The Challenges of Switching to Online Teaching

With the growth of the pandemic, more and more people are working from home every day. More than 800 million students around the world did not go to school today! While some of us have the privilege of accessing a decent quality internet connection which enables us to easily reach out to our students, we should keep in mind that some of the students could not communicate with us in the same way.

I sent out a survey to my students earlier this week to understand what fraction of them follow my online classes with no problem. Counter-intuitively, it turned out only half of my students have access to high quality internet connection which lets them see the video and hear the audio clearly through our Zoom connection. It seems like the video lags sometimes for most of the others and the audio is not very clear for a smaller fraction. In another query, I realized half of my students either did not have a desk for writing or couldn’t find a distraction-free environment to focus on or participate in the discussions of the online classes. Let’s acknowledge that here I am talking about students of a great wealthy university in a first world country (note: of course it does not imply that the students are wealthy or from the first world countries). Needless to say how much more challenging this situation could be in some other parts of the world.

What can we do as educators (teachers, professors, etc.)?

Firstly, we have to understand how frustrating this could be for our students. Transitioning from a regular organized schedule to a life that you have to coordinate with others is sometimes very challenging. Our students were encouraged to leave on-campus housing to go back to their parents’ houses or somewhere else if they can. Although this might be heartwarming for some, it could be distracting and depressing for others. The living situation of people varies by a lot and some students have to take care of their younger siblings or elder family members while at home. Some homes might not be mentally satisfying for several different reasons. Some homes might be small and without the minimum requirements for proper studying.

After we realized how complicated this situation could get, the second thing we can do is to reach out to our students individually to express our understanding and to let them know we are here to help. Of course, this takes a lot of time if you have many students, but it is important to make personal connections. Feeling loved and cared about is crucial for everyone, and for sure more for those who are struggling with the current situation. Younger students might be experiencing such a challenge for the first time in their lives. We have to assure them that we feel and understand them and we will do whatever we can to make the path smoother.

What are the next steps? Any solutions? This is a rare situation that needs to be addressed on a case-by-base basis. Send surveys to students, talk to them, understand what their issues are and brainstorm with them or your colleagues to come up with the best ideas to address their concerns. For example, if someone now lives in a time zone that is 13 hours different from us, we shouldn’t ask them to attend all the online classes in the middle of the night. We might be able to put them in a different section, or send them the class recordings in an asynchronous setup. If someone does not have access to a good internet connection, we can ask them to contact us mainly through email/chat and exchange files instead of lagged or slow videos. If someone does not have access to any electronic devices, we might find some funding resources through university or personal grants to equip them. If someone doesn’t have a distraction-free environment, we might be able to provide noise-cancelling headsets for them. There are several ideas we can generate to make the lives of our students easier throughout this difficult time. We just need to put a little bit of effort and think that this is the time we can be more helpful to our students, our community, and the world by spending more time and become more creative.