How teachers took the classroom online

times of India 5.4.2020

They give lessons on Hangouts

Correct homework on WhatsApp

Turn iPads into whiteboards

Ketaki.Desai@timesgroup.com

‘Ma’am, ma’am, it’s S’s birthday today,” is a familiar refrain for most school teachers. It’s usually followed up with everyone singing for S while she sits there, with an awkward smile plastered on her face. A similar celebration took place in Shrawasti Ganguli’s virtual classroom recently. The children did sing happy birthday, but it was over Google Hangouts, and one even brought out a keyboard to add some flair to the performance.

Ganguli is the head of the English department in Delhi’s Sanskriti School and has been conducting classes for students of Class 12, as well as observing classes for 10th graders. “It’s not just about academics,” Ganguli says. “They should have some routine, especially because everything is so morbid and gloomy right now.”

Teachers and professors across the country are having to adapt to a whole new mode of teaching. No longer able to waltz into the classrooms, they’re having to record audio or video sessions, trying not to get too self-conscious about how they look or sound (yes, teachers get self-conscious too. Who knew?). Others are holding classes on video conferencing apps like Zoom and Google Hangouts, dealing with poor connections, infrastructural constraints and the lack of control over whether students are paying attention or just texting each other.

Ashwini Deshpande, professor of economics at Ashoka University has been teaching online for two weeks now, and has written a piece about her experience. The first week, she made audio recordings of her lectures and sent them to her students. “It’s very odd because you’re sitting alone in a room with your iPad and you’re just speaking. I’ve done episodes of podcasts before, but even then, you’re being interviewed. Here, I’m just sitting on my own and going on talking,” she says. “You wonder, should I be beating this point? After all, they can rewind this if they need to.” Since then, she’s been holding classes through video conferencing platforms, which has more of a classroom-feel, even though she misses being able to read their expressions and adapt her teaching style accordingly.

Though technology has allowed teaching to continue, the experience of the classroom cannot be wholly replicated online. Dr Avitoli Zhimo, assistant professor at the department of anthropology, University of Delhi, says she misses the debates and discussions that happen in the classroom. “I miss the physical interactions where they laugh at my sarcasm. I teach social anthropology where nothing is concrete and finalised, and there’s always room for debate,” says Zhimo who has made private Facebook groups for each of the papers she teaches where she holds classes via Facebook Live. Her students ask questions in the comments, and she leaves the video up for anyone who may have missed it.

One of her students is Sagarika Rao. The 23-year-old says that while it’s nice to be able to really pay attention to a lecture without furiously taking handwritten notes and while really committing to the out-of-bed look, she would much rather be in the classroom right now. “We can use the comment section to shamelessly interrupt her, so there is some level of interactivity. But it’s not comparable to classroom teaching. It’s our last semester, and it’s so sad to think about the fact that we have already had our last class,” she says.

It’s not just teaching that’s happening online. Deshpande says she’s held office hours, which are one-on-one sessions with students virtually. Sanskriti School released report cards and held result discussions online. And the lockdown doesn’t mean an end to homework and assignments either, with many institutes using learning management platforms to make handing in assignments easier. Zhimo says her inbox was flooded with students sending over assignments, making her not even want to open it before she switched over to Google Classroom.

Some educators see this period as providing a gateway to think about education differently. Satyam Mishra, co-founder of non-profit Project U-turn and a Global Girls Education fellow teaches maths to kids with special needs in classes 4 and 9, as well as students preparing for engineering entrance exams. “Maybe by the end of this, we will be able to develop a Khan Academy of our own. Using interactive videos and other technology to customise education for students based on what they need is the next step,” says the Puneresident. Having lost his trusty whiteboard and marker to a lockdown-struck classroom, he’s relying on apps like Vittle to explain mathematical concepts using drawing. His students send their doubts over WhatsApp and he shoots videos of him solving the question. When they submit homework over WhatsApp, he draws big ticks on the correct answers and circles the areas they need to work on.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, chairman and coordinator of the Centre of Advanced Study, Department of History at AMU has been livestreaming his lectures on medieval India on YouTube. It’s not just his students who are watching these, but also history enthusiasts and students from other universities as well. Not all teachers are so quick to adapt though, Rezavi adds. “There are people who have been delivering lectures using the same notes for years. They don’t want these to be up online.”

To Deshpande, it’s clear that the best part of college is not the classroom, not for the students or the teachers. It’s the times spent drinking coffee with your peers, getting into discussions, sharing ideas, meeting different kinds of people. All things that get lost in this model of virtual learning, for all its virtues.

Dr Avitoli Zhimo

assistant professor, Anthropology, DU

Uses Facebook Live, students interact through comments

Misses the debates that happen in the classroom