We are in a special period. Due to the global epidemic, people have to maintain social distance. As a result, the demand for online remote teaching has surged. When face-to-face teaching is no longer a viable option, online teaching has become the only option for most educational institutions.
There is a significant difference between online learning and in-person teaching, which is the intervention of technological tools. In a web-based learning environment, what learners need to contact are teaching content, teachers, other learners, and interfaces. The first three are in our traditional face-to-face teaching mode. For example, when a student reads, this is the interaction between the learner and the learning content. The interactions between students and professors are the interactions between learners and teachers. The additional interactions between learners and interfaces in online teaching come from the tools used in remote teaching. For instance, if we use Zoom in class, it requires professors and students to be proficient in using the Zoom interface. If our communication needs to be done through e-mail, it is also necessary to use the function of e-mail proficiently. Moreover, when our teaching materials are not printed books but electronic manuscripts and videos, these teaching contents can only be accessed via tools or platforms to successfully complete teaching needs and achieve teaching goals. This reflects a drawback of online learning. Not only do users have an extra requirement for learning the tool interfaces, but teachers also have extra preparation: transferring and uploading teaching content to online tools.
In the future, if we further explore ways to improve online teaching, we need to think about how to reduce the complex interaction process which is inherent in the interactions between users and various online tools, and how to increase more interactions between learners and between learners and teachers. For example, choose tools that most people are more familiar with to reduce the time for everyone to adapt to the new interface; minimize the use of different tools; encourage asynchronous forum discussions, and so on.
References:
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Yu-Chu Yeh. “Analyzing Online Behaviors, Roles, and Learning Communities via Online Discussions.” Journal of Educational Technology & Society 13, no. 1 (2010): 140-51. Accessed September 16, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.13.1.140.
Clark-Ibáñez, Marisol, and Linda Scott. “Learning to Teach Online.” Teaching Sociology 36, no. 1 (2008): 34-41. Accessed September 16, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20058625.
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