VAK in the Digital context

The utopian world of the school teacher has seen a drastic shift with the advent of COVID. Gone are the days suddenly when the teacher could walk into the safe haven of the school and interact well within the classroom wherein she could use all her resources to make classroom teaching and facilitating as interesting as possible. A sudden shift that came in completely unprepared has moved the teacher from the classroom setting to the online setting. Remote teaching has now become the buzz word for the teacher and in most cases, she has to force-fit into this system. We hear of Nobel laureates who choose not to teach online for they feel their presence cannot be felt, or their spontaneity and creativity are capped by that camera and the small screen. But then what is the other alternative? This can be a truly frustrating situation for most teachers across the globe.

To the School Management and Principal who are smart, it is important that they ensure all their teachers fit into the new remote teaching as quickly as possible. This is the New Normal and the faster we fit in the quicker we will adapt to it. Preparing relevant course materials, creation of content that fits into the new remote instruction system will take time and with limited access to school resources, libraries, these are trying times for all. Add to this the challenge of ensuring there is differentiated learning in the online classroom which caters to the highly gifted to the one who needs special attention, which would have been so much easier in the classroom, is a big challenge.

In this context, the working of pedagogy that caters to a range of learning styles: Visual, Audio, and Kinesthetic (VAK), and setting tasks that vary during the teaching-learning session is a challenge. This is where a variety of multimedia resources could be of help where there are snippets of videos, a song, quick reading material and other interactive content. Preparing content can take a long time and add to this the challenging task of giving assignments that need to assess the learning of the learner. Quick thinking leads the teacher to quizzes, MCQs, worksheets, discussion, and probably smaller activities, but then how do you monitor them all?

This is where a good LMS can support. For the Principal, it has to have ease of access, for the teacher it has to enable her to check on the individual progress of the child and if assessment papers are set in and ready; the time saving can be huge and of benefit to the school and the teacher. The time that is saved in these times can be used sensibly by the teacher to prepare for the next day and also spend time in all the training sessions and weekly meetings and reviews. And to think and devise a quicker way of evaluating all those papers.

The time saved thus, the teacher can set herself busy in creating and updating material to cater to differentiated learning or surf through the repository available to ensure the right content and right activity is available to continue making her teaching align with VAK. Here are a few suggestions, but it is important that we participate and add to this list so that all our fellow teachers benefit from the learning. Upswing learning provides you with ready solutions during these times which are teacher-friendly, Principal efficient, and a complete one-stop solution for a School.

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