Strategies to shift to effective online education during the pandemic
Preliminary reports suggest that students had an overall positive experienced with online education during the COVID-19 lockdowns (Agarwal & Kaushik, 2020). The personal experience of authors in attending workshops has been very positive. For example, an interactive workshop on introduction to microbiome 16S rRNA analysis workshop proved to be uniquely informative because of the screen sharing option whenever a trainee encountered problems. Breakout room option available on Zoom provides a great way for addressing individual trainees’ problems. Bao (W. Bao, 2020) summarises strategies successfully adopted at the Peking University to shift all the courses online. The instructor should anticipate and prepare for unexpected online platform shutdown due to user overload. They should avoid overwhelming the students with new information and as much as possible, should divide the lesson into small modules. Due to the limited scope of online interaction including restricted appreciation of body language and facial expression in the online platform, the instructor should attempt to use their voice effectively and speak more slowly. Technologically savvy teaching assistants could greatly facilitate an online teaching session. The successful online learning depends to a large extent on the student’s learning activities beyond the online classroom. Therefore, the instructors are advised to enhance motivation of the students by designing engaging assignment (W. Bao, 2020).