Blended Learning
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic affects the delivery of lessons to learners. It paves the way to have new approaches in teaching and learning. The Department of Education (DepEd) provides various distance learning modalities that are suited to the location of the learners. Parents are the ones who decide the applicable learning modality for their children.
A survey conducted by the DepEd revealed that most of the parents prefer to have a modular distance learning modality. Learning modules are provided by the schools for the learners. However, some of the parents prefer to combine the learning modules with the online explanation of the teachers regarding the content of the lessons. This is classified under blended learning or the combination of online and modular learning modalities. In this condition, teachers meet their learners at least once a week using Google Meet. Their primary task is to explain the content of their lessons and to address the queries of the learners. Likewise, teachers are going to distribute and retrieve copies of the learning modules to/from the learners.
Parents, Children, And Blended Learning
Parents play special roles in the studies of their children in blended learning. They are designated as the learning facilitators or teachers of their own children at home. This usually happens after their online classes with their teachers. Their tasks include answering the queries of their children about the activities, monitoring the work of their children, and checking the answers of their children in their learning modules.
Parents are encountering problems with the implementation of the blended learning modality. First and foremost, the distribution and retrieval of learning modules are not feasible for the succeeding weeks. There are times that the school failed to print the learning modules for the learners. This results in the extension of the working time for the previously printed learning modules. Likewise, the content of the learning modules has errors. Activities are not fit to the levels of the learners. This is the reason why learners struggle with answering their learning modules. Moreover, there are identified families who find difficulty in supporting the studies of their children. Parents have no capabilities to act as learning facilitators for their children.
As a matter of fact, they ask for support from other members of their families or even neighbors to aid in the studies of their children. Lastly, time spent teaching their children is considered as one of the problems encountered by some learning facilitators. Other learning facilitators leave their house early in the morning or while their children are still sleeping and arrive home late or while their children are already sleeping. There are other problems that learning facilitators encounter. However, based on the survey conducted, these are the prevalent problems that most learning facilitators encounter.
Academic Performance Of Learners
The academic performance of the learners is primarily based on their written works, performance tasks, and portfolio assessments. These are the three criteria that teachers are looking at to come up with the learners' average grade for the quarter. Written works refer to book or article reviews, essays, journals, reaction or reflection papers, reports, data recording and analysis, laboratory reports, and the development of work designs and charts. Performance tasks may involve interviews, multimedia presentations, projects, campaigns, case studies, multimedia production, portfolios, investigatory projects, collages and diorama making, and designing and implementing action plans and experiments or investigations.
A portfolio assessment refers to the documents that serve as evidence of learning during the quarter. These contain all the required outputs of the learners in answering their learning modules. In the presentation of their learning portfolio, learners are required to have their analysis regarding their output. Teachers ensure that the activities given to their learners are within their levels. Likewise, they also consider the ability and capacity of the learners to ensure that they can accomplish the given tasks on time.
