My uni hasn’t yet shut but the departments are all gearing up (we’ll scrambling is a better description) for everything to switch to online learning for the virus. It’s really all fun and games to sit through meetings showing me how create online groups like it’s 2009.
Anyhow, my deeper question to the community: Do envision online learning further impacting education in Taiwan after the virus mess is over? Or, do you harbour a sneaking suspicion that the flipped classroom concept will disappear with the virus?
For me, it seems Taiwan runs on making everything official, while in fact, many times very little is actually done. If it feels something has been accomplished, then it has, right? The flipped classroom concept in my opinion represents a massive threat to the status quo of education here. It means you’ve freed up a massive block of two hours to only do communication tasks that can mimic the real world if you physically meet in a classroom. You don’t need me to teach the same crap I taught last term from the book in class. In fact, I’d go so far as to say education in Taiwan is getting owned by the virus. Many departments in universities are getting exposed from shams they are because the current mode and expectations of education are obsolete in the face of online possibilities. The problem is, if universities admitted as much, they’d see it as a massive threat to their authority as dispensers of knowledge. Learning information on a computer doesn’t feel official enough. But in light of so many degrees providing little ROI for four years of your life, I suppose people will one day wake up and realize they could have saved tons of time and money by using Google. If universities don’t provide something of added value in career path learning that can’t be easily done online, then I only imagine many degrees (not all) will become more and more worthless.
My students come to school at 7:15 a.m. and sleep at their desks for about 20 minutes before going out to clean the school. At 8:10, a teacher rushes into the classroom to give them a test, demanding students stop their cleaning tasks because the test needs to be taken now. Five minutes into the test, another teacher interrupts the test to give the students a sheet full of information for the quiz they will have that afternoon. 20 minutes later, the first period teacher wanders in to class, five minutes late, but it’s OK because they can teach through the break after class.
For the entire day of 10 minute breaks between classes, students might have the chance to rush to the toilet between teachers getting in more quizzes, speed lessons, or talking though the break because the teacher took their sweet time coming in to the classroom after the bell rang. The teacher simply turn their mic up as loud as it will go and just throws knowledge into the air and feels satisfied that is sufficient teaching. Learning is all on the students, right?
Nap time rarely happens because they need to make up tests because “they aren’t trying hard enough”.
I get frustrated at my students inability to do just about anything. Underline the subject. Circle the verb. Put a triangle around the noun. It’s on the board, just copy off the board, do exactly what I’m doing, They literally are incapable of doing it. But then I observe other teachers. They ALL give out multiple choice homework assignments. The students need only copy “A” “B” “C” or “ZHU!”. They ask questions and answer them in the same breath. There is no expectation for a student to use their brain power in the classroom. Teachers blame attitude, and, to a large extent it is. But where does that attitude come from? Maybe it comes from sitting at a desk for 10 hours a day and doing nothing.
Taiwan transition to online learning? A flipped classroom model? Ha! You go to online learning and both teachers and students will become masters of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to make more time for napping on hard surfaces.