Socializing is an important and essential way for humans to interact which helps us to bring the various ideas together. Before March 2020, we would have never thought of conducting regular online classes. There is a saying that Necessity paves the way for new inventions and discoveries. Technology has made it possible to teach the students online by coming up with many innovative ideas.
Teaching is not only about taking lectures. It is also interacting with the students and making them understand the concept. With the introduction of Competency Based Medical Education in Medical Colleges, we should also Demonstrate and make them perform precisely. Assessment is one of the important aspects to know the academic status of the students. Assessment (both Formative & Summative) makes students prepare their subjects better and improve their knowledge to apply it in Clinical Conditions.
Though there were many Learning Management systems before the pandemic, many institutions never heard it before. Covid 19 made it possible to use the technology to its fullest exploration by all the educationalists.
Before the pandemic, we were using Blackboards and PowerPoint Presentations for our lectures. After the pandemic, Zoom, and Google meet platforms had come for our rescue. We took classes by sharing our PowerPoint Presentations. But it was not easy to monitor the students and interact with them. We were frequently and randomly checking the student’s attentiveness by asking them to switch on the videos and popping the questions. This made us go for a search to monitor the student’s presence. GOOGLE ATTENDANCE was the answer, which monitor’s the time spent by the students in the online class.
PowerPoint Presentations have to be used to the fullest options that are available instead of only projecting the pictures or reading the lectures. I started creating concepts for each slide and got positive feedback.
There are various tools in PowerPoint Presentation, which I’m exploring and making use of it. Pear Deck - add to the PPT helped me to interact with students online and it helped me to understand their acquisition of knowledge.
Mentimeter and Poll everywhere were some of the other add-ins which aided my presentations to be more enthusiastic than it was offline. Interaction makes our classes energetic and these tools made it possible online too. These add-ins took its attention, dragged me to think and learn more about PPT.
Udemy was the platform from where I learned and improved my PPT skills from various professional teachers.
I trained myself with Zoom and Google meet platforms, discussed with my friends from other colleges to use a better platform for our students. I choose between Zoom, Google meet, and Team Meetings for our students of MBBS, B.Sc., Allied Health Sciences, and Diploma courses.
As we started having regular online classes, we thought of assessing the student’s knowledge. We were regularly assessing them by google forms by the end of each online session.
Google Classroom was the one which assisted us to manage the real timings of the examination. We scheduled and posted the Questions for our Internal Assessment. Students went through the questions and wrote the answers within the stipulated time. There was always a chance that students may misuse the technology, but still, these assessments would improve their knowledge by searching for the answers. We gave 15 minutes to upload the answer sheets. We evaluated the answer sheets from Google Classroom itself and the student’s grading was published accordingly.
Conducting online viva was fascinating. I had one-to-one sessions using WhatsApp calls. I was suspicious that the students might be using their notes to answer. So, I made them close their eyes and answer my viva session. It was exciting and noteworthy to receive a response from our students.
Due to technical issues, our timetable with Anatomy and Biochemistry overlapped then and there. Though We had online classes regularly, Timings were the major factor.
I came across the concept of recording the PPTs. We recorded our voices in PowerPoint Presentations and posted them in the google classroom for a scheduled time.
I converted my recorded voice PPT into a video, then I uploaded it the YouTube. This helped our students to have access to the topic anytime without any time constraints. After each of my uploaded videos, I posted Questions using a google form to monitor and assess the students.
Though there are many things which we made use of during this pandemic, there are some negatives too. Myopia and Digital eye strain have become a growing Epidemic and we must be aware of it too. Many of us and our students developed Myopia during this pandemic.
Because of this pandemic and usage of technology, we have learned better and taught our students better. However, Live contact classes cannot be replaced by any means, technology helped us to go near it.
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