Self-assessment Quiz
Hello, welcome to EDL (Emotional Distance Learning), an Erasmus+ project funded by the European Commission. EDL aims to develop socio-emotional skills in adult trainers, so that they can better manage their online training. The aim is to improve these skills from both an intrapersonal and interpersonal point of view, enabling the trainer to regulate his or her own emotions when faced with the difficulties involved in remote training. The educator, at the same time, will learn how to manage the emotions generated in the group of learners. In this way, the training will be a success since emotions are our best allies in the transmission of concepts and contents.
For this, we would like to ask for your help. You need 8 minutes of your time to complete this questionnaire based on your subjective opinion and personal experience. It is not a placement test, so no answer is incorrect. Your opinion is very important and the results of your answers will be of great importance for the development of the training system that we will design in the coming months.
You will immediately receive feedback on your answers, indicating your score in the different areas mentioned in the questionnaire.
The data from this questionnaire will only be used for the internal development of the contents of the EDL Project and are absolutely confidential.
Thank you again and welcome to EDL!
MANAGEMENT
Online teaching continues to grow and flourish, yet, at the same time it also comes with several challenges, both for students and trainers. One of these challenges is the adaptability of teaching materials and activities, predicaments that arise due to the lack of the trainer’s digital capabilities.
Moreover, many students and teachers are not equipped with the appropriate speed of internet connection that is required for online learning, so they face technical issues during lessons as they are not fully aware of technology and computer applications.
On the other side, having discipline and classroom management issues, as well as time management difficulties, has a huge impact upon the quality of the teaching-learning experience and on a teacher’s emotional wellbeing.
It’s therefore, very important that teachers in online classes have all the support and necessary tools to deal with these matters in an effective way. In the following questions, the trainers can answer if they experience similar difficulties in managing a class and teaching tasks in online learning procedure.
COMMUNICATION
Creating good rapport with students is vital for effective teaching and learning. It can prove challenging for many teachers to creating good rapport during face-to-face classes and when delivery is online, this difficulty only grows. Non-verbal and para-verbal communication is important in both a physical and digital classroom. Making simple adjustments to the way educators teach during digital lessons, such as camera angles, lighting, hand gestures and body posture, can help improve the way they connect with their students.
Another challenge of online learning is students’ motivation. Teaching online brings into focus the teachers’ difficulty in maintaining or even monitoring the learners’ attention. On one hand there are the learners, often digital natives, who struggle to stay focused in front of the screen with a thousand possible distractions. On the other hand, there are the teachers, who sometimes recognise that their learners are not engaged in the lesson anymore.
The primary issue that manifests in group activities is that of members’ unequal contributions and issue which often leads to incomplete, late or inadequate results. Therefore, knowing how to create rapport and having powerful interactions with students is vital for effective online teaching and learning and for keeping students motivated. Start this quiz to find out more about your communication skills.
ADAPTABILITY
Despite all the advantages gained by peri-COVID distance learning, there remain stark problems with which our global societies have struggled to address. Emotional distance and students’ fatigue, being as they are some of the more prominent examples, are expressed by a variety of factors. With the screen time increasing drastically, the mind is overwhelmed with information and the brain finds it rather difficult to register all the information, which can undermine the quality of the learning process.
On the other hand, facing a momentous change such as the shift to online education is not easy, especially for teachers who were not able to choose this shift but were subjected to it because of COVID. Almost all human beings tend to resist change, especially at the beginning and if they are dominated by negative emotions, such as fear of change, anxiety, insecurity, demotivation.
Furthermore, it goes without saying that although the Internet is an invaluable source containing more knowledge and information than anything that has come before, it can be a major distraction and hinderance to classwork. For both students and teachers, multitasking behaviour and distractions and consequently concentration problems can undermine the effectiveness of online education. The following questions will help the trainers acknowledge their level of adaptability skills.