Abstract:

Teaching has seen a dramatic change, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a major shift from the traditional classroom teaching to online teaching. Teachers and lecturers had to adapt very quickly, having to learn and use a wide variety of online tools. Many of these online tool's focus on supporting students with online learning and with enhancing the teacher-student interaction. There has been varying experiences with these tools with many not suiting the skills of the teacher or suiting the learning experiences required. Many teachers have continuously learned and adopted new technologies during this time. With so much choice it can be very confusing for the teacher to know what to use and when. This can consume lots of additional time with learning these tools, preparing classes to use these tools and adapting the lesson plans to use these tools. Additionally, teachers have dedicated additional time to allow for synchronous and asynchronous delivery to better suit the different circumstances of their students.

The primary mode of teacher-student communication, both before and during this period, has been on face-to-face communication. In the classroom, the teacher is traditionally at the top of the room with the students distributed around the room. When the classroom is transferred online there are a number of additional challenges. Some of these challenges mainly revolve around engagement for the student. How can they feel like they are in a classroom setting? An evaluation was conducted of a number of different technologies including Zoom, Teams, Bongo, Blackboard, Google Meet and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), with evaluation and feedback from a University class group on their experiences. To support the evaluation of the software some additional equipment was needed including good quality webcam and microphone and a green screen. Various combinations of these technologies and equipment were evaluated with student feedback on each. The preferred option involved having the presentations/whiteboard and the teacher on the one screen, enabled with the use of green screen. This gave the impression of the teacher standing at a whiteboard, pointing at different parts of the screen using their hands and interacting with what was being presented. This is very similar to what is experienced in the classroom where body language forms an important part of communication.

[Follow this link to see a screenshot from one of these interactive classes.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eptuq7u3dj9dkpr/Screenshot%202021-02-26%20at%2015.37.12.png?dl=0 ]

Keywords:

Innovation, technology, online teaching, virtual classroom, distance learning.