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The first semester of the 2020-2021 is thankfully over. I, like most
teachers worldwide, used Zoom from the first day to the last day and never
actually met my students. After the shock and confusion of the previous
semester, both teachers and students began this semester with awareness of the
situation and the understanding of the technology. Thus, an intuitive analysis
of this Zoom semester has merit in terms of grasping the impact of Zoom on
material selection, student-teacher interaction and student performance.
As a matter of background, I teach advanced English (Levels B2 and C1)
to engineering students at the Braude College of Engineering in Karmiel,
Israel. I taught two groups of 30 students from all departments. I am thoroughly
familiar with the material as I have taught the course for more than a decade.
Most of my students are in their first year, with their ages ranging from
19-27. A few of them are even married with one soon becoming a father. They
come from all sectors in Israel, including Jewish, Muslim and Muslim as well as
native-born and immigrants. Consequently, the background English level is very
heterogenous. Despite falling into certain level categories, they have varying
degrees of proficiency in specific language skills, with writing generally
being the weakest and reading the strongest. Thus, my two groups collectively are
a fairly representative.
The limitations of Zoom required an adjustment of the course tasks.
First, online teaching does not allow the teacher to see whether students are
truly paying attention or learning. For the most part, all see a series of
gravestones (names in the grey background) or unclear headshots without facial
expressions. Thus, online teaching is like throwing a line in the river and
hoping the fish will bite (often with the same success rate). Therefore,
explanations were minimized and breakroom session maximized to allow students
to actively learn and teachers to better assess actually understanding.
Furthermore, it is effectively impossible to prevent students from sharing
knowledge during quizzes and tests, especially in regards to objective answers.
Consequently, the grading emphasis switched from a statistically important
final with an unseen to a minor element involving a seen text with interpretive
questions and a writing task. During the semester, more time was invested in
writing and, curiously, speaking as they involve individual student activity as
compared to general learning. The result for the teachers of the staff was significantly
more time work.
Student-teacher interaction on Zoom is defined by the technical
limitations that only one person can speak at a time and the time required to
get from one break room to another. In a normal classroom, the teacher can
ascertain which students wish to participate and encourage others to join them.
In Zoom, the first to speak controls the microphone. In practice, I heard very
few students while I was in the general group mode, an unacceptable situation
in normal times. Moreover, even when I broke them up into small groups, the
time and effort required to switch from one room to another is significantly
greater than that of moving around a room, where it is also possible to monitor
which groups are on task, unlike in Zoom. Given the lack of communication with
the vast majority of my students, I invested more time outside the lesson.
First, I always opened the session 15 minutes before the start of the lesson
and stayed online until the last student left, giving them a chance to ask
questions. I also provided much specific feedback on their writing assignments
and initiated email where I felt that the students were “out of it” based on
their performance. Timely, detailed written feedback partially replaced the
personal contact typical of effective teacher-student interaction.
That said, albeit the academic results reflect only one semester,
performance was noticeably below the level of previous years. The number of
failures was higher but that may be just a statistical anomaly. More seriously,
the number of students whose final paragraph reflected a complete or significant
lack of comprehension of the course material was unusually high and very distressing
to both parties. I had the impression that I truly had been too often teaching to
gravestones. Granted it may be one of the causes is my explanations. Also,
these students were clearly less advanced having lost most of the previous
year. However, it is highly probable that the most important cause is that the
30+ hours that students spend on Zoom, not including their HW, reduces their
capacity to absorb, especially given most have none enjoy the reinforcing effect
that actual social interaction with their fellow students provide. Not only
that, the home environment poses much more threats to their concentration. Clearly,
the attention issue must be addressed in some way.
As said, these conclusions are entirely intuitive. Yet, as Zoom will
continue to serve as the medium of teaching for the next semester if not
longer, it is vital to analyze and strive to overcome the limitations of the
tool. These are my Zoom lessons from the previous semester.
* Give access to the blind by providing captions to pictures.
Picture: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=995558">Gerd Altmann</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=995558">Pixabay</a>
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