Xinjiang University,Xinjiang,China Email:64650086@qq.com

[Abstract]Online teaching has both theoretical and practical applications that are arranged and designed in a pattern that benefits both the students and the teachers.Against the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic,the Chinese universities decided to come up with a strategy referred to as“Suspending Classes without Stopping Learning”.In this paper,the main focus is laid on the background information and the functions of Rain Classroom which is used as the main tool for online teaching program.It further tries to take a look at the challenges that are likely to occur.And this study,however,aims at addressing the importance and the benefits of online teaching to both the teachers and the students.

[Keywords]COVID-19;online education;online teaching;Rain Classroom

Introduction

Since the beginning of early 2020,the world has been struck by the emergence of coronavirus pandemic which has had a great impact on both economic and social development.As a result of the virus emergence,the education sector has been largely affected in China.The Chinese government has however vowed to ensure continuity of studies despite the pandemic.Bao(2020)contends that the government’s strategy of“nonstop teaching and learning”has seen most Chinese higher learning institutions coming up with ways to ensure learning continues.Bao(2020)adds further that most faculties have so far implemented the online teaching platform as most of them have had teachers taking their sessions through online platforms where their students learn through stirring at computer screens which they use to deliver content.The students advance their knowledge through the use of the internet which they use to do further research.Bao(2020)argues that a case study from Peking University revealed that the number of courses offered through this learning platform has increased significantly when compared to the maximum number of courses that were previously offered by the departments of the institution.It is estimated that a total of 2613 undergraduate online courses have been introduced,and further 1824 graduate online courses have as well been introduced.With the rapid adoption of the e-learning technologies,some questions have risen and most researchers tend to find out whether the research studies that have been conducted have had the right channeling which may ensure the correct delivery of information to the students.Joseph et al.(2020)posit that the pandemic has called upon emergency responses that provide agility to the education sector and they believe the pandemic has enhanced pedagogical developments to most learning institutions,more so those with low infrastructural developments.Online teaching is a point of discussion in the recent case,the research will tend to address the online teaching platform and give details of how the teaching program is carried.Although there are a lot of advantages that come along with online teaching,there are few challenges that need to be corrected to ensure the effectiveness of the online teaching platform.

Overall Research Aim

The overall research aim of this paper is to assess the online teaching program which is done through the rain classroom and Tencent meeting platform.This research intends to go further to address the challenges and give suggestions for possible solutions.The study will also try to find out the effectiveness of this teaching platform and the benefits that are likely to result for both the students and the teachers.

Objectives

1.To determine the effectiveness of online teaching to the teachers and the students.

2.To know the functions of Rain Classroom and how the all process is carried and why the students may like this platform for learning.

3.To identify the main challenges that are associated with this way of learning.

Research questions

1.How effective is the online teaching platform in terms of infrastructure accessibility and the comfort of the learning environment?

2.What are the main functions of the Rain Classroom and how is the Rain Classroom carried out? Do the students really like this form of learning as compared to the physical attendance of class?

3.Is this an effective way of teaching students English as their second language?

The background information and the functions of Rain Classroom

Most learning institutions have come up with distance learning which has so far proved to materialize and be a more effective way to control the spread of the coronavirus(Wang et al.,2020).In response to the government’s strategy of“nonstop teaching and learning”,all the faculty members in Xinjiang university started to teach in front of the computer screen,and the students had to stay at home and took the courses through the internet.The implementation of the program,however,has not been an easy task as there are contrasting opinions on the content to deliver to students,how to teach the content,the amount of work to be covered by both the teachers and the students,and the teaching environment.I teach basic English to ethnic minority students.Many of these students didn’t learn English before,and their English level is relatively low.Therefore,it is really a big challenge to teach online and make online teaching more effective.At the beginning of the semester,we were at a loss.In the first two weeks,we did a lot of preparations on technological challenges that we faced.We came up with plans and backup plans in order to make this online teaching possible.Most of us have chosen rain classroom in conjunction with other tools such as Zoom,Tencent Meetings.With so many tools working together,we confronted with the whole system crashing from time to time,and picked it up again and came up with backup solutions.From week 3 to week 16,we gradually adapted to online teaching platform and kept thinking about the questions whether we could make the online teaching as effective as offline teaching,and how we could possibly benefit online teaching experiences and what improvements we need to make to make online teaching pleasant for both the students and teachers.The learning environment is an important determinant of learning.In most cases,learning premises always require silent environments which may be a challenge to some instructors and the learners depending on their neighborhoods.Murugaiah&Yen(2019)argue that most institutions register more online courses and the success of getting to understand well or teach well the concepts will vary with the background noise that may interrupt the session.For effective learning,we decided to follow a systematic program that ensured the maximum engagement of the students.The main aim was to ensure maximum students’participation and engagement.The teaching therefore will be assessed to ensure effective learning and teaching process.The whole university lecturers chose Rain Classroom as the main form of teaching.

The Rain Classroom consists of two parts;Wechat and Power point.The teachers can facilitate a lot of questions and comprehension quiz to install within slides.The Rain Classroom that we use for teaching follows three main steps which are:before class,during class,and after class sessions.Each of these sessions follows some activities that have to be carried out during the learning process.

To begin with,before classes begin,the announcement for class attendance is made.The announcement is meant to inform the students that they should be ready for learning that is about to commence.After the announcement,preview questions are given to the students to make them ready for the learning activities,through the provision of this preview questions,the students will then be able to analyze the questions well enough and will be ready to tackle them once they are taken through the course content.The provision of reading materials is also provided to the students before official learning begins.After ensuring the students are already prepared for learning,the next step then follows and this step is simply the class session which entails three main activities which include; attendance of the class,student input,and comprehension check.Attendance of the students will follow their sign up which they do by doing a login into the classroom by using some given credentials.After the sign-up,a cold call can be given to those students to convince them to embrace the learning through the platform.During the class learning session,the students’input is assessed and they can ask questions through onscreen tweets.One function of rain classroom is that if you turn of the online tweets,it can instantly generate word cloud.The word cloud correspond to the frequencies of those words being mentioned by the students.And then it gives an instant feedback on the collective effort of the students.They also can submit their comments on their opinions on the course content at this point.The students can have voice interaction with their teacher in Tencent meeting as well.(This can’t be achieved in the Rain Classroom.)This is the time that the teachers get maximum time to interact with the students to know whether the student understood the concepts well enough.The last session during class learning is the comprehension check.Within fifteen minutes,teacher will throw questions that would help the teacher to get responses from students.At this time,the teacher assesses the students’performance and gives the students back their results and feedbacks.It is at this time that the teachers can easily tell their students’weaknesses or strengths and advise them accordingly on what they need to do to improve their performances(Martin&Bolliger,2010).

Lastly,the students are then taken through the after class session.Here the teachers arrange well the students’performance and give the rankings based on the assessment tests that the students may have taken during the learning time.After the results are given to the students,discussion forums are made open to the students.At the beginning of the semester,the students were divided into four or five study groups.They often make discussions and accomplished their assignments together on these Wechat groups.And every group has group leader who can monitor the students’work and they always remind their group members to finish the task on time.At this point,we offer the students with summarized course content which they use alongside other course materials to do their discussion.

The Challenges that are likely to occur as a result of the Rain Classroom that is used

During this time of the coronavirus outbreak,online learning has proved to be a good platform for syllabus coverage.Most of the teachers and students have had the opportunity to continue with their duties outside the classroom.The move has so far proved to materialize.Even though online teaching may seem to be effective,some challenges are likely to result from this teaching session.Whereas collaboration and effective communication makes it easy for the learners to connect and stay engaged during the learning session,online teaching and learning however have some challenges that both the teachers and learners are likely to go through.To begin with,the biggest challenge that may be experienced in this learning platform is the number of students to be taught by one teacher at a time(Jenna,2017).

During my teaching time,I came to realize that it was very hard to handle a big number of students at a time.Dealing with a big number means that extra teaching personals would be required to be able to invigilate and assess well the performance of each student.Getting to hire more personnel would ensure the students are more active learners than passive learners during the learning session.However,it is hard to implement in our learning environment.The online teaching system may be effective if well implemented,however,Chen&Hung(2002)argue that this learning platform would only require a very high technological support which can only be found in few institutions that have a better infrastructural set-up.During my teaching,I learned from my students’responses that through group discussions,the students were able to personalize the knowledge they obtained from discussion forums that I arranged for them.From personal assessment,I also learned that the students were not so engaged with the quality and the depth of learning and it was not guaranteed whether the students have a plan on using their knowledge to relate to any previous course materials or with real-world problems that may require their skills to solve.

Again it comes to my attention that most of the students were not fully committed to the learning if close supervision did not follow.In face to face classroom,I could call their names to answer the questions from time to time,however during online teaching.It would be so time-consuming to have a roll call constantly.Only after they finished their quiz in Rain Classroom,I could tell assuredly who was there for me,and who was not.I was forced to look for extra course materials to be able to help the students to understand complex words and grammar patterns that they don’t have interest in.Having to do this close follow-up make the system tiresome for me,because at some point I have to compress the course outline in a way that the students can easily understand and I have also to take time to come up with some topical questions that may help the students to be able to do their revision and also prepare for topics that have not yet introduced to them.Despite making all these sacrifices to the learners,I am still not sure of the students’commitment towards this learning program and I cannot evaluate whether their feedback is honest.

Moreover,I learned that the students easily disconnect and have less concentration during this online teaching than when they do in a physical classroom.Most of my students come from remote rural areas,where the wireless network conditions are relatively poor.Teaching through Rain Classroom was a challenge as I was not able to have loose control of the classroom to note whether there are those students that are not paying attention in class.Students could operate other things on their mobile phones at any time when they were using the Rain classroom and Tencent Meeting.Therefore,it was hard to tell which students were listening attentively and who were doing other things in class.I was also having a difficult time evaluating the rate or extent at which the student was able to comprehend the text.I was further forced to evaluate a way to prepare a feedback analysis scheme which would help to know the extent of the students'understanding and therefore I would look for ways to help my students improve.I also observed that whenever I gave my students a task in Rain Classroom,their responses were rather slow,therefore I had to extend the time limit of answering questions.And some gave the right responses as some of them got it wrong.This also took me time to try and explain to them the importance of paying attention and giving feedback.As a result,it would take a lot of time to finish the task,and finally it would affect the normal teaching process.Segregating the students to explain to those who do not understand well the concepts would consume more time than the one scheduled for the teaching session.

Importance and benefits of online teaching to students and instructors

In class,learning is important to both the teacher and the students.The teacher through direct interaction with their students will be able to assess all of their students’strengths and weaknesses and will be able to easily help their students get better and have easy handling of the syllabus coverage.Martin&Bolliger(2018)contend that students are always satisfied based on the way they are taught.They argue that for maximum students’satisfaction,they are always involved in the teaching session by their instructors.The students have to be frequently involved and engaged in the study sessions to ensure maximum concentration from them.

In spite of the challenges discussed above,there are definitely lots of benefits for online learning experience even though we are so new to this.This is my first time of doing online teaching,but I found a lot of great benefits.Through the online teaching program,I came to learn about the students’confidence.To those students who always feel shy to participate during the face-to-face learning sessions,by use of Tencent Meeting,they are free to ask questions and tweet their thoughts on screen in Rain Classroom,get involved in discussions that I organized on Wechat groups.Onscreen tweet enables the students to text their comments as the lecture is going on.If students do not feel involved in the learning process,they are less likely to stay focused to work harder to make sense of the lecture.Usually in lecture environment,students may not have enough time to express their opinions or confusions.As a result,few students actively engaged in the classroom.One way to improving students’engagements are the way of using onscreen tweets which encourage students to express their views and perceptions.The Rain Classroom can project the students input instantly on the shared screen anonymously.In this way,students’participation will be increased and they can benefit a lot from online teaching platform.Croxton(2014)puts forth that the interactivity of the learners with their instructors is an important satisfaction aspect and it helps to improve the persistence and consistency of learners to attend the online teaching sessions.Through class attendance on the online platform,the learners as I have observed have grown more curious about learning of new concepts more.Another thing that I think most useful one is that students can zoom in effect.In the physical classroom,the professors and students usually are meres away or yards away.But in online courses,every students sit in the front row,and they can both see and hear more clearly the lectures.The Rain classroom has record and replay functions,therefore I personally advised my students to conveniently review things which they missed in class.

Additionally,I have learned of the different types of students due to this online teaching program.Students have varying attitudes when they are taught different new texts.Most of the students seem to lose concentration when I am taking them through concepts that are complex or that they cannot easily understand,or when taking them through the unit which they don’t like.Therefore,what the students are most interested in and curious about matters most in online teaching program.The success of the interactions relies on heavily in students’time management skills and self disciplined to participate in this way of teaching.Other notable benefits that I have realized include; the increased flexibility of students,through the flexibility,they have been able to learn different new learning styles as well as improve their technical skills to approach certain concepts.Through the training that we want through prior,I have improved my computer skills.The increased knowledge on computer and technology has enabled me to make the classes more interesting and engaging to my students,I have so far felt the students receive the content I deliver at maximum levels since their participation and engagement have relatively increased.Rain classroom is very effective in terms of providing data for learning,we can use those to have feedback to improve our own teaching and we also can save more time in commute.

Moreover,I have had the privilege to do my work more easily as I have found the teaching medium to be a more flexible way.Through the advancement of how knowledge of technological know-how,we also get the opportunity to learn of new complex concepts that may only be taught by technicians during the normal school programs.All in all,the online teaching platform enables us as the teachers to be able to acquire a new set of skills without necessarily having to pay for the same.Through government sponsorship,we get to learn concepts that we would have not been able to learn in case we were to acquire the knowledge through our means.When compared to other nations that the coronavirus started to affect later after the reduction of the coronavirus pandemic,China has taken a big step towards the learning transition.Comparing with learning in the United States before the pandemic,Allen&Seaman(2013)recounted that the increased number of online courses had increased as over 6.7 million learners’preferred the learning platform as compared to having to attend classes in person.It is therefore justifiable that both students and teachers can learn and engage in other duties at the same time without having to commit so much to one activity.

Conclusion

Throughout the analysis of the learning process of higher learning,it is justifiable that online teaching can be a very good program to assess the students’understanding and performance during the learning session.The paper introduces the main functions of Rain Classroom that is used for online teaching program,and describes the possible challenges that are likely to affect this learning platform.The challenges even though,they may affect the learning process,they,however,do not deter learning from taking place.This paper also settles the unending discussions on the importance and benefits of online education.Learning is a sequential complex process that follows an important yet vital developmental ladder.Over the past few decades,research studies on philosophy and education have revealed different aspects that have so far been covered in online learning.Based on the experience obtained from taking the students through various course contents,it has come to my attention that understanding of the students perception and attitude and giving them the opportunity to freely interact help them to develop their development skills and therefore they embrace online learning as a better study platform which has a room for the future learning.The migration to online learning was not planned for but it came as a result of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,to ensure the implementation of this learning platform therefore,it will take collective efforts of every individual ranging from the students and teachers to the government.

Acknowledgments

The author is the language teacher at Foreign Language College of Xinjiang University,the part-time researcher of the key research base of humanities&social sciences in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China(A Study of Chinese and Foreign Culture Comparison and Cross-Culture Communication),and a member of the 2019 Teaching Reform Project"Application and Research of College English Teaching Model Based on Rain Classroom and MOOC"set up by College of foreign languages,Xinjiang University.