The Top 3 Challenges of Virtual Teaching and How to Overcome Them

While it wouldn’t be fair to say that virtual classrooms are riddled with complexities, they are not entirely free of problems either. We all know that the concept of distance learning has been around for a while, and institutions offering such courses have their own modus operandi. However, the pandemic has brought in a new angle to education – the whole industry now relies on remote-operating models. In this article, we will focus on the challenges of remote teaching that educational institutions and instructors around the world face, and how to overcome these challenges.

With classes being held online, teachers are delivering lectures, sharing course materials, assigning tasks, and communicating with students through learning apps. Moreover, students, are using these devices to study, research, finish assignments, take tests, and more. However, it isn’t as simple as it looks. Let’s see why.

Sharing Course Material

It’s important for teachers to ensure that students have all the study materials needed to prepare for their classes and complete their assignments. The challenge, however, is to send the same study material to every student (of the same grade) individually. While emails are a good way to do this, they still have certain restrictions on the attachment size. Besides, emails can be slightly difficult to track. In the case of students using personal devices, ensuring that such devices have the right apps to run the files shared can also be difficult.

Enrolling school or student-owned devices into a mobile device management (MDM) solution, such as SureMDM, can help teachers push content updates to all devices at once. Once a device is enrolled, the school app can also be installed on it remotely through the central SureMDM device management console. Teachers can then share messages, study materials, exam notifications, marked assignments, and more with students easily.

Ensuring Students Stay Focused

It’s important to ensure that students only have access to age- and course-appropriate materials while using their devices to study. Since most students have easy access to the internet and smart devices, the chances of them downloading malware unintentionally or landing on a website that offers inappropriate content cannot be undermined. This is especially true for younger students who may not have the maturity to understand the extent of damage such incidents can cause. As such, schools need a solution that can not only prevent such things from happening but also send notifications to those concerned in case of non-compliance.

Blocklisting websites based on keywords, turning student devices into learning kiosks so they only have access to approved apps, and enforcing policy-based compliance can be very helpful in this regard. Device management solutions, such as SureMDM, offer lockdown features that can help school admins do this. In addition, they also allow IT admins to configure time, geo, and network fencing policies. When these are in place, students can only access allowed apps or websites within a stipulated timeframe, when inside a particular geographical location (such as school grounds), or while accessing a particular network.

Providing Remote Maintenance & Support

Issues such as students facing trouble accessing study materials, teachers being unable to send files, or devices malfunctioning are quite common in a virtual learning environment. While it’s easy for school IT administrators to address such problems when devices are easily accessible to them, they now need a way to fix these issues remotely. During this pandemic, they have to carry out even regular patch updates and other maintenance activities from afar. Besides, schools that are now issuing devices to their teachers and students to facilitate remote teaching and learning need a way to configure and deploy a huge number of devices quickly and at once.

This is where a remote management solution like SureMDM can help. Not only does SureMDM help IT admins troubleshoot devices remotely in case any issues arise, but it also supports zero-touch enrollment methods. This means admins can configure devices remotely so students and teachers can start using their devices right out of the box.

For information on why adopting MDM solutions for virtual classrooms can help facilitate both remote teaching and learning, consult our product expert.