Challenges in Online Learning

  

    

        COVID 19 have tremendously affected our lives both positively and negatively. It also made a revolution of online education; however, it was not easy to adapt to this kind of change immediately and have raised some disadvantages for both the students and teachers. I will be discussing some challenges that I personally faced with online learning. 

      1- Less Focused : In many courses, it was hard for me to stay focused during the lecture, due to the system of students explaining the material and not the teacher. The way that students present keeps it hard to stay focused, this is because of their tone of voice, pronunciation, and articulation of their voices when presenting, dull PowerPoints with no interest or action in them, using too much words in the slides. Luckily there is the concept of recorded lectures that helps me be more focused on the lecture and get the best out of it at my own pace. Although, I am usually not focused in other lectures, because of the pedagogy being used, I am highly focused and enthusiastic in Media and technology since everything done is applied and we are highly engaged in the classroom activities and all of us are on-task in this class because Dr. Amal uses a very nice approach in teaching, her instructions are very clear, her activities and assignment are solved enthusiastically, and I am lucky to take this course with such a great Dr.

    2- Internet Problems: Internet connection problems happen all over the world, and the more people are using the server, t) he slower the internet connection is, this is bad from the teacher's side because the students will not understand the material being explained if the voice is too lagging and even if they want to repeat the session from the recording it will not help understand the lecture.

     Let us look at some solutions Regarding this issue:

          A- Working on a different network : It makes it faster since only 1 person is using this network only, it wouldn't necessarily be perfect but it can help. 

           B- Use a UPS: UPS is a large battery that can serve as an alternative during the electricity is cut off until it comes back.

           C- Have Back up plans : For students, losing the internet connection does not tremendously affect things; however, if teachers lose their internet it is a big problem for the students. Therefore, a teacher should always have a backup plan when it comes to online teaching (example: Have mobile internet service... etc. ) 

    3- Using new Applications : At first, I had some trouble joining the class when using Zoom, this is not due to lack of computer skills rather than it is a professional meeting application that I never practically used, whereas using Google meet was easier since I have encountered it previously. Thankfully, with Dr. Amal's Help I can now use Zoom easily and proficiently. 

   4- No Student-Teacher Interaction: I, myself am a very social person; however, not seeing my classmates even on camera made me a little bit shy to even greet them without feeling anxious and my heart pounding, this is due to the fact that there isn't any real interaction with the students between each other. I feel like I am studying just listening to the lecture as a voice note, rather than engaging with my classmates like I would in university campus. In addition, not all teachers turn on their camera when giving the lecture, and this makes it a little bit hard to get interactive with the teacher. The fact of talking to each other like robots behind the screen is frustrating. Thankfully, when Dr. Amal turns on her camera, I am very enthusiastic and very happy to see her; whereas other instructors just talk from behind the screen, I just know how they look like from their pictures, but I wish they would turn on their camera to know them and meet them. Unfortunately, we have lost the student-teacher interaction during online learning, but this is a choice and teachers can show themselves or not while talking, this makes it more engaging like in reality. 

     In conclusion, Online learning difficulties can be categorized into technical issues or Pedagogical issues, and with this new revolution that brought up a lot of advantages, including opportunities to join Classes internationally and at the comfort of their home, it promoted higher order skills more, and it allows the students to repeat the lecture at their own pace; however, not to mention the disadvantages encountered during online teaching which can easily be prevented and improved.  

                                                                                                                           -Dana Molla-