Personal reflections:
It was an anxious time when we learned we were to deliver our lessons online from the 23rd March due to the coronavirus lockdown. We had a one-week break from teaching prior to that week to prepare ourselves, and get to grips with ZOOM to deliver our classes online. For me, it was uncharted territory as I had not delivered classes online before and had no idea how students would respond to these lessons.
The first few weeks were a bit disorderly. I needed to adapt my learning materials for online delivery and seek out the necessary resources for use at home - such as a whiteboard, a decent headset and a quiet place in my house. Anyway, I did manage all of this at the end.
After three or four weeks, things had pretty much settled, and it was time for self-reflection to check on the effectiveness of my online delivery. I began by asking my students about their new learning experience and was surprised to find that most of them were quite positive about their online classes. They were certainly missing their face-to-face contact and mingling with their friends on campus but they now felt relaxed at home and happy not to bother with waking up early in the morning to travel for two hours in crowded buses and tubes to get to their 9 o’clock class on time. This was actually a big relief for some of them.
I can see how my students were finding comfort in attending classes from their bedroom with a cup of coffee in hand. However, at the same time, I was concerned about whether I was sufficiently addressing their learning needs and maintaining the quality of education they pay for and expect.
Azad Noor, Programme Element Leader Engineering Foundation LBIC, Brunel University, shares his 8-week journey into online teaching.
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