A QUICK SURVEY OF THE ONLINE TEACHING ACTIVITIES BY SCHOOL TEACHERS DURING THE COVID-19 PERIOD AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This article presents some results from a survey on the online teaching activities done by school teachers during the school shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic with the participation of 929 secondary and primary school teachers from 42 provinces. Teachers conducting online teaching have qualifications from teacher training professional schools, colleges or universities. The most often taught subjects were Mathematics, Language Arts, Physics, Foreign Languages and primary school subjects. Teachers’ abilities to conduct online classes are limited, but due to the social distancing policy and as per requested by educational authorities, they have to teach online. The main tools used were Zoom, Google Classrooms and Microsoft Teams, selected by teachers themselves since they know how to handle these tools. Teachers are learning by using groups on social media during the epidemic. The online teaching is mostly the live streaming of all video sessions of lectures. Although most of the teachers know how to integrate PowerPoint presentations into the live sessions, they do not have media editing skills. These teachers still have difficulties in conducting online teaching, they use their private laptops, some have to use smartphones with mobile internet connections due to the lack of fixed network connections. Some students do not have ability to participate in the online sessions. The large size of the online classes made interaction with students impossible. Based on the initial findings, recommendations have been made about organization of online teaching, training of teachers in teaching techniques, and assurance of online teaching in schools.