Online teaching is a challenge for the teachers a lot because teachers are the one who are interacting and engaging the students, says Dr. Shraddha Sharma, HOD English Language and Communication, Thadomal Shahani Centre For Management Mumbai in an interview with Pratik Ghosh, ArdorComm Media Group.
How is the online mode of education different from the physical and according to you what is the future of education?
Talking about future would be so early we cannot say anything but of course, online teaching has become a part of our lives now. Whether schools will be open, colleges will be open, we will be working online I know for sure and it has changed the lives of teachers, students and everybody. The challenge is basically not only the students are facing, teachers are also facing a lot of challenges. Teaching online is not a child’s play, every teacher has to be trained first before teaching the student because online is something when you are teaching a student, you have to grab the attention of the student which doesn’t happen in the physical class. In physical class teachers are teaching and there’s a physical contact like, ok you’re not listening, come on listen to me, look at me, but here in that window, a student is making an eye contact but you never know that if there’s a TV right behind. Even in the laptop also, the student must have opened some other window, and still making an eye contact. I would like to share with you one good example, one of my students, he fixed his brain with my voice. While teaching I tell them I’ll call you only once if you’ll not respond, I’ll remove you from the session. So that student quietly I didn’t know that you can fix your brain with the voice and there was a time when there was an activity and there were 4 to 5 girls, they talked about him and he didn’t listen, I told him that there were so many compliments about you gentleman, why didn’t you react? That day I got to know that online teaching is not very easy, for me he was listening but he was not listening to his classmates. So yes, online teaching is a part and it’s a challenge for the teachers a lot because teachers are the one who are interacting and engaging the students. Teachers have to be trained in an innovative manner, there should be some idiosyncratic pedagogy. In Thadomal Shahani Centre For Management (TSCFM) we have been opting many such kind of activities, we have been training our faculties for this online teaching. We have been enabling our faculties so that they can groom their students. First, we are grooming our teachers and as they have groomed me first, now I’m grooming my teachers to groom the students.
What are your takeaways from this education leadership summit?
The discussions are fine but these should be implemented, so my take is what we are doing today should be implemented as soon as possible and I’m learning a lot, listening to a lot of people. While listening I can make it out that the challenges we have been dealing, every university, every college and all the teachers are facing, it is not we but how fast universities and colleges are dealing and implementing, that is the important thing. Whatever we are discussing today, we know the points, we know the crux of the situation so we should implement as soon as possible because it’s the matter of our future. The generation which is not going to the school or college, that is suffering and that generation is in jeopardy. Being a teacher its our responsibility that we understand the importance of our role to play in this situation and act accordingly.
