A coterie that is used to monitoring, control and personal interface with the teachers finds it tough to settle with online classes. No seatmates, lunch sneaking, homework showing or communicating via chits with your friends. Student life has seen a transformation in the year 2020 that nobody ever expected. It has been a year full of a shift in the regularities. Students, especially in lower classes, do not have the motivation to study. While teacher struggles in trying to hold the entire class together, the students too face a bunch of issues with online classes.
In this article:
Below are the biggest challenges faced by students in online classes-
1. Parent Intervention Becomes Important
Parental intervention is absolutely necessary if the students are extremely young. The younger lot cannot even operate the systems by themselves. Further, they have an attention span of a hummingbird so it is essential that the parents play an active role in their classes. The parents have to sit through the entire class, make them sit up straight, not yawn, not play with their pencils, pens, books, etc. This parental patrolling takes a toll on the natural-ness of the children. Further, the teacher also teaches with an understanding that the parents are around and this does not make their job easier.
2. Parental Pressure
It is one thing telling your parents about how your class was or a day at the school was, it is another to have them sitting right next to you all the times. All parents are in the beeline of letting their children outperform the other. The children have to succumb to parental peer pressure. The parents also prompt their children with answer trying to make their child look good in the class. All this and more eventually brings the child to a state of turmoil wherein he/she can’t be himself/herself.
3. Technical Issues
It is impossible for every child to have high-speed internet functioning at their home. The entire paraphernalia of online classes depends upon one adjoining thread, the internet. There are unforeseen technical issues as having the gadget, internet and student focus all in one place is important and hard to achieve. The technical issues or connection problems with one student can disrupt the flow of the entire class.
4. Lack of Self Motivation
Students in the smaller classes are not very self-motivated to study. They will try every possible way to get distracted. They can even get distracted by the design of the table on which they are studying. Hence, parental intervention becomes necessary. Focusing on the computer screen for a long time, unless it’s their favourite movie, becomes a tough task for their children. It is hard to let that disinterest fade away.
5. Lack of Infrastructure
Not every student will have a separate study room or table and chair for studying. The lack of infrastructural facilities anyways creates a posture issue, concentration issue and directly impacts the child’s academia. There was a sudden rise in the purchase of work/study tables in the past few months. While parents do try to accommodate to the requirements of their children, it just becomes impossible to provide the same educational support as is provided by the school.
6. Communication
To curb the cacophony in unison, the teacher has too often mute all the children. The communication is not as natural as in the class where hand-raising culture is prevalent. In online classes, usage of emojis serves as a substitute for the physical interface in the class, but it is hardly so. The teacher has to gauge on tabs to dither which child is paying attention and which child is not. Most schools are following the strategy of one teacher teaching and the one assisting in ensuring that the children are paying attention.
Conclusion
The children miss all the fun and frolic of the class and online classes take a toll on their monitoring and attention spans. The challenges faced by students impact their own academia as little do they know how not paying attention in the class, they miss out on value education. Further, continuous parental monitoring further lessens their already low motivation. As a parent, it is important to create a sense of healthy competition and not trying to supersede the other students.
