With continuous lockdown of schools and little visibility on re-opening, online learning is no longer only a stop-gap arrangement for schools and parents.

For online schooling to be effective, there are four key infrastructural requirements:

1. Internet. A high speed and consistent internet connection with low latency.

2. Device. A smart device on which the child can take the class.

3. Place. A distraction-free place to learn and focus on the classes.

4. Enabled teachers. Teachers who are trained and enabled to run the online classes.

Even though schools and parents ensure that the infrastructural requirements are met, in many cases it does not yield the desired outcome. In fact, students become more distracted, lost and feel left behind. This is because infrastructure is only an enabler.

For any schooling to be effective, students need to cooperate and actively take part in the learning process.

The learning environment plays a big role in this. With online schooling, children are at home and the environment in most cases is far from ideal. To add to the challenge, during online schooling, teachers cannot influence and guide the students like the way they can do in a real classroom.

As a result, you might find that your child is:

1. Not listening to or paying attention in the class.

2. Fidgeting with the touch screen, mouse or the keyboard.

3. Roaming around while the class is still going on.

4. Getting distracted most of the duration of the class.

While online schooling cannot yield results like the offline real classroom environment, you can take the following simple measures to increase its efficiency for children.

1. Place. The place where your child sits during the online classes is paramount. Please ensure that the place you choose is a dedicated place for the classes. Also ensure it has comfortable seating and is distraction free. An empty room with limited, or no movement of other family members would be ideal. Limit your entrance into the room during the classes and let the child feel that what he/she is doing is important. This will bring in the required amount of focus and seriousness in the child.

2. Screen-size. With online schooling starting as a stop-gap arrangement, many parents used their spare phones or tabs as the primary screen for the online classes. This continued and those devices became the de-facto screens for online learning. Now, with the learning becoming more academic, it has become very difficult for children to concentrate on smaller screens. For proper visibility and distraction free experience, you can use at least a laptop, or, ideally, a desktop screen for the classes. This will help the children view the class/content better and help with better engagement and understanding.

3. Headphones. Again, most children use the speaker of the device as the primary audio output. Usually, this sound is not loud enough and many times, it gets mixed-up with the ambient and surrounding chatter of the house. After a while, it becomes very challenging for children to concentrate on what is being said. They lose interest and eventually start fiddling or focusing on other things. An over-the-ear-headphone is highly recommended as it will make children feel directly being talked to. There will be less loss of signal and children will have minimum distraction from any ambient sound.

4. Input lock. Students who have developed a habit of fiddling with the keyboard and mouse during the classes do it as a way to cope with boredom. With the new setup of a space, good screen size and over-the-ear headphones, it should reduce. However, there are many free softwares (here) that lock the keyboard and mouse input. KeyFreeze* (link) is one such free software that many parents have found useful.

5. Incentivize. Like adults, children need to be incentivized in the right manner. This helps the children feel motivated and excited about the activity at hand. You can create small goals and incentives for children during the online classes. Incentives such as play-time, screen-time or even a favourite snack sometimes does the trick.

We might still be a few months away from the real, offline schooling resuming. Although for us adults, it might be “just a few months”, but for children – being first-time learners – those few months of missed learning might have a disproportionate impact. Let us ensure that we go that one extra step so that when children re-join the offline schooling, they do not feel left behind.

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*Note: Mont Ivy Preschools is not incentivized by KeyFreeze in any manner. Mention of any particular software is merely for indicative/suggestive purposes and not an official recommendation from Mont Ivy Preschools. Parents are advised to perform their own due diligence before using any software.