In traditional universities, students face their teachers in a live environment due to which their communication skills are more refined as compared to students in a distance learning environment.
You task is to suggest how the communication skills can be improved in students who are getting education in Online distance learning?
Answers
Explanation:
Children who are involved in distance learning should engage and interact with their friends more often to enhance their confidence level. Also take should take regular feedback from their online friends about their conversation.
In addition, one should record his online session and then watch again and again to find his weak areas and then work on these. This will make them more confident
In an educational set-up, the main purpose of communication is to ensure that:
1. The students understand the lesson clearly.
2. The students can frame questions properly, to seek clarification.
3. The students can answer well, both orally and in written assignments.
Since the oral part is missing in distance education, improving their communication skills becomes challenging. However, keeping the above-mentioned purposes in mind, the following steps can be taken:
1. Increase the scope of assignments- Usually, assignments for online distance learning courses are in the form of questions and answers. Instead, the assignments can include tasks such as building a vocabulary map around a concept. It would encourage the students to read more and research keywords related to a particular topic. Additionally, they would read more, thus improving their vocabulary and hence communication skills.
2. Provide the keywords for answers- If students are given a bunch of keywords to include in their answers, they will get some guidelines without being spoon-fed. Keywords will make the assignments rich in topic-specific terms and add to the overall quality of expression.
3. Start an online chat forum for the class- Having a chat forum where the students can interact with the teachers will help make up for the lack of direct face-to-face communication. The more the students are encouraged to interact with each other and staff, the more confident they will become. Once confidence is built, communication will become more frequent. The more one communicates, the better one gets at it. In case this is not possible, even exchanging emails with the teachers will help.
Though video conferencing is available now, it is not a very feasible option when dealing with an entire class. With greater advancements in technology, more methods of effective teaching will become available in the future.