THESE ARE THE BIGGEST OBSTACLES TO DIGITAL TEACHING

Erfurt, 08 May 2020 - Every student must have access to digital forms of learning - this is the most important conclusion of the current IU survey in which around 800 teachers* participated. In order to get schools off to a fast start for digital learning, IU wanted to know what the teachers surveyed see as the biggest challenges in online teaching.

"The topic of 'achieving learning goals' mainly concerns the motivation of students," says Sommerfeldt. "Communication with students - similar to students - runs differently on screen than in the classroom." Ten years of experience from online study courses shows that teaching forms and didactics have to be adapted for this, he said. "For teachers, too, this means first acquiring the technical and didactic knowledge."

There were mixed results in the answers to the question about the tools that are currently most frequently used by teachers for online teaching. "The respondents work with very different learning and communication platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Kahoot, which also provide teachers and students with exciting tools for digital teaching," Sommerfeldt explains. "Tools like email or WhatsApp are certainly a supplement. But for motivating virtual teaching, these two channels are of course not enough."

"Our experience: a notebook is more convenient, but a smartphone is sufficient in many cases if teachers switch sensibly between online and offline: For example, assignments can be set online via mobile phone, which can then be worked on paper, photographed and handed in for examination. Participation in the class community via teams or Slack, for example, also works on the mobile phone. Even if it's not as efficient in the long run, mobile works for now," Sommerfeldt believes.

* Source: Around 800 participants who took part in the survey, which was conducted from 16.3.2020 to 01.04.2020 as part of free online training for teachers on the topic of "Digitisation of Teaching".