The challenges of remote education

  WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES IN REMOTE LEARNING?     

                                      

At the outbreak of the pandemic, schools encountered numerous technical difficulties in setting up online teaching pathways, which impacted the learning outcomes of students and particularly disadvantaged students. 

The pandemic deprived schools of an essential element for the preparation of distance learning pathways, namely time. Creating a remote learning environment requires precise planning in terms of objectives and resources and specific practice on the part of teachers. 

Now that the most acute emergency phase is passing, schools need to reflect on the shortcomings of the solutions adopted so far and on how to intervene so that students and teachers can work within effective remote learning frameworks. From this point of view, the first step to be taken is to identify the detrimental factors to distance learning. 

One of the significant risk factors stems from disparities in students’ learning opportunities within a fully online educational environment. These disparities arise from a gap in resources and knowledge that can create an unbalanced playing field among students. Not all students, in fact, necessarily have access to the devices needed to follow distance learning lessons or sufficient training to use them properly. 

As noted in a survey by the RAND Corporation, one of the most pressing challenges concerning distance learning stems from “concerns related to communication with students and student participation, including difficulty reaching all students, concerns about students’ work completion, and challenges with holding students accountable for schoolwork“. 

Digital disparities contribute to a lower level of engagement in-class activities and homework completion. If educational institutions do not properly address these disparities, there is a real risk that the number of students left behind in distance education will increase. Therefore, the digital divide is a strong discriminating element that educators should be well aware of when considering remote learning approaches. 

Another composite set of challenges emerges from the management of the distance classroom. This includes the difficulties encountered by teachers in scheduling class activities and processing lessons and interacting with students. 

It is also necessary to rethink the type of activities proposed to students to avoid a drop in their level of involvement due to the absence of physical interaction with the rest of the class. From this point of view, digital resources offer numerous opportunities to diversify and enrich the content of lessons and teaching activities when teaching remotely. 

However, experimenting with new didactic approaches focused on the direct participation of students is not easy, especially for those school environments linked to traditional educational models based on the frontal lesson method. 

Written by : - Hitesh Agarwal