As digitalisation progresses, more and more courses are being organized online. There is a distance course and open mass courses as well as live instruction in a small group. Explaining and going through things is already well managed. However, a balance should be struck in how the student him/herself becomes familiar with things while the teacher supports learning. The roughest example is probably the videos used in adult and qualification training: Teaching relies on passive video viewing. While the good side of the video is that you can always repeat the past, it is one-sided as a key teaching channel. Learning by watching long videos is not suitable for many topics. Rather, the theoretical and learning material should be pedagogically divided into meaningful wholes, taking into account the student’s starting level, and a short subject, causation, or video explaining the theory should be used to explain difficult key issues.
In online teaching the testing tool is often a multiple choice test. There is nothing wrong with the multiple-choice test, but deep understanding and difficult questions should be asked in the form of textual questions. They measure competence better and are suitable for upper secondary, vocational school, upper secondary school and higher education. Has new technology, constant learning of new practices and software, and passing them on to students taken up too much work time from the teacher? Has the organization of cumbersome and time-consuming exams been facilitated by taking advantage of multiple-choice tasks? How much of the time in all training is spent correcting and reviewing assignments and exams. I think the time spent on inspections is steadily declining. A recent study by the Finnish National Agency for Education found that 17% of a high school teacher’s work went to taking an exam.
Online training is increasing, inspection of tasks is gradually being automated
Different types of education are increasing in the world. Lifelong learning has come to stay in the West. In Asia, education on a large scale and its need is increasing. As the population middle-class, competition for jobs and success requires skills and continuous learning. The rapid development of technology areas means that in order to stay on the carts, individuals have to learn new things. In developing countries, with a lower starting point for information, the need for learning is considerable. Good examples of the development of learning are India and China, which have taken real leaps in teaching and especially in the use of network and technology over the last decades. More and more people are taking courses, and even degrees, online. All major international universities have degrees available online. Roughly speaking, studies completed in the old-fashioned correspondence course are now online and growing with the development of technology and the general acceptance of digital learning content.
Thus, an already identified bottleneck is emerging in checking assignments and exams, as well as giving feedback to the student. The truth is most often in high school and elsewhere in secondary school that there is little use of exam return lessons, and if so, consider whether they should be held at all when students do not attend.
In the next part of the blog series, we’ll talk about how Eximia’s new technology is revolutionizing online task verification and promoting learning.