Online teaching

Alpha School, a private school chain, is recruiting more teachers.

“The school has cut the activities of the administration and supportive divisions, but we need 5-10 more teachers to support classes,” Nguyen Si Thu, chair of Alpha School, said.

Other education establishments have also organized online classes on a large scale. One of them is Nguyen Hoang (NHG), which has many education brands for different education levels, from preschool to higher education, with 50 schools in 18 cities/provinces.

“Teaching online with multi-dimensional interactive technology platform is the best choice in current situation,” said Do Manh Cuong, deputy general director of NHG.

Non-state education establishments had to close the doors during the epidemic, but some of them began using online teaching activities.

The ‘digital classes’ as called by Cuong are organized on basic apps such as Microsoft Office 365 Teams and Quizizz. Each teacher in NHG’s system is granted one Microsoft Office 365 for use in daily teaching. Students can learn from a distance through book and lecture exchange, home exercise assignments, grading, and tests, and make real-time transactions or through livestreaming.

Obstacles

While educators believe that online teaching is the best choice for now, they admit that online classes cannot compare with traditional classes in terms of efficiency.

It will take many years to build and develop a high-quality course or an online program because it is necessary to prepare lesson plans, train teachers and find suitable technologies. Meanwhile, schools, students and parents still have not prepared well enough for online teaching.

“Online education remains unfamiliar to both students and teachers,” said Cuong from NHG.

Schools remain concerned about teaching and interaction platforms, curricula and training programs. Many parents still have not got used to computers and technology.

Poor interaction is also a problem of online education, which affects students concentration and enthusiasm in learning. The new form requires teachers to have more information technology skills, new knowledge transfer methods, and creativity in teaching.

Platforms play an important role in the success of online teaching systems. Educational institutions have different training competencies, depending on their investment capability.

Before activating the online teaching system, an international school in district 7, HCM City, ran a ‘virtual school’ system which helped communicate with parents. It was then easy for the school to switch from direct (offline) to indirect (online) teaching.

According to NHG, using the same technological platform is needed to ensure consistency and uniformity. The platform chosen by NHG is Office 365 with the teaching app MS Teams.

Le Ha