“Just finished communicating with parents to ensure that students can watch live classes online, but there are still many problems.”

Zhang Xu is a Chinese teacher in a middle school in Luohu District, Shenzhen. Although he has returned to Shenzhen from his hometown, due to the school’s announcement to delay the start of school (opening of online classes), he had to use all available materials and application software to start recording and distributing related Course content.

Perhaps, for a period of time in the future, many teachers and students will spend their daily lives separated by a screen like this.

Teachers “first taste” online courses, trying to ensure quality

According to the latest data released by QuestMobile, classes have been suspended during the epidemic, and netizens’ reliance on online education platforms has increased. Although the number of users is lower than usual due to the winter vacation, it has increased by 22% compared with last year’s Spring Festival, and the length of time has increased. 30%.

In Zhang Xu’s view, schools, teachers and students all have an urgent need for online courses. He told me that in the preliminary investigation, he found that many students in the class were worried about the problem of academic failure and hoped to catch up with the established learning progress through online classes.

In order to strengthen classroom interaction with students as much as possible, after thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of recording and live broadcasting, he decided to give up the video recording of the course and live the class instead.

Through the live broadcast room, he can let the students leave messages in real time, and complete the pre-class roll call and class questions, which ensures the quality of the class to the greatest extent. Through interaction, students can also avoid distraction and desertion in class. “Of course, the efficiency of interaction is still low, especially the speed of students answering questions. Sometimes it takes a long time to leave a message, and it is difficult to know whether the knowledge point is absorbed.”

In order to solve the “shortcoming” of online live classes, Zhang Xu contacted friends who work in teaching auxiliary institutions and have rich experience in online classes, and asked how to ensure the quality of students’ learning in online classes. The answer is: make full use of the questionnaire. tools, design in-class quizzes, and allow students to fill in and submit within a limited time after class.

“Usually there are ten multiple-choice questions related to classroom knowledge points, but I am worried that students will check the answers online, so I set up some special questions.” Zhang Xu told me that special questions are often the details of his online live broadcast, such as what to wear The color of the clothes, what historical allusions are quoted, “This is not available online, just to ensure that everyone is listening to the class attentively.”

But even so, the progress of the online live broadcast is still much slower than the actual teaching. The main reason is that the efficiency of classroom interaction is still relatively low, and the limited online class hours have to be allocated to the teachers of each subject.

“The liberal arts (teachers) are relatively good. Through the in-class test, you can get a general understanding of the students’ classroom situation. Science is troublesome, and it is difficult to do the in-class test with a large number of calculation problems.” He told me, a teacher in a classroom auxiliary institution. A friend has a trick for this – it is recommended to take online classes through video group chats.

In addition to real-time interaction, he can also use the front camera of students’ mobile phones to understand their learning status and see if students are distracted. “But there are 55 people in my class, and it’s really difficult to cover everything.”

It can be seen that the teachers have indeed put in all their efforts for the online class. But at the same time that the teacher tried every means to give the students a lesson and tried every means to ensure the quality of teaching. There are also a small number of students who do everything possible to “skip classes”. What’s the matter?

Students “skip classes” online, blocking the network and closing the microphone are all tricks

Students’ natural instinct to “cut class” seems perpetual. There are online classes in school teaching, and students have countermeasures for “skipping classes”.

After a round of searching on Weibo, you will find that in addition to teachers, there are also a small number of students who are not good at learning who have been “driven crazy” by online courses recently. In order to be able to “skip classes”, the bear children can be said to have tried their best, and even set up a number of WeChat groups for exchanging experiences.

In a WeChat group called “Bronze”, a group of junior high school students were discussing how to avoid online classes at home school. The student with the online name “Mu Kui” said that when the class was checking students’ homes for unconditional online classes, he told the head teacher that he had no broadband network at home.

“I didn’t expect that the head teacher finally called (to the parents) to coordinate the problem of the Internet. As a result, I almost got beaten up.” Mu Kui told the group about his failed “skipping” experience, and persuaded other students not to Taking no internet at home, low computer and mobile phone configuration as the reason for “skipping class”, it is easy to be “see through”.

Another third-year student nicknamed “Haozi” said that due to the approach of the entrance examination, the school arranged for the third-year class to have online classes, and there would also be questions and interactions during the class. In order to cause the poor broadband network signal at home, he specially Use your computer to download high-definition movies during class time.

“It is recommended that you all try. If the download speed is fast enough, the live broadcast (class) will be obviously stuck.” Haozi said that even if the teacher calls the parents to inquire, the parents will only see the situation that the live broadcast of the online class is stuck. , “It’s just an online class. If I’m the only one stuck, it’s easy to be suspected.”

Some students in the group also complained that the online supplementary class that their parents signed up for is a small class system, using group video chat for class, and every time they are in class, the teacher will see their every move, and if they get distracted, they will be discovered by the teacher.

For this reason, they quietly turn on game updates on their mobile phones every time they are in class, so that teachers can see their images as “frame-by-frame animation”, or even freeze completely. I’ll answer questions, even if I take a nap.”

In order to cope with the in-class test in online classes, some students even formed an alliance with their classmates to share their answers within the specified time, so that they could complete the test in time regardless of whether they were serious in class or not. Some students who cannot “skip classes” even called in the group to let other students collectively criticize and report related applications, which is also a form of retaliation.

Nowadays, these students who have a “stuck” internet speed as soon as they are in class, and who collectively “shut down the wheat” as soon as they ask a question, have been dubbed “students with disabilities in online classes” by netizens on Weibo. In order to skip class, the bear children really worked hard…

Of course, this is only the state of some students, not the overall phenomenon. However, in order to ensure the effect of online courses, many parents are also thinking, what is the ideal way to open online courses?

Parents’ “accompanying reading” effect is good, enhancing parent-child relationship

“In the past few days, my child has delayed the start of school, and my wife and I have also delayed going to work, so we happened to be with us.”

Zhao Yang, a parent from Shanghai’s Pudong New Area, has been serving as a “student companion” for his son, who is in his second year of high school, every day. He told me that even though his son is not a senior year student and the pressure for the entrance exam is not great for the time being, the school has decided to start online supplementary classes as soon as possible for senior sophomore students who are about to enter senior year three this year.

The Ministry of Education has not yet imposed strict limits on the duration of online classes, while schools require students to take classes online for no more than four hours a day. “We were in a hurry, so we signed up our children for other online classes four hours away, mainly for mathematics.” Both schools and classroom training institutions know that parents of students are also delaying work recently, so there is an additional requirement. : Parents are asked to “accompany the study” online, and euphemistically call it “enhancing parent-child relationship”.

In fact, Zhao Yang also knows that the reason why the teacher asked parents to be “accompanying students” is to let parents control their children and prevent students from distracting, deserting, and even watching mobile phones and playing games during online classes, “But I I didn’t expect that accompanying reading would be so difficult.”

He told me that his son likes to play mobile games at ordinary times, and once he starts playing games, he can say that he does not want to eat or drink. Now let the son sit honestly and watch the content of the online class on the mobile phone, it is really “super hard”, the child can’t sit still at all, after a while, he is thirsty, and after a while he has to go to the toilet… …

“In desperation, my lover and I had to take turns staring at him. In the end, we beat him up, so that’s honest.” After a lot of tossing, Zhao Yang realized how bad his son was in school on weekdays. Taking classes online at home, because he and his lover are watching, the learning efficiency is much higher.

Of course, everyone understands that this cannot become the norm after all. After the epidemic is over, students will naturally have to go back to school, and they will have to go to supplementary institutions to take remedial classes, and parents will also have to return to work, and the full-time “accompanying study” will end at that time. “I am really worried that the children’s learning status will be the same as before. , I can’t really complain.”

He told me that he and his wife are still very grateful to the school and teachers. Although the students have parents “accompanying them to study”, many teachers still put a lot of energy into preparing lessons. Whether it is the content of knowledge or the process of the class, the teachers can be seen Work hard. Many teachers are trying to use humorous language and funny interaction to cultivate students’ interest in independent learning, and the workload is much larger than before.

concluding remarks

At present, students and schools are “suspending classes without stopping school”. In the next period of time, it is believed that a large number of famous Internet celebrities like Zhang Xuefeng and Li Yongle will emerge on Weibo, as well as a large number of funny jokes about online “skipping classes”.

As teachers, students, and parents all participate in online education actions, the advantages and shortcomings of the online education model will be further highlighted, which also puts forward higher requirements for all industry participants. For the online education industry, this opportunity for all students and parents to participate in learning is more like an industry-wide exam. Not only schools, teachers, students and parents are involved, but industry participants will also experience a profound temper.