Is now the time to ditch online learning?

Zoom, Teams and other online platforms were brilliant during the pandemic, keeping us connected to friends, families and our children’s schools. Teachers and private tutors adapted quickly and moved their classes online, enabling our children to carry on learning and seeing their teachers in the darkest times of the pandemic.

There’s also no doubt that as a result, many service providers have permanently changed how they deliver what they do. After all, online provision can be cheaper, more time effective and efficient than in person meetings. But that begs the question, is online learning the best way to deliver tuition for school children, or is it time to ditch online learning and get back together in person?

The advantages of learning online

We’ve outlined some of the main advantages of learning online, and they tend to centre on time and costs savings, and efficiencies. As a parent, if you haven’t got to get your child to a particular venue for their tuition, it will save you time, hassle and may mean you can be more flexible about the timing of the tuition. For a tuition provider, the advantages are similar; you save the costs of the venue and the time involved getting there.

The disadvantages of online learning

It’s worthwhile keeping in mind that teaching online is not as simple as a teacher or tutor just moving what they’ve always done from the classroom or tuition centre to an online platform. As a starting point, teaching and tutoring online should involve additional teacher training and a thorough understanding of the technology involved, without which valuable time can be lost and opportunities will be missed. Notwithstanding this, there are still a number of ways in which online delivery can never compete with the in-person experience.

Lesson delivery

It can be very difficult to deliver a dynamic and engaging class online, especially to young students. A good teacher will use body language, the space around them, variations in their voice, dramatic pauses and all sorts of other techniques to deliver a lesson or explain something in a way that is interesting, easy to understand and inspiring.  All these things have a big impact on how easy something is to understand as well as how memorable it is.

Yet the limitations of being on a screen make it hard to use props, body language and maintain that valuable eye contact and connection with students. Add in a poor internet connection and a few technical issues and it can result in a flat or disjointed delivery which is hard to follow and harder still to understand and remember.

The ability to concentrate

Few can forget that Zoom fatigue was a thing and few would disagree with the fact that it can be very difficult to stay focused during an online call. And whilst this is hard for adults, you can multiply that 10 times for a lot of children.

Some students have significant difficulty sitting or staying in one place for long periods, most need regular breaks and then there’s the call of Minecraft, Snapchat, the cat, doodling on a piece of paper or just daydreaming - all very tempting when you’re on an “online call”.

From a teaching perspective, it can also be very hard to spot whether a child has got their head down working on a maths calculation or is actually texting a friend, particularly if there are multiple students online at the same time.

Feedback and personal interaction

Perhaps the most important part of teaching and tutoring is the personal interaction. Many children need the personal touch when it comes to understanding how to do something, whether that’s help forming letters, reading, doing a calculation, or even understanding a concept.  Those children that need a little extra support with their learning often really benefit from hand over hand support, along with in person feedback and encouragement, and direct interaction with a teacher or mentor. What’s more, just being in a room with other students can inspire, encourage and motivate in a way that you cannot replicate online.

From a teaching perspective, there are also often subtle physical cues that signal to a tutor that a child may be struggling in some way. Sadly, online, much of this is lost.   

Confidence and mental health

It’s no secret that the pandemic left many young people feeling isolated. Whilst children may be back at school now, private tuition online can still be an isolating experience, particularly if they are not interacting with other students in the group. What’s more, online tuition will not help build your child’s confidence with others or their ability to work in a group in the same way that in person, workshop style tuition will. In person tuition helps children form connections, develop a sense of comradery and community and this in turn can help can encourage and develop a desire to learn and grow.  

Too much screen time

Many parents already feel like they’re in a battle with too much screen time. Spending too much time online can result in a host of well-known problems which include poor posture and other physical problems, poor sleep due to too much screen light, eye strain and headaches.

There is no doubt that online tuition and teaching had an important role to play during the pandemic. But what our many years of teaching has taught us is that it’s the personal connection and small group environment that is the most effective way to teach, learn and develop social skills and confidence.

If you’d like to know more about our small group, workshop style tuition, please get in touch.