Does the thought of home-based learning being here to stay send shivers down your spine?
Does work from home while your child is having online classes from school make you feel like screaming?
There have been many poorly planned online learning experiences that have frustrated both the teacher and the student. As a result, the sessions are less than optimal, and disinterest can seep in.
At the same time, there are also many well-planned online learning experiences that have proved a joy to both student and teacher too!
Creating a well-planned online learning experience requires a systematic online-first approach. An online learning program is different from just moving a physical class online.
Myths of online learning programs for children
With this in mind, let us see what the common misconceptions from parents are whose children have tried online learning with less-than-optimal results.
Here are 5 common myths we hear about online classes for children, along with how we deal with each one at LingoAce:
Myth #1: “Children cannot stay focused during online classes.”
The dynamics online are different. Your child may find it hard to sit still and listen to a teacher present from a screen. There is no classmate to get visual cues from, or a teacher who could tap on the desk if your child wasn’t paying attention in class.
During in-person lessons, the teacher can refocus a student's attention back on the lesson at hand by calling them by name. How do we help students to focus on an online class?
Children love and need to be engaged during learning. This is something we realized early on at LingoAce. With this knowledge in hand, we created programs that incorporate interactive and engaging multimedia. This gamified and interactive learning is precisely created with attention-deficit students in mind.
For instance, our pre-school foundation program (for children aged four to six) feels like being part of episodes of a cartoon show.
As a result, children often find themselves immersed into the storyline. They love to interact with our original characters, Tigo and Duoduo. Tigo brings them to get to know new friends and Duoduo helps them to learn new words.
Myth #2: “Online learning lacks social interaction”
You may worry that online learning takes away social interaction from your children.
On the contrary, our small class or 1-to-1 arrangement means that interaction is part of the learning process, not something that only happens after classes.
The quality interaction that your child has with their teachers is crucial, especially when it comes to developing the confidence in speaking Mandarin.
Our small class size gives your child the safe space he or she needs to practice speaking Mandarin and receive real-time guidance.
We don’t take away social interaction. Instead, we make quality student-teacher interaction integral to our lessons.
Myth #3: “Children won’t do homework assigned in online classes”
Homework is given and reviewed each lesson at LingoAce and is methodologically created to reinforce the memory of lesson concepts and difficult words.
In fact, our students' parents have feedback that their child enjoys doing the homework given at LingoAce! Can it be true? Yes, this is really music to parents’ ears. How do we do it?
Animation and gamification are incorporated to make both learning and homework content more engaging and motivating.
We make homework fun, to keep students engaged and motivated to tackle new concepts. We go to the extent of even color-coding their homework, to keep our learners engaged.
Students of LingoAce key in their response to online questions as well as work on printed homework which requires them to write out their response.
Parents stay involved, through tuning in to live lessons (through a parent app) and post-lesson playback made available, so they can monitor their child’s progress and know what homework was assigned during the lesson time.
Myth #4: “Teachers can’t supervise students well during online classes.”
Some parents worry about the lack of supervision in online classes. In the traditional classroom setting, teachers can monitor their students easily and spot if students are not paying attention. But how about in the online setting?
That's why at LingoAce, we make classes fun and engaging such that students want to be part of the excitement. The key is to start with making it a self-directed journey for the student. Besides this, the small class ratio at LingoAce (1-to-1 or 1-to-4) also ensures that each student receives much more individual attention from their teacher compared to a traditional classroom setting.
Beyond this, parents are also actively involved in their child's learning journey, through regular detailed reports of their children's learning progress (i.e., performance insights, strengths, and areas to work on).
We've even created an app for parents to 'tune in' to live classes without interrupting their child’s learning!
Myth #5: “Online learning programs are quite simply, physical classes moved online.”
If you are a parent of a school-going child in Singapore, you would have experienced HBL by now.
The pandemic, though unfortunate, made online learning essential and no longer a 'good to have'. In a post-pandemic world, it is safe to say that reliance on technology for learning purposes will only continue to increase.
However, a typical home-based learning arrangement necessitated by the pandemic does not accurately reflect the true potential of online learning yet. Some schools and tuition centers may have been caught off guard and had to catch up quicker than they were prepared to, in a bid to comply with measures set by the Government.
Teachers, already having their plates full of workload, now need to struggle to use newer technologies that are required online. Some of them are learning to ‘go online’ for the first time. This makes the learning experience rather rough for already easily distracted children.
Online learning programs are not the same as just shifting classes online
We believe in a tech-enabled education at LingoAce. Our teachers have been using online methods to teach since 2016, so we welcome the move to make online learning more mainstream. Being an online platform since we first began, we live and breathe online learning, and our teachers are trained and well supported by the edu-tech platform we created solely for children’s learning of the Chinese language.
Some unique points offered at LingoAce include classes reviewed via AI technology to evaluate effectiveness of content and teaching.
Additionally, our curriculum specialist also audits classes with permission and our teachers provide immediate feedback on the content and delivery.
The classes are constantly being refined based on tech-enabled evaluation methods, making the online learning experience superior to home-based learning methods.
These are merely the tip of the iceberg on how our online learning programs differ from moving traditional classes online. You can read more about the LingoAce difference here.
In gist, online learning delivers a subpar experience only if it is purely trying to replicate a traditional classroom setting.
At LingoAce, programs have been designed to be ‘online-first’. LingoAce is created from the ground up to provide the most seamless online learning experience. We live and breathe online learning.
LingoAce programs are designed for digital use and deliver learning experiences that are unique and simply not replicable in the traditional classroom setting. We’d love for you to try us out! Do sign up for a free trial class to let your child experience the LingoAce difference.
