THE current pandemic has posed a colossal problem to students, such as poor Internet connectivity, lack of educational materials, and the low quality of the learning modules.
Nevertheless, Wilfredo K. Pardorla Jr., a teacher of environment, science and physics of the senior high-school department in Cebu provinces’ Saint Cecilia’s College, is unfazed by these obstacles.
“[These hurdles do not extinguish] my burning passion,” Pardorla told the BusinessMirror in an e-mail interview. “Eventually, this passion in teaching, together with my co-teacher-researchers, gave birth to pioneering research projects on high-altitude ballooning and rocketry in the Philippines.”
The educator pointed out that teaching physics at this time presents a new breed of challenges, while ensuring his students achieve the processes of concept, calculation and real-life application in every physics lesson.
“The real-life application had to be partnered with experiments and teacher demonstrations,” Pardorla said.
According to the educator, teachers are currently experiencing major paradigm shifts in terms of teaching-learning processes delivery. As a result, he transformed from being an online learner, as he took webinars and accredited online courses, to online-distance teacher.
Pardorla shared that the retention span and screen time of the students have to be factored-in into the lesson preparation in the new normal to minimize distractions created by many factors at home.
The focus on learning, he opined, is a bit of a challenge both in online and modular mode of learning: “This one, along with other factors, may lead to procrastination among students in completing their tasks and activities.”
In an online set-up, Pardorla said he has still to innovate ways to determine if his students actually learn from his classes. To remedy the situation, he gave the appropriate assessments.
Pardorla considers as a blessing his online-teaching application in previous face-to-face classes through blended learning and flipped classroom—even prior to the pandemic.
The science teacher revealed he and other faculty members in their institution are still currently addressing the debacle of Internet access and connectivity of their students. They also devised ways to divide their classes with three learning options to cater to the different economic capacities of their students. These are online classes, digital modular classes, and printed modular classes for the basic education department.
Online classes are delivered through videoconferencing for synchronous sessions and learning-management systems for asynchronous sessions. Meanwhile, printed modular classes are for those students who have very limited to no access to the Internet. Printed modules are released and retrieved on pre-set dates through the students’ parents, guardians or relatives.
Their digital modular classes, Pardorla shared, are for those students who can log on to the Internet, but still have limited or disrupted connections for the entire week. Digital modules, together with supplementary activities, are given to them and retrieved via the Internet in bulk at a predetermined date.