Online Teaching: Challenges and Strategies for Success - Essay Sample

Introduction

Teaching without in-person interaction does not differ from any other form of teaching philosophy in my view only that online learning might pose a few challenges for both the teacher and the student. In any class whatsoever, the organization is the key element apart from an online class where an instructor may lack organization and fail to plan the elements of their online teaching. This disorganization might have negative impacts on the intake of knowledge by the students thus affecting their performances. Not having a physical presence of a teacher during learning might have students being reluctant with low self-motivation and organization. This is just nature since many cannot work without supervision.

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Theories about education are mostly derived from psychology. The correlation between psychology and educational theory is that as one describes how people act the other describes how students learn. Teachers in Isolated schools have reported being overwhelmed by students' behaviors surpassing the complaints coming from teachers in urban schools, (McLean and Dixon, 2010). Behaviorism is a theory that relates a student's behavior and their ability to learn hence defining learning as the acquisition of different behavior concerning environmental factors. The mind focuses on observable activities thus locking out independent activities of the mind. In the case where students were learning through audio and video scripts in six months, the students were placed in groups in which they acquired new skills and behaviors from one another and were able to learn five subjects efficiently and finish the course. Students could not be influenced by negative behaviors from their colleagues since they only interacted during learning and group work sessions.

Constructivism is another theory of learning and is closely related to only learning as a philosophy. Constructivism involves the interpretation of material learned and constructing meaning out of it. Learning has always been described as a process that is ongoing and also reflective; meaning there are actions of doing, then reflecting on the action done and lastly rethinking about the action done altogether. The act of action and reflection gives the student the ability to merge the new knowledge with the pre-existing knowledge and experiences to form more complex forms of ideas.

Constructivist learning involves collaboration and conversation among students and instructors. Teachers from isolated schools often face behavioral issues among their students and have always found it burdening to deal with both aspects of teaching and coping with the behaviors of their students, thus they resorted to using an innovative network known as Bring It To The Teachers (BITTT) instituted by a researcher to address the lack of professionalism in dealing with such situations. The network comprised of teachers from different isolated schools who came together to share ideas among themselves and teach students who portrayed oppositional and defiant behaviors.

Conclusion

Open educational resources can be essential besides further knowledge apart from the one offered in traditional learning. Students could be able to expand their ideas on several topics of discussion without having to gain access to an instructor. The same point also poses a threat to learners since they can access some information from open texts which might not be verified and might contain bias information which will, in turn, mislead them. Use of Open Educational Resources is a good idea at this advanced stage that learning has reached as long as students us texts from licensed sites, this curbs the problem of using biased information as materials of learning. I would use Open Educational Resources since it is a quick way of obtaining information, provided the information it entails is legit.

References

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Williams, H. (2019). Being Inclusive: Intentionally Weaving Online Learning, Reconciliation, and Intercultural Development. New Directions For Teaching And Learning, 2019(157), 59-76. doi: 10.1002/tl.20330

Bristol, T. (2019). Building Community in the Online Course. Teaching And Learning In Nursing, 14(1), 72-74. doi: 10.1016/j.teln.2018.11.004

Yeom, Y., Miller, M., & Delp, R. (2018). Constructing a teaching philosophy: Aligning beliefs, theories, and practice. Teaching And Learning In Nursing, 13(3), 131-134. doi: 10.1016/j.teln.2018.01.004

Zoltek, S. (2016). Learning through teaching: An online setting. Innovations In Teaching & Learning Conference Proceedings, 8, 2. doi: 10.13021/g8qg7m