By Nora Garcia

The majority of schools, colleges and Universities in the UK are now closed due to the Coronavirus spread. Online-Teaching is the current method employed to help students throughout their academic year.

Professional Educators in schools and Universities are experiencing difficulties when it comes to teaching and to examine their students, as the academic year is arriving to an end. Face-to-face teaching is not an option as the Prime Minister made clear yesterday that the UK is in a ”national emergency”.

Teachers are now using platforms such as Google Scholar, Google Drive and Microsoft Teams in order to share information and keep in contact with the students. Some of these professors addressed the problem of internet connection and the lack of attention of the students as being the major obstacles of this method.

Martín Naveiro Vázquez, teacher in a Secondary School in Spain, has been in quarantine since the 14th of March. He has changed his way of teaching creating new videos with tutorials and starting to use Google Scholar.

It´s horrible, but thanks to this situation, I’m learning how to make Youtube Videos, for example. Or how to give classes in another way. I’m adapting, and I think everyone, all the teachers should do the same.

Martín Naveiro Vázquez

Online-Teaching is challenging professional educators due to the absence of previous training and the adequate content that is needed for this method.

Theo Papaioannou, Professor of Politics and Development at the Open University which it is used to distance and online teaching for many years, admitted that they are challenges in face-to-face teaching: “It is much more difficult to engage students online than it is to engage them when you do face to face teaching.”

Rose Capdevila, who also works at the Open University as Senior Lecturer, has addressed her personal opinion about the current situation and how to deal with Online-Teaching: ”Personally, I think at the moment it is important to allay student fears.

Personally, I think at the moment it is important to allay student fears as much as possible. This means giving them clear information even if just to say more is coming on a specific date. Good and communication is essential.  For academics at brick universities with no training in online teaching, most of the online teaching will not be what they are most proud of or the best students can get, but that’s okay. Everyone needs to be kind to each other.

Rose Capdevila

Lecturers at the UWS are sharing information and tools through platforms like Moodle in order to help the students to finish this academic year. Most of the schools and Universities in the UK will remain closed until further notice.

For further information on COVID-19 visit the government web page https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus

For further information on COVID-19 in the UWS visit https://www.uws.ac.uk/about-uws/coronavirus-covid-19-information/