Activity 7.2 Distance Education

            The distance classes are a new solution to improve the learning on this digital era, maybe because it is easier to find the information one as student needs. But not at all is easier on this kind of class because a lot of students that take this distance classes are not familiarize with them and if on their first class they have an awful experience, they will hate this distance classes so one as teacher needs to prevent that kind of bad experience happens.

            This happen once, when I was on third semester of the language teaching career, like one and half year ago, it was my first time in contact with this modality of class; the class was basic psychology. I hated that class because the teacher only gave the lesson plan and the students of that class and I had only to do an activity once a month and the teacher never gave feedback.  In my opinion, I did not learn anything during that class, and I fail it. I had to repeat that subject, but the second time I take it I notice that the teacher had used exactly the same lesson plan without changing anything.

            When the second activity date came I was sick so I send the same essay that I did on the first time but only adding one paragraph more. The first time in that essay I got forty three as grade and the second time I got one hundred; with this I confirmed that the teacher did check neither the activities so I started to think that all distance classes were useless nor a rip off because the teacher that gave that class did not was attend the students’ needs. Until I take the open and distance education class, where in this subject the teacher is more aware to what the students are making and promotes also the autonomy and the interaction by using videos, comments, etc.; but most important the teacher gives feedback to the student, this is an aspect that can help the learner to know if he is doing the things right or not.

             I believe that an important aspect to keep motivate the student is the feedback because the teacher is not present like on a normal class, using feedback he can give the learner more motivation to continue exploring the knowledge. So if we as teacher need to, in distance classes, give feedback to the students to make they feel that are doing well and be more motivate to progress in our class; in other hand, if we did not give this to our learners they will forfeit the class and probably hate using distance class.

            Well, I think that otherwise of my experience, distance classes have advantages and disadvantages like everything that exist on the world. The advantages on this kind of classes are more notorious than the disadvantages because there are more than the others.

            One of the most notorious advantages is that gives the student the liberty to find their own way and rhythm to learn the topics. This means that the learner is not obligated to be constantly focus on the lesson because he will be working on his own rhythm not on the group rhythm, in comparison to the normal class where the teacher gives a rhythm according to the group and classroom needs and some students will be bored causing that they lost the interest on learning. But in distance classes, this does not occur because as I mention before, the student will learn and research by his own, the knowledge. The teacher will become a guide to this student with the correct feedback the harmony between both is gone improve the knowledge and the learner will have more creativity.

            Other notorious advantage is the aspect that allows people that work or does not feel comfort being on a classroom, the distance classes are perfect for them because they will doing the study in their home, their work place or any place where they feel comfortable. Also they can manage their own time to learn without to interfere with their work time or maybe if the person considers himself with too old for be into the classroom to prevent been target of laughs from the younger students so taking distance classes is perfect for this person because he will be able to study without the fear of the laughs, and also he will have more motivation to learn.

            The other of the advantages that I consider notorious is that gives facilities to the students for improve their knowledge and learner process, because distance classes are given on internet the learners can have access to this tool to search for concepts that they ignore or do not know. Also if the student has any doubt, he can contact the teacher by the different electronic media such as send to an e-mail, or maybe contact him with the help of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, for mention some. Thanks to the technology that the smartphones have you can also count with WhatsApp, Skype and other similar communication tools that help the student and the teacher be on contact.

            But not in life is perfect that why as all the open classes have also disadvantages; one of the most notorious and maybe the most important disadvantage is that sometimes could occur a blackout. This means that probably the electricity power will fall, when the student is sending his activities, or maybe the internet signal does not response; these problem could make the student feel a little disappointment specially if that problems occur during the last moment to send the work, because the learner will never know when those problems pass.

            Other disadvantages that can appear is that if the student does not feel the same by taking this type of class, maybe because he always take normal classes so it will be harder to him to understand how these distance classes works. And because the teacher is not present as in a normal class, the student will need to be more autonomous using the guide of the teacher, but he also needs to receive feedback from the guide, because if the feedback do not appears the learner will feel disappointed.

            Other disadvantage that could appear is a common also in the normal classes, and this is the plagiarism and procrastination. They are serious problems that appear a lot, but here on distance class are more common because the student thinks that is a class on internet and he instead of doing the activities, he will be maybe playing or chatting in social networks. With this the student is leaving to late the work he need to do, also he can ask their partners or someone that already do the activity to copy the same work. But when the learners search for some information on internet he takes that information as own without giving credit to the real author.

            In conclusion, I propose that as the technology is growing and the new generations of students, distance classes will be necessary to satisfied the needs they could have by the use of new digital materials.

Evaluation in a distance class

Evaluation means the making of a judgment about the amount, number, or value of something; assessment.  There are some types of evaluation that are the most common (for me):

·         Questionnaire: that is based on seeking feedback method also improves speed, anonymity and standardization

·         self-evaluation: where the students try to find there weakness and strengths during the process of the class

·         Holistic evaluation: is the kind of evaluation where you see each aspect as a whole.

·         Analytic evaluation: is similar to the holistic evaluation but the difference is that here each aspect is analyzed on a specific way.

Some of the difficulties that can present the distant class are that if you as teacher use the same type of evaluation some students could cheat or pass the answers to the other students. Other difficulty that could appear is the fallout of the internet that could block the students to apply the evaluation.

A language teacher can do a lot of things during this current educational flow (constructivism) tell that one as teacher can use the projects as evaluation, also you can use the rubrics, the diary, the portfolios; with all of this the student can feel that he will not be evaluate in the same way that some teachers were doing from antique era. Also they will feel the flexibility to do the activities because they will not feel stressful with the variety of evaluation aspects.

Other thing that the teacher can do could be some techniques of old flow (behaviorism) such as test but not the boring form that some people do the exam, you can improve the way to do it i.e.  doing some listen items that are in the like of the students such as cartoons or animation that they like, for example: for kids it could be adventure time, for teens could be some about music, etc.

You also can put images to motivate the creative aspects on the students because some of they learn by the uses of pictures to improve their knowledge; so with all of this aspects can use the teachers to evaluate the knowledge acquired by the students.

 Based on my experiences on evaluation, I created some ideas about how to create a good evaluation on a distance class, for example: using an activity such as an essay, that the students can send you the essay and you can check it, other can be a project that they can send you.  You can also apply the self-evaluation to they see their own process during the distance classes.

Well in conclusion, I think the evaluation can be uses on both styles of classes because you can adapt the evaluation process to each class and some of them you can use on the same lesson. Also you can generate on distance classes the uses of different media to impulse the activities that you will evaluate the students. So you as language teacher can use a lot of aspects to create new evaluation instruments.