Online Microteaching

For me, online teaching elicited many mixed thoughts and opinions, both of which are positive and negative in nature. A positive aspect of teaching online is the ability to work remotely within the comfort of one’s home. I was in full control of the noise levels around me because I could easily mute my sound feedback during group work activities if need be so as not to distract my learners’ thought processing (e.g., pets barking, cars driving past, etc.). A less positive experience, however, is needing to consider the availability and reliability of technological elements, including a stable Wi-Fi connection, hardware, and sound software functioning (and possible unexpected malfunctioning). In a sense, I found online teaching to be slightly more uncomfortable because of the uncertainty that comes with operating technological devices. In a face-to-face setting, I can easily adapt to any adversities prohibiting teaching and learning. In an online session, key hardware, and software (e.g., a laptop and internet connection) is a pre-requisite if any type or degree of teaching can occur. For example, PowerPoint content cannot be distributed to learners and colleagues without a Wi-Fi connection or sufficient data availability. In the classroom, however, lesson preparations and teaching and learning resources can easily be distributed and shared in a hardcopy and/or concrete format (e.g., class readers) with a colleague next door.

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I also found teaching online to elicit minor frustrations because of delayed connectivity on my side. For example, there was a slight delay between the notes I drew on the presentation slides and the time these were reflected onto the learners’ side. This made it difficult for my learners to answer questions in real time. In an authentic Grade 3 online lesson, learners may become agitated because they cannot see and therefore understand what I am referring to on a given slide. This is frustrating for me as the educator because my main goal for each lesson is to obtain and maintain the learners’ interest in the subject content. Another negative aspect of online teaching for me was the silence that occurred when the learners were completing the group work activity. As a student who has spent the last 3,5 years completing face-to-face teaching practicals, it was rather disturbing not hearing the healthy buzz of voices indicating that thinking and reasoning were taking place. However, I did appreciate that the digital tool used for this group work, Google Docs, did allow for live updates of what the groups were doing, even if there had been a slight delay on my part when observing learners’ understanding.

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Teaching online did redeem itself, however, because of how well the teaching tool, Blackboard Collaborate, accommodated my engagement with the learners and vice versa when all technological considerations worked to capacity. In other words, it was refreshing to know that various modes of communication could be used to engage clearly and easily with the learners. For example, verbally (microphone, video camera) and non-verbally (chat box with a selection of emojis). Therefore, I thoroughly admired how well online teaching could equip me with the tools necessary to accommodate the learning styles and preferences of each learner. Engaging in this microteaching experience further awarded me with a few more skill-building opportunities. When preparing the PowerPoint slides prior to teaching my lesson, I was exposed to presentation elements I had never used before. These included audio playback and transitions between slides to engage learners further. However, I would not be able to showcase this new skill because when I started sharing my slides on Blackboard Collaborate, the animations failed to display as they were not compatible with one another’s formats. If I had the opportunity to present the same lesson again, I would spend less time incorporating these transitions and more time including more challenging examples for the learners to engage with. Alternatively, I would seek to use another online learning and teaching platform such as Microsoft Teams to achieve my presentation goals.

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I also learned how to articulate clearly when teaching content, taking extra care to exude a level of confidence in the way in which I delivered the lesson content. On the day of microteaching, however, I did let my nerves have a slight hold over the pace at which I delivered content. To solve this, I would practice my lesson more frequently prior to teaching it to alleviate the jitters that arise with any new experience such as this one. In addition, I would reconsider using Google Docs as my digital teaching and assessment tool. While it was appropriate for viewing the learners’ thinking processes during the group work activity, it was quite difficult for the learners to navigate on their own. To accommodate a Grade 3 learner’s technological competency level in the future, I would either include clear screenshots of how to navigate this tool correctly in my PowerPoint slides prior to facilitating the activity or I would replace it with a fun, more age-appropriate tool such as Kahoot! or Quizlet. I would also need to send the links to the Gimkit quiz to each learner prior to the learners engaging with it, as quite a bit of teaching time had been used up to sign up each learner with an account to be able to access the quiz.

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This experience has helped me to develop a critical perspective on designing in-person assessment tools and activities that not only assess subject content covered in class but also use differentiated questions to accommodate the learners’ current strengths and areas of development. The online teaching experience has also helped me develop my ability to plan teaching and learning material that can be adapted or directly translated from contact lessons to blended or full-time online lessons. This is a crucial skill to have as any unforeseen circumstance could demand this adaptation without notice. For example, another Covid-19 outbreak taking place. This includes designing and implementing resources that are exciting and engaging for the learners to interact with. For example, I changed teaching parts of a whole using play dough pizzas to teach with a 2D pizza rendering cut into equal slices. Furthermore, this experience has allowed me to develop my creativity and essentially trust my own capabilities as a soon-to-be-qualified educator. It has taught me how to trust the process and to accept that not every aspect of a lesson will go as planned. It taught me how to adapt to uncertain and unforeseen adversities and plan in advance to limit the effects of a prospective lesson failing at first. Most importantly, however, teaching online has assisted me with improving my time management skills. If I had not started preparing for this lesson as early as I did, I would have been doing myself a disservice as an educator, but even more significantly, a disservice to my learners who have every right to learn and be enriched with content and life skills that are planned effectively and comprehensively by their teacher.

Figure 1: Pixabay. [s.a.]. Letter Blocks. (Pexels, 2016).

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Reference List

Pexels. 2016. Letter Blocks. [Online]. Available at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/letter-blocks-247819/ [Accessed 22 August 2023].

List of Figures

Figure 1: Pixabay. [s.a.]. Letter Blocks.