Online Learning in Covid’19: Managing Expectations

The sound of the television in the living room, the constant clatter of dishes in the kitchen, the dogs barking in the lawn; the cacophony of movement and noise in a house are an ever present distraction. With Covid’19 taking the world by storm over the past year, education has shifted towards online learning. Institutions all over the world had to shut down and operate online, which meant that people had to find a spot in their homes to convert into a classroom.

People everywhere have now become accustomed to this new era of schooling, where even younger children are able to navigate their intricate LMS and access their classes online. E-learning is not just a new way to educate, it’s a new way of life.

But, with every advancement comes a new set of challenges. The rapid speed at which Covid’19 spread made it difficult for people to come to terms with online schools. There was little time for both teachers and students to pivot, and left all confused over outcomes and what to expect from such an exercise.

To quote Brian Tracy from his paper, “Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills that Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed”

“Positive expectations are the mark of the superior personality.”

To achieve success with online classes, we should first outline what our expectations are, and create an atmosphere that puts first the idea of learner changeability. For instance, as educators should consider how methods of teaching might affect certain groups of students. Then, there are often uncontrollable situations at home that will inadvertently affect the outcome of a lesson. An educator has to expect such anomalies while a student has to alter their own expectations to the ever changing nature of the environment surrounding the pandemic.

With so much uncertainty, expectations have to be managed. We must provide support to educators and students in order to meet these expectations. Companies such as academicearth.org with free access to online courses , edhelper.com with abundant access to worksheets for teachers, and villagesquare.io by providing a platform that serves the educational needs of both educators and learners simultaneously, have devoted their efforts into erasing the obstacles by creating platforms that target diverse learning problems.

Because of Covid19, there is an entirely new world of opportunity in education; it will be interesting to see how education unfolds in the next year or two and how these platforms evolve.