaving their traditional classrooms, among many other changes. After all, like life, learning shall continue. However, changing the way of teaching is tough though. On top of that, handling so many students is a hard job.
Although you’ve got the top qualities to be a good teacher, online teaching can make you upside down.
However, for every problem, there’s a solution! Likewise, online teaching challenges also have quick fixes. Here are common challenges faced by teachers in online teaching and ways to avoid them.
- Engagement in The Online Class
Unless thoughtfully designed, online teaching can produce challenges in engaging students, unlike traditionally. Additionally, teachers find it difficult to adopt a new learning platform. Altogether, this makes students passive learners. Although such students may pass their assignments, they don’t make connections with what they’ve learned. They should be able to go through the material appropriately and quickly absorb it.
Solution: Unlike traditional learning, online teaching has ample opportunities to reinforce concepts and engage students. Teachers can prepare a customizable interactive textbook as a teaching strategy. In that, he or she can track the completion of the topic. This way, teachers can introduce new concepts for better understanding and then provide grades on the assignments.
- Personal Connection With Students
In the traditional classroom, teachers can speak to each student individually. That way, they could gauge the perception of students. That creates a personal connection between teachers and students. However, one of the challenges that many teachers have so far faced in online teaching is – students feeling disconnected from their teachers. As well, from their classmates. A gap has been created with teachers failing to understand the strengths and weaknesses of students.
Solution: Employ a communication forum – in this, teachers can communicate with students individually. That will be either during the session or after the same. Apparently, this will bridge the gap between teachers and students at least.
- Assessment Of Assignments
Like engagement and personal connection, assessment is also a crucial part of students teaching. And online teaching causes stress to teachers, especially and students, at times. Hence, when there’s a bunch of assignments, teachers feel strenuous. Additionally, due to minimal conversations between teachers and students, expectations from the students’ performances also vary. In fact, students not completing their projects or assignments is likely possible.
Solution: Teachers must have a knowledge of questions that students might ask in common. And they should be well prepared with the answers. Secondly, you should regularly provide assignments to students; that way, they can easily assess students’ performance.
- Motivation In Students
In online learning, students need to be self-motivated most of the time. A teacher gives his or her best only when students stay motivated. It creates an environment of healthy conversations in the classroom; additionally, it persuades the teacher to bring in more variety in the classroom. Conversely, if students find difficulty staying motivated, they’ll not speak up and have conversations regarding the subject. Over time, those students will lose interest in it.
Solution: This scenario calls for team efforts. Along with teachers, parents are the biggest positive support system. If teachers cordially work with parents, they can keep students motivated. Alternatively, teachers can employ apps that allow students to interact, helping them stay motivated.
- Proper Planning
Though the way of learning is changed, the course remains the same. With traditional teaching, the time commitment wasn’t an issue. Converting them into an online format is a difficult job for teachers. In online schooling, teachers require time for proper planning and techniques to deliver to the students. Plus, because online teaching has now become the “new normal”, teachers are taking more time to prepare their content than before. Also, if students delay submitting their assignments, teachers are overloaded with extra work.
Solution: If teachers aren’t able to prepare on time, they can build a good rapport with students by communicating politely and in a fun way. This will help teachers to keep the students motivated in the online classroom. Furthermore, you can set reminders for project delivery in your learning management system and send them to your students one week before the submission.
Conclusion
Students are the future of our nation. And for teachers, it not only requires effort but also big hearts to help shape little minds. Teachers are held more responsible toward young buds with teaching jobs high in demand. However, a lot of trial and error is going on for online teaching. So, if you get stuck anywhere or come across any of the above hurdles, make sure you follow the provided solutions. It’s because great teachers are aware of the shortcomings, and they work on improving them.
