Learning Activity 8.1

As a teacher at Coquitlam Open Learning, the problems I face at work are unique to an online setting. Here are three issues that I was dealing with before I went on maternity leave.

1. Implementation of New Curriculum
   Since I teach mathematics for grades 10 through 12, implementation of the new curriculum for these course are scheduled for September 2019. While there is still a lot of time until then, this still poses a challenge for online teachers because in September 2019, the entire online course must be developed and ready to go. Unlike classroom teachers who can develop their unit and lesson plans as the school year progresses, online teachers must have everything ready to go at the beginning of the school year because students need to be able to access the whole course upon registration. This is a huge time commitment and with 200+ students in my courses, it is hard to find time to develop new courses. Another challenge that this creates is that there will be students who will be midway through the course. Since we are not bound by semesters and the school year like a “regular’ high school, students can complete their course anytime within a 10 month period. We will need to find a way to transition students under the old curriculum into the new curriculum without disrupting their progress.
2. Student Academic Integrity
   One of the biggest challenges in online learning is ensuring student academic integrity. Since we do not work with the students face-to-face in a classroom and because our student loads are so big, it is difficult to ensure that students are completing their own homework. Furthermore, there have been problems with cheating during testing even though students must write tests in testing sessions supervised by online teachers. For example, when I first started my position at Coquitlam Open Learning, our principal discovered that there was a tutoring agency in Coquitlam that had copies of our tests and was distributing them to their clients.
3. Lack of professional development and interaction

   Coquitlam Open Learning is a small program consisting of only 8 teachers where each teacher is generally responsible for one subject area. As such, I am the only mathematics teacher in the program. Because of this, I do not have the opportunity to discuss topics such as teaching practices, the new curriculum, etc., with other math teachers. A few years ago when I was teaching at a large high school, I often spoke to my mathematics department head and received advice from her regarding classroom management and different activities I could do in the classroom. It is isolating sometimes to not have someone in the same subject area to talk to, especially with the new curriculum being rolled out.

Original assignment post found here.