Horizons of online education
The Internet has made things quite easy and convenient for educators around the world. All you need is a computer, an internet connection and you can hold classes, discussions and seminars anywhere in the world by connecting with people from all around the world in real -time. With the use of different online education tools available on internet in general but google meet in particular for conducting classes, webinars, conferences, short-term courses, expert lectures, meetings and many more education related activities, these activities have gained a lot of momentum during the lockdown period due to COVID-19 pandemic and it may turn out to be an easy mode even after COVID-19 pandemic. People in education sector have come forward whole heartedly and well supported by the administration to explore all possible ways to conduct many online educational activities for the benefit of students and teachers.
Attending webinars
Webinars are really useful in engaging the listeners through live presentations and interactive multimedia which can makes the distance feel less of a hurdle. Webinars save costs and avoid travelling are seen as an effective tool for increasing sales and improving interactions with customers. Businesses all over the world are using webinars to attract customers, promote products, and build loyalty. But at present these are being excessively used in education sector to disseminate expert knowledge to interested audiences in the webinars. Other than conducting online classes in schools/colleges/universities, online webinars have become a trade mark in higher educational institutes. Each and every faculty is coming forward very enthusiastically either to organize or attend such type of activities. The experts from different parts of the country and sometimes from abroad are being arranged to give online lectures during these activities. Sometime, it becomes very difficult to understand the reason behind the crowd getting registered in such type of online activities. Some simple reasons other than inquest for looking some subject knowledge like acquiring a participation certificate, making use of ideal time, to oblige someone in order to give more representation to the activity, any many more such reasons may be behind the great grand success of such online educational activities. Experts are also at free hand to deliver almost same lectures at different activities without bothering to think that same participants may attend their same lectures many a times. The lectures are of same or of different fields does not matter much for the participants as they have to just to login into the lecture through the link and forget about the lecture. Be involved in one’s own work and switch off the lecture at a appropriate time and if possible put some comments in chat box just “say hello to all”. All in all, a webinar offers great opportunities for both participants and presenters, but if you are going to fun one or watch one, you should be aware of the possible pitfalls along with the advantages of this type of online training and plan accordingly.
Teacher-student interaction
There can be different ways a teacher can adopt to disseminate subject course details to students but all of these are not free from problems.
- Teachers are generally uploading the typed or copied text in google class in large volume which students are finding boring to read and learn. Instead of this mode, students prefer video or online live class by teacher.
- Many teachers have prepared video lectures for their subjects but the video lectures with limited subject material and only point wise topics without any depth of subject will be useful if teacher tell the course in depth during video lecture and student also read the course in depth after the lecture. But generally teachers only read line wise text in the video and rarely go in detailed explanation of the concepts and mathematical steps. Students listen to these video lectures as route lectures and then struggle to find out the way towards detailed and deep learning.
- Teachers who are working hard to engage online classes just like class room classes are also facing lukewarm response from students. Students are generally joining online classes irregularly and are not interested to be evaluated regularly.
Online evaluation
Online lessons have emerged as the go-to solution but online evaluation of students for class work is flanked with many disadvantages like asking, answering and evaluation of quizzes, short answer type of long answer types questions has their own limitations. Question and answer shuffling, time limit, choice to limit the responses, not to show answers etc. are good features of google forms but have limitations towards the inclusion of mathematical characters, figures etc. in the questions. Further, copying and paste of material to prepare assignments and mass copying during examinations through mobile contacts among students cannot controlled.
