Teachers' Opinion
Mr Lin – Fuzhou Sixteenth Middle School – History teacher
How was teaching on Ding Ding (China’s Zoom equivalent)?
It is a brand new challenge for us to teach across the screen. Ding Ding has many functions that we are not familiar with. Furthermore, because there is a lack of teacher to student interaction, in the beginning of its use we felt powerless and confused.
However, after a period of online teaching, with the increasing familiarity with teaching tools and experience, more functions could be fully utilised. This had increased the teaching experience but overall, I still prefer face to face teaching.
What are the pros and cons of teaching online?
Pros
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There is more flexibility in regard to teaching time
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We can more effectively implement differentiated teaching. We can target students at different knowledge levels with differentiated teaching.
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There is more variety in teaching methods. Because most online teaching is screen share, the teacher can use multiple apps and programs to allow the teaching content to have more variety and be more engaging
Cons
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The teaching experience is not complete and as multi-faceted as face to face teaching. The teacher cannot see a student’s interest, result and their emotional condition through their actions or emotions. This is unbeneficial for teacher to adjust moods in the classroom and therefore the learning outcome is not always as desired.
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For students who are weak on fundamentals and lack personal motivation, online learning is a very poor learning method. Therefore, online learning is easy to cause a split between motivated students and those who are not.
What is biggest challenge you had for online teaching?
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It is mainly interaction with students. This not only includes teacher to student but also student to student.
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One on one teaching is possible but through the screen it is ineffective
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Online teaching also allows students to provide their own opinions or comments through typing. It is however quite time consuming and there is only so much time for each period.
Any advice for students?
Learning online is not only obtaining knowledge, it is also building your character and will. Therefore, you must keep a serious attitude for your own sake. During online learning, you can use screenshot to take some notes and ask the teacher after. This is to mitigate the disadvantages of online teaching.
Is failure rate higher than before?
Low scores are higher.
As a teacher, is there anything you can bring to lessons in the future? Or is there any of your own abilities that have been improved as a result of online teaching?
More familiar with online teaching software, able to compensate offline teaching with online teaching. Online teaching increased teacher’s data analysis skills.
How are you conducting your exams? Do you think there is a need for online exam monitoring software?
We use a few specified online exam monitoring software. However, we also send the exam at least 15 min prior to the parents, for some at least one day before. Because some families do not have a printing, therefore the integrity of the exam is not guaranteed. Some parents also need to work and they have to give the exam to student earlier.
For the exam process, we can only hope students are self-disciplined but it is unavoidable that students try to use different methods to search for answers, such as using the web.
If online exam monitoring software can be implemented, it may decrease some unfairness in exams. However, it could involve problems of intruding privacy and not be accepted by all parents.
