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.
Hi Annie,
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree that we can't find complete/perfect solutions and instructions from any theory to act as teachers in culturally diversified contexts. We need to apply theory to practice, and to combine different steps in our different specific contexts. However, I have felt that theoretical approaches can give me many good ideas for creating good pedagogical practices in multicultural e-courses.
You picked out a good point: why we prefer so much the Western online practices and solutions? Maybe due to the constructivists paradigm? I have leaned also from Eastern e-courses; e.g. the use of visual elements has effected to me.