Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña (2023)
What does it
Mean to Teach Online?
Comprehending concepts
The tail end of December 2019 brought
the pandemic to the teaching scene and a few months later, we found ourselves
teaching in a virtualized context that was new for many a teacher. Now, do pay
attention to the word ‘virtualized’ that I used instead of the term ‘virtual’. Here
it is where we need to grapple with the meaning of ‘virtual’ rather than ‘virtualized’.
Why don’t we explore what it really means to teach online as a synonym for
‘virtual’ and not for ‘virtualized.’
In my home country, Costa Rica, fellow
educators do only use ‘virtual’ for the kind of teaching they found themselves
doing from home—some kind of remote teaching.
Filling in our students’ blank slates through this type of teaching is not what
must be labeled as virtual teaching. What happened in Costa Rica and in many
other countries around the globe was that remote teaching was just the
virtualization of whatever we were doing in a F2F classroom, including all our
bad teaching practices. For sure, many teachers wholeheartedly prepared their
lessons to discover that their ‘empty vessel’ learners were not assimilating
the course content satisfactorily. In the farther reaches of their minds, these
educators could not comprehend why the learning process was not happening as
planned. Could it have been possible that they had not really understood the
difference between teaching F2F and in a virtual classroom?
Because the confused mind of an
educator is in enmity against online learning and teaching, educators could not
really assimilate the quintessential idea of what online teaching is. To start
with, remote learning or a virtualized curriculum is not online or virtual
learning; we are talking about two very different teaching scenarios. My simple
but compelling argument here is actually coming from Cambridge Dictionary
Virtualizing one’s curricula is, was,
and has been a solitary sport. When educators were told by their employers, many
of these professionals had not received a diploma accrediting them as ‘virtual
educators.’ When the coronavirus began its global rampage early in 2020, in
Costa Rica the Ministry of Education might have considered that the pandemic
was meant to be short and allowing teachers to virtualize academic programs was
a relatively low-risk activity. I’m not going to criticize what was or was not
done by the Ministry of Education in my country, but it seems to me that it
happened in many other places around the world.
What does it mean to teach online but
in a virtual setting then? Based on Bluestone (2022),
there are certain characteristics that a virtual classroom must have. If these
elements are present, we have an educator working in a true virtual environment.
|
Bluestone’s Virtual Classroom |
Concerns about Virtualized Teachers |
|
A
simple layout that’s easy to follow |
Did
these educators create a simple layout for their learners to follow while the
pandemic was going on? How were their institutions coaching them to create
this simple layout for virtual courses? |
|
Learner-centered
content and features |
How
were activities and course content reshaped to make it learner-centered especially
when the teacher was not around to pinch in? |
|
Self-paced
classes with modules and flexibility |
How
did the educators transformed their usual classroom activities to become
self-paced modules with flexibility if learners wanted to work on them at
different hours? |
|
Socially
connected student groups |
How
did teachers help students connect with one another to create a sense of
being socially connected and not pure isolation? |
|
A
secure foundation to protect student data |
How
were instructors protecting any kind of sensitive information regarding their
students? Who else had access to this information if their computers were
part of an intranet? |
|
Courses
measured with quizzes and completion certificates |
How
was the evaluation of each course changed be measured with quizzes and other
kinds of summative assessment? What was the role of formative assessment in
their lessons? |
|
Mobile-friendly
interfaces for on-the-go learning |
What
kind of platform, such as Google Classroom, was used by the teacher to make
all course content available for learners to have access 24/7 anywhere? |
Teaching
online or virtually does imply the usage of a suite of online tools that may or
may not have been fully present while educators were in remote, virtualized
teaching; it was not virtual because the program was not born as an online
curriculum.
Albeit a false assumption of what
online, virtual teaching is, learners also drew upon their background knowledge
on how to behave while in school. A virtual curriculum also prepares students
to face the new challenge. Though I like the idea of working hard in short, focused
bursts in classroom activities, I bet that the constant complaints teachers had
in regard to assignment submissions, homework delivery, and so on were truer
than true because students barely put in their learning milage. And all this
happened because a virtual, online course is not created in one go. Virtual,
online programs do require that teachers don’t stifle their creativity in
lesson planning and objective achievement.
References
"virtualize". (2023,
August 18). Retrieved from Dictionary.Cambridge.Org:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/virtualize
Bluestone, Z. (2022, November 16). 7 Characteristics of
a Virtual Classroom. Retrieved from MemberPress.Com:
https://memberpress.com/blog/5-characteristics-virtual-classroom/
Suggested
Reading Comprehension Exercise.
Now that you have read the blog entry, read the following statements, and decide if they are true or false. The answers are provided below.
True/False: The
term 'virtualized' is used in the text to highlight the distinction between
different types of online teaching.
True/False: In
Costa Rica and many other countries, remote teaching was a direct transformation
of traditional classroom teaching into an online format.
True/False: Some
educators struggled to understand why their remote teaching methods were not
yielding the expected learning outcomes.
True/False:
According to Cambridge Dictionary, the term 'virtualize' refers to converting
something physical into a computer-generated version.
True/False: The
author believes that many instructors use the term 'virtual' inaccurately to
describe their online teaching practices.
True/False: The
text suggests that virtualizing a curriculum was a collaborative effort among
educators.
True/False: The
Ministry of Education in Costa Rica took significant steps to accredit teachers
as virtual educators during the pandemic.
True/False:
Bluestone's characteristics of a virtual classroom provide a framework to
differentiate between virtual and virtualized teaching.
True/False: One
of Bluestone's criteria for a virtual classroom is having socially connected
student groups.
True/False: The
text implies that the creation of an online curriculum happens all at once and
doesn't require ongoing development by teachers.
Answers:
True
True
True
True
True
False
False
True
True
False
What Does It Mean to Teach Online? by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd
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