The year 2020 was the awakening of a new era, for all the teachers around the globe. Overnight we equipped ourselves with a new set of skills that we had never dreamt of. In a rush to find an ad hoc solution to remote learning and teaching, the curriculum took a back seat.
As a classroom teacher, I had donned many hats: a homeroom teacher, a specialist teacher and an administrator. None of these roles required technology as a primary content delivery system, hence the shift was daunting and arduous. Different schools preferred different delivery systems based on the accessibility of devices, affordability to parents and what the institutions felt comfortable with. For us, five hours of live streaming worked the best.
“Students’ traits such as self-regulation, attitudes towards blended learning and computer competence all had an impact.”
Learners were not spared in this unprecedented time, they went through a high degree of uncertainty and anxiety. Different learners adapted differently during this phase. Students’ traits such as self-regulation, attitudes towards blended learning and computer competence all had an impact. These, along with their background; family support, social support and management of workload played a pivotal role in their overall success.
While some showed a significant increase in motivation, satisfaction, knowledge construction and performance, others saw a major setback. While the whole world is praising blended learning as student-centred and more accessible, the hard reality is that it was not inclusive.
In India, before Covid, all the schools offered in-person or on-campus models universally. The prospect of fully technology-driven learning, blended learning or remote learning, was only explored and implemented during the pandemic.
“While some showed a significant increase in motivation, satisfaction, and performance, others saw a major setback.”
On several occasions, parents bought into the myth that screen time is harmful to a learner’s overall mental, social and physical development.
In response to the concern, many schools looked for a mid-way, by allowing parents to witness the learning for a day or by reducing the lesson timings.
The former proved to be more effective as parents saw how learners got more face time with peers and teachers. The project-based and app-based learning gave personalized and individualised learning experiences.
The fact is that whether we agree or disagree, blended learning is the new normal in learning and teaching. As the number of cases continues to decrease and schools are planning to reopen for physical learning, the parent body will be polarised into two; one opting to go physical and the other online.
Blended learning as the name suggests is a learning approach in which the two systems of learning are blended together, asynchronous and synchronous.
Asynchronous learning encompasses online interactions between learners and teachers through chats or emails, online discussions and student-paced tasks.
Synchronous entails video conferences, interactive webinars or lectures that are live-streamed allowing students to put up questions or queries at the same time.
As an educator I have come a long way in adjusting and reimaging learning. I also feel privileged to have gone through a tough time and managed to come up the other side with students feeling empowered and liberated from the use of only pen and paper.