Teaching Online is Hard!

#teachingonline #onlineteachers #digitalclassrooms #virtualclassroom
Ok let's get super real in today's video - these are some of the struggles and challenges that online teachers are dealing with everyday. It's why so many of us want to quit, or need a break.

It's not really what we signed up for.. yet we are on the ride. Hold on tight friends.

There's always hope though - watch to find out my glimmer of sunshine at the end of all of this.

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At 8:47 you describe your epiphany. Very uplifting. I've had a few "standouts" who have done well with online learning. I suspect they would have excelled in face-to-face and online classes even before COVID. Sometimes I hang my hat on this smaller percentage of students as it makes me feel like it's worth it. I do feel sad that we're leaving behind the less prepared students, though.

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Everything you say is completely on target. I'm a college instructor and teaching online is more like individually tutoring 91 students by email, discussion boards and comments on assignments *rather than* simply having class and gently guiding students during class. What we also miss is that in face to face classes, there is a form of peer pressure that actually helps students be guided to do assignments correctly rather than go off base. Online, they're reading maybe 1 out of 10 sentences or watching 1 out of 4 videos I provide and then "taking a stab" at an assignment. Then, I'm doing damage control with their writing stages--outlining and rough drafting. And most of my students are providing much worse final drafts of assignments. In my postsecondary classes, our retention is TERRIBLE and students either "ghost" and stop engaging at all or drop out. It's demoralizing for instructors as we've never seen this kind of drop out before. It's exhausting.