The home environment is vastly different from the educational environment. Humans’ neural connections are connected in such a way that home has become synonymous with relaxation and comfort (Meyers et al., 2013). People are returning home to gain strength after a difficult day. In quarantine, individuals realized that the home environment is not conducive to concentration on important professional issues. Suddenly, an extra snack, a smoke break, general cleaning, and watering flowers become a priority – anything but brain strain and certainly not the development of new knowledge and skills. These distractions impede the total involvement in the learning process.
The atmosphere in the classroom, on the contrary, is programmed to receive serious content since it is educational. Undoubtedly, there are distractions too, but the brain still tends to pull people back because of the same neural connections. Moreover, live learning is the perception of content through teacher-student contact (Scarino & Liddicoat, 2009). When the speaker sees the curious eyes of students, they feel their responsibility and importance and begin to invest more in his work: they come up with new learning formats and prepare for classes more carefully (Kral, 2012). Students, in turn, see the teacher right in front of them and feel his life energy and interest in what one is doing, discover what they are interested in, and concentrate as much as possible on getting information. This increases students’ level of involvement in the process and, as a result, increases the level of assimilation of the material.
The specificity of online education is that it allows one to enter the learning process in a more comfortable environment. Yet there is also a trap: these comfortable conditions may not be conducive to learning and pose a distraction to knowledge acquisition (Scarino & Liddicoat, 2009). Indeed, online education provides a great opportunity for flexibility for students and, at the same time, places more demands on their ability and desire to creatively participate in tuning their educational trajectory. Nonetheless, a real educational setting provides much more learning opportunities. In general, it creates a genuinely working environment where individuals are ready to absorb knowledge fully and have the ability to practice it right away.
Home and classroom environments drastically differ in the way one acquires knowledge. Since online education has become a reality, most face-to-face educational classes were shifted to the online mode, greatly impacting students’ performance. Educational settings are important for establishing closer contact between teachers and students. It also encourages both parties to prepare for the lessons more thoroughly and motivates on bigger achievements. Even though online education enables individuals to express more creativity, it does not encourage them enough to participate in lively discussions as the majority of the participants tend to listen passively. Finally, face-to-face learning is beneficial as it lets students engage in the activity momentarily without much contemplation.
Effectiveness of Dialogical and Collaborative Approaches
The dialogic method is a system of regulatory rules for the preparation of educational material and conducting a communication conversation based on the principles of teaching. It is used to explain the educational material by the teacher, assimilate it by students (Bertau & Tures, 2019). Additionally, it encourages them to participate in the formulation of problems and their solution and activate their academic activities.
The work on the dialogic method is carried out in the form of a conversation in classes of the first and third types (the study of new material, generalization, and systematization of knowledge).
In the conversation, the teacher engages students to answer questions that are addressed their existing knowledge and skills. The number of reproductive problems determines the share of their independence in educational activities. When asking questions that require new information, new knowledge, and new approaches to the answer, the teacher either answers them himself or organizes the study of the textbook and other sources of knowledge by students (Kurhila & Kotilainen, 2020). This method is very dynamic; it can turn into a heuristic and, if necessary, into a creative one and can be used at almost any lesson stage.
Collaborative learning is an interactive process in which learning is based on the interaction between students or between students and a teacher to achieve a specific goal. The participants of the process gain knowledge through an active joint search for information, its discussion, comprehension, and application in the format of group projects, joint developments, creative sessions, brainstorming sessions, and other formats (Casanave & Li, 2008). Collaborative learning is most effective when training groups with a predominance of experienced employees who can share expertise and with less professional colleagues.
Teachers using collaborative educational technology note that it completely changes the atmosphere of the educational process, as inert and indifferent schoolchildren in the learning process turn into surprisingly active and interested subjects of the educational space. The strength of collaborative educational technology is the fact that stronger students provide assistance to less prepared ones (Alghasab et a., 2020). Finally, since the responsibility for solving the educational problem falls on all participants of the lesson equally and the total score of the entire team and individual assessments of each student depend on successful cooperation.
Different learning approaches have been proven effective in the learning process. For example, the dialogic one was recognized to be efficient in developing decision-making and problem-solving skills in students. This method is based on asking questions and engaging in a conversation with a teacher or other students. The other approach is collaborative, which implies group working during a lesson. It is the interactive process through which individuals are able to share their ideas, and the involvement of each is encouraged. This technology helps boost the sense of responsibility and team spirit and develop the skill of assistance.
Evidence of Learning Is Best Demonstrated through Writing
Control of students’ knowledge is a set of measures that include checking, identifying, and evaluating the degree of mastering of program material by schoolchildren. Control procedures are carried out orally and in writing as part of the current, intermediate, or final control of knowledge. It is considered that the written form is the best way to check one’s expertise. Written examination of knowledge, skills, and abilities is characterized by high time savings and students’ independence. When it is carried out frontally, the level of general preparation of the class and each student individually is revealed (Moore, 2012). In comparison with the oral exam, it differs in the individual nature of the tasks and the difficulty for many students in expressing knowledge in writing.
It is useful to perform written tests without special preparation for students. This makes it possible to objectively check the strength of students’ knowledge acquisition. It also prevents students from potential homework overload in the days preceding the writing of control papers, excess arising from the fact that teachers force students to repeat the relevant material to them before these works. Conducting written tests without special training reduces the excitement of students, which is very important for the objectivity of the test.
The need for thematic control is due to the fact that each student is characterized by a certain rate of assimilation of educational material. Therefore, the usual test work, in which it is difficult to take into account the individual characteristics of students properly, may not be enough to judge whether the planned learning outcomes have been achieved. Thematic and final control checks not the student’s diligence but academic achievements (degree of preparation). The advantage of a written survey is that it is possible to accurately identify errors and difficulties for each student and the class as a whole (Korostyshevskiy, 2018). The disadvantages include the already mentioned slow pace of writing, poor thoughtful design, as well as nervous stress accompanying such work. Nonetheless, the practice has more pros than cons; thus, written verification is one of the important methods of monitoring and evaluating students’ knowledge, skills, and abilities.
The written check of a student’s expertise in the subject is proven to be the most effective means of evaluating one’s knowledge. It allows teachers to identify strong and weak sides in one’s learning process. This way of assessing students’ performance is also beneficial because it helps save time, unlike the oral assessment, which may linger. In addition, this method is advantageous because a teacher can adapt it to any level. It also helps address different aspects of writing, including grammar, spelling, coherence, cohesion, and others. Finally, written verification removes stress since the student has some time to think about the answers.
References
Alghasab, M., Hardman, J., & Handley, Z. (2019). Teacher-student interaction on wikis: Fostering collaborative learning and writing. Learning Culture and Social Interaction, 21, 10-20. Web.
Bertau, M., & Tures, A. (2019). Becoming professional through dialogical learning: How language activity shapes and (re-) organizes the dialogical self’s voicings and positions. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 20, 14-23. Web.
Carrión, R.G., Gomez, A., Molina, S., & Ionescu, V. (2017). Teacher education in schools as learning communities: Transforming high-poverty schools through dialogic learning. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42, 44-56. Web.
Casanave, & Li, X. M. (2008). Learning the literacy practices of graduate school: Insiders’ reflections on academic enculturation. University of Michigan Press.
Korostyshevskiy, V. (2018). Spoken language and fear of the blank page. Adult Learning, 29(4), 170–175. Web.
Kral, I. (2012). Talk, text and technology: Literacy and social practice in a remote indigenous community. Multilingual Matters.
Kurhila, S., & Kotilainen, L. (2020). Student-initiated language learning sequences in a real-world digital environment. Linguistics and Education, 56, 100807. Web.
Meyers, E., Erickson, I., & Small, R. (2013). Digital literacy and informal learning environments: An introduction. Learning, 38(4), 355-367. Web.
Moore, A. (2012). Teaching and learning: Pedagogy, curriculum and culture. Routledge.
Scarino, A., & Liddicoat, A. (2009). Teaching and learning languages: A guide. Curriculum Corporation.