The Department of Early Childhood Education (ECE) collaborated with Parents Daily to conduct a survey with 1,027 kindergarten teachers on their views on online teaching practices during the current local pandemic situation. In the webinar on 24 July, Dr. Vivienne Leung and Dr. Christina Han, Assistant Professors of ECE, disseminated the findings of the survey and shared tips on how to enhance the effectiveness of online teaching respectively.
Dr. Leung pinpointed that some 70% of kindergarten teachers adopted online teaching and some 80% of them videotaped their lessons in advance. Nearly 90% of them lacked trainings on online teaching. They encountered technical problems such as insufficient online teaching materials, lack of IT skills and shooting skills. More than half of them admitted that online teaching was a trend in the future and kindergartens would continue to adopt online teaching. They would implement a mixed online and offline learning mode: extend the online classes to non-online activities at home.
In order to enhance the effectiveness of online learning at home, Dr. Han said that home-school collaboration was needed. Online teaching should also be combined with teaching aids to improve the efficiency and feasibility of online learning. Teaching in innovative ways, such as through interactive games, could enhance student participation and their learning motivation in online classes.