My Identity Task 4- Challenges faced as an online teacher

As a Multicultural teacher we face many challenges. It varies from teacher to teacher. To overcome these challenges (Wang and Reeves 2007 11-12 Kinuthia, 2007) their points show some ways, but I feel these are not the complete solutions; however we can take guidance from them.

The main challenge that I face is motivating the students. How we can motivate each and every student? Because in f2f class many things help us to understand the psychology of students but as online teaching this factor is erased, and finding out the problems and difficulties faced by students is very difficult as our students are totally out of sight.

As (Bently et al, 2005) gave the principle rule that to the students online course should be like an adventure.

I think the situation is more challenging if the students and teachers don’t consider the course in the same way. This is especially going to be more challenging when students are from different age groups. Youngsters may take the course as an adventure but the mature people will take it as a serious thing. Teacher should be able to handle both kinds of students; to identify them and guide them. Other challenges are time consumption, management of students and guidance on individual level.

Another big hurdle is English language. In different parts of the world English is used as a second language and people are not well versed in it and they have not the ability to express themselves properly.

People often think that European and American online university courses are more authentic and so prefer to join them.

People are thinking that online teaching is easier work instead of teaching f2f, but I think it is more hardworking and challenging.

 

My study journal

My International Study Journal

In my study journey I plan to compare two very diverse learning cultures; that of India and England. It would not be a hyperbolic statement if I say that they are as different as east and west!

People from these two nations come from entirely different backgrounds and have very different cultures and traditions. Hence it would be quite intriguing as well as challenging to study these learning cultures.

Although I am not an Indian, I have worked in Indian education system for more than ten years and have first-hand knowledge of it.

While I do have a lot of knowledge about the British educational culture (largely because my children have studied a British curriculum) I would like to gain more knowledge and would like to do an in depth study of it by observing the natives.

To achieve this, I would travel to UK and visit schools and Universities there to observe the teaching and learning process. To make my studies more reliable and valid, I would take a large sample size and consider people of all age groups, i.e. from primary school to higher school to colleges to universities for I believe a learning culture is established from a blend of both the young and the adults.

I would then compare the two learning cultures of India and England and chart out their similarities and differences based on table 4:

	Observations	Similarities	Differences
Student and teacher activities	Ways of teaching (teaching methods & practices)

	Observations	Similarities	Differences
Student and teacher activities	Ways of teaching (teaching methods & practices)
	Teacher’s role
	Student’s role
	Relations between teachers and students
	Relations between peers
	Communication and collaboration in the school community
	General atmosphere / climate
Learning context	Subjects taught
	Timetables
	Class size
	Exams / evaluations / assessment
	Order/discipline
	Attitudes and values of student and teachers
Learning resources	Learning materials The use of ICT
Student consultation	How is it organized? Support given for students with learning difficulties Attention given to talented students

 I intend to explore issues such as the most obvious difference between the two learning systems- while the UK education system is largely ICT based and follows the student centered technique; Indian education still revolves around the teacher. The teacher gives lectures on topics given in the syllabus which is to be covered and then students memorize these lessons and sit for exams

I intend to interview a few teachers and students who are the part of the Indian system (excluding myself to make my work unbiased) and ask them about the strengths and weaknesses of teaching in this fashion.

Also, I would do the same to the UK students. Everything has its benefits as well as weaknesses as nothing on Earth is perfect. No method is flawless.

The table 4 seems to be tailored just for me! It fits in perfectly with what I have in mind from student teacher activities to learning context to learning resources etc.

I will also observe the general class atmosphere and the behavior of students with their peers. From what I have seen in movies and read about in various articles and books, the relationship between peers students in the UK is string in some regards but bullying and hostility is common there mainly because of segregation of students into groups of the ’cool’ and the nerds. This is not as prevalent in Indian culture. I intend to explore more in this regard as well.

I would also observe what each of the systems in question does about the special needs students.
While Indian system relies heavily on memorization, the UK system is more evaluative and analytical.
 
Learning cultures are a direct result of the country’s own culture and in India there isa large consumption of food such as almonds, coconuts, fish etc, as part of their traditional cuisine. Indian moms also send their kids to learn Mental Math’s from a small age. Therefore, due to their life style and culture, Indians have honed their skill of memorization.

Also, a general view of the people of the sub-continent is that the better you are at memorization the “clever” you are. I believe this is why memorization has become a huge part of their learning culture.

All in all, I believe this will be interesting task to work on.  

Topic 3

T3 COMPARING LEARNING CULTURES

Learning has changed over the last few decades very drastically. I feel lucky to be a part of this change in this context as earlier I was teaching with the old methodology.  

Old methodology was teacher centered, and lecture based. I remembered when I was in my school the same methods were used, students were not allowed to ask many questions, they were only allowed if the teacher permitted. Corporal punishment was very common. Students were afraid of teachers. Curriculum used to be designed as memory based learning in which main emphasis was on memorization instead of conceptual learning. Though some of the schools were following UK or American Curriculum but the teaching method was teacher centered and because of this situation students were not being benefited.

When I started my teaching journey the situation was same. From the last few years in UAE there have been some revolutionary changes in the field of Education. This encouraged me to know what the modern education system is and what the difference between them is.

Now I feel we are standing at the crossroads between the modern and old system. What I observed is that the old teachers and those who are coming from South Asian countries are not getting how to cop up with this situation. Some teachers have changed themselves to meet the demands of the modern world through their effort but the overwhelming majority is still wandering.

 Actually when teachers started their career their main aim was to earn money to support their families.

Also the mentality of some people is they have finished their education already and now it is the time to earn and live a comfortable life. They do not have the concept of “Lifelong learning”.

 On the other side online education is a new system where people are not confident and have little trust in it. Many people will not agree with me on this statement. But this lack of trust is because:

1. Cyber crimes such as frauds.
2. Bogus Degrees can be issued.
3. People give preference to the renowned institutions degrees instead of online ones.        

  Online teachers should take the following measures:
1. Building up the students confidence
2. Continuous contact with student through Skype or any other easy webinar
3. Find out the difficulties they are facing as a multicultural environment.
4. Try to promote friendly environment

 Building up the student’s confidence is most important as it is human nature that when we see each other physically one kind of bond develops among teacher and students, which is mutually very important. Full guidance should be given in the introductory class as to what kind of this course this is. As students belong to different cultures and have different calibers we should keep continuous contact with student through webinars, monthly or as deemed necessary. If students belong to the different countries and time zones meetings can be held in groups at separate times to make it convenient for students and teacher. In this way teacher will be able to understand their situations and gradually the environment will be comfortable and with continuous contact the environment will be become friendly automatically.   

 

 

     

LEARNING IN DIGITAL CULTURE

What is culture? And what is the importance of it?

Culture is related to the development of one's attitude. One's culture plays an important role in shaping the principles of the individual's life; culture shapes the personality of a community. The cultural values of an individual have a deep impact on his/her attitude towards life. According to the behaviorist definition of culture, it is the ultimate system of social control where people monitor their own standards and behavior. The importance of culture cannot be stressed enough as it is an integral part of living. On the other hand now the new culture is developing which is called digital or cyber culture.  Digital culture is an environment where teachers and students use   available ICT technology.

Digital culture has following characteristic in contrast to conventional culture:

1.  Constant availability

2.  Wide range of information

3.  Easy access

In spite of above mentioned benefits one major obstacle in cyber culture is growing use of passwords and monetary involvement to restrict information.

On the other hand free information is also available in abundance but authenticity and quality cannot be assured.

As the present world is becoming mainly commercial oriented digital information is also commercialized.

The example of Digital culture is like an umbrella where all sides of cultures merge in to it, where the information can be obtained and passed on without any hesitation, instead of F2F culture where people will be hesitant and shy in communicating with each other.

Recently I completed my PGCTHE course in e-learning in higher education. This course was entirely based on digital culture and it gave me the experience of digital leaning in cyber culture.

Development Task

Development Task

For the authentic learning development task, my chosen topic is “Social Values”.

Now the question is that why have I have selected this topic? In fact, growing commercialization has resulted in selfishness. A society where people are selfish is devoid of “social values”. Social values are like a life for the society. Without social values a society will be considered as dead. Though social values might be slightly different in various cultures, generally these values are common across the borders.
It is of paramount importance for the young generation to have full realization of these values as lack of these leads to corruption.
I have been following “student centered learning “approach for the last few years in my classroom.

I intend to assign this topic to all the groups of my students. They will be given reasonable amount of time to complete the topic. At the end of it, every group will bring their findings, and these will be summed up into blog posts for the whole school to review.

I have divided the topic into sub topics and each group will work on their designated topic.
The sub topics are below:

1.  Values of parents-children relationship

2.  Values of neighborhood

3.  Values of teacher-student relationship

4.  Values of elders-youngsters

5.  Values of relations

After planning their work with the teacher’s help, a discussion will ensue. Each group will write a blog and other groups will comment on it.

The students will visit the E-libraries, web sites, online encyclopedias and other cyber resources.

All the groups’ work will be assessed on the quality of their performance.
The whole process will be carried out in accordance with the underlined nine elements of authentic learning. This will promote Multicultural authentic learning environment among students.
 In accordance with nine elements of authentic learning for this task I have chalked out my strategy as under:
 

Element of authentic learning	Guidelines for implementation	Implementation
Provide authentic context that reflects the way the knowledge will be used in real-life	• a physical/virtual environment that reflects the way the knowledge will ultimately be used	Purpose of the course is to gain the knowledge which can be applied to own personal life in order to attain balance.
	• a non-linear design to preserve the complexity of the real-life setting	Selection of the topics for each group will be flexible to suit their situation.
Provide authentic activities	• activities that have real-world relevance	Authentic knowledge will be applied on real life.
	• ill-defined complex activities that provide an opportunity for students to define the tasks and sub-tasks required to complete the activity	“Social values” is the main subject students will define activity relevant to their sub topic.
	• a sustained period of time for investigation	The tentative duration of the task will be around four weeks.
	• the opportunity for the detection of relevant versus. irrelevant information	Information will be monitored for detection of irrelevant material.
	• tasks that can be integrated across subject areas	Whole task will be integrated across subject areas.
Provide access to expert performances  and the modelling of processes	• access to expert thinking and modelling processes	Accesses to authentic source of information will be provided e.g. online discussions, forums and video interviews.
	• access to learners with various levels of expertise	On line discussions will provide learning with different level of expertise.
	• opportunity for the sharing of narratives and stories and access to the social periphery	Blogs, comments and classroom discussion will provide access to information sharing.
Provide multiple roles and perspectives	• different perspectives on the topics from various points of view	Different perspectives of the topic will be unfolded from various point of views of the participants.
	• the opportunity to criss-cross the learning environment	Students will have flexible and multi role environment.
Support collaborative construction of knowledge	• tasks are completed in pairs or groups rather than individually	Student centered groups will provide collaborative construction of knowledge.
	• appropriate incentive structure for whole group achievement	The assessment is done on group level based on the article and group work (activities during the work).