Teaching Biology Online: Delights and Downsides
LikeI have now done a few years of teaching A level biology and wanted to compare face to face vs online tuition. I know for a fact that many parents are suspicious of online tutoring, but there may be some myth busting I can do to reassure them.
First of all, parents often make a saving on transport. Face to face tutor seem to spend nearly as much time travelling as they do teaching! This is clearly not ideal, though it can have its upsides: in my own experience I'd often get a nice cup of coffee and even occasionally a cooked breakfast! However, tutors will have to add petrol and time costs to their price, which is not the case for online tutors, who just need a reliable Wi-Fi connection and some decent (free) software. This helps keep costs down for hard-stretched parents.
And the software is getting better. Microsoft Whiteboard is excellent for drawing up rough and ready diagrams freehand and allowing the student to modify and label it. Where it really comes into its own, is the ability to paste pre-prepared content in. So rather than draw out a transverse section of a leaf with all its myriad layers of epidermis, cuticle, pallisade mesophyll, spongy mesophyll, stomata and guard cells, the diagram can be introduced in one copy and paste action! Student and tutor can then label, discuss and manipulate it to their heart's content.
Sometimes parents aren't keen as they fear the student won't have a good record of the session. Again, by exporting the Whiteboard session as a PNG or PDF file, the tutor can get a record of the tutorial a few minutes after it ended! So long as the student is tidy-minded enough to file these away on their computer or OneDrive, then it can become a really useful revision resource over the weeks. And as they have contributed to the session, at least some of the content is in their own words, which is invaluable. In contrast, textbooks offer a passive and sometimes sterile learning experience. On A level biology, as a student, I never felt I had learned a topic until I had read it, talked it through and then re-written it in my own prose. This is also a really valuable technique for when the students go on to university (hopefully!).
However, being honest, there are one or two downsides to online teaching, but a lot of it is at the door of the less motivated students! In one case, we have the dodgy Wi-Fi problem. In many cases, this is a real issue, and it is incumbent on an online tutor to make sure his or her online offering is reliable. But of course it takes two to tango, and if the student's Wi-Fi is poor it can be problematic. It can also be used as an excuse by students who would rather be Tik-tokking rather than absorbing the finer details of the counter current gas exchange system of the salmon, so it is important to be on guard!
Many students also don't like to put their video on. Fair enough, some people are shy, but it can occasionally mask nefarious activities! For example, one student was watching the Formula One car race during a lesson, while the other had a strategically placed AQA Mark Scheme offline and was reading out the answers to my exam questions with suspiciously precise English!
However, overall, I would heartily recommend online tuition. It is usually more convenient for everyone, and students and teachers can spend more time doing what we do best-teaching and learning!