Nunzia Castelli doesn’t know how many students are on the other side of the screen. Ten? Fifteen? Twenty? Since the pandemic turned the planet upside down, a good part of his online classes are given to a black screen like smut. His students have taken the habit of not turning on the cameras on their computers and it is impossible to know if they are attending to his explanations or watching a Netflix series in pajamas. Anyone knows.
Talking to a machine without seeing the faces of the interlocutors is not a dish of taste. At least for Nunzia Castelli, Professor of Labor Law at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). “It’s frustrating and unpleasant,” he admits in a telephone conversation with Public. But that’s what there is. Students take refuge in the right to privacy in their homes and in the low power of the Internet connection to turn off their cameras. And it is not an isolated case. The vast majority disconnect the image. In Castilla-La Mancha and in the other two autonomous communities consulted by this newspaper.
In order to Mara González, Professor of Economics and Business at the University of Zaragoza, teaching a black screen is not an insurmountable problem. After more than a year of online teaching, he seems to have gotten used to a system that had to be improvised due to the emergence of the covid and that has lasted much longer than expected. He is aware that telematics teaching allows students to disconnect from the virtual classroom without the teacher noticing. “You don’t know if there is someone on the other side listening,” acknowledges the teacher. “It is evident that the students who do not want to attend, do not do it. And while you are giving the class, the same is with the mobile or simply watching a movie”.
Mara González: “You don’t know if there is someone on the other side listening”
Nunzia Castelli believes that not seeing the faces of her students deprives her of basic pedagogical information. “I do not enter into communication with them. I do not see their expression of understanding and prevents the exchange,” he protests. Participation has been seriously affected, when in face-to-face classes it already represented a notable deficit.
It is not the only aspect of the online modality that bothers the UCLM professor. In his view, telematics education involves important disadvantages with respect to the conventional system. “The university is communication, exchange and community,” he sums up. And those elemental principles are being laminated by a makeshift educational model in a few months to overcome the threat of covid. “The university must be face-to-face. It cannot be a place where the teacher vomits knowledge about immobile students,” he says.
Among other things because it significantly reduces the methodological possibilities to “voice and, at most, PowerPoint”, Castelli points out. “It does not serve to train critical citizens, because the students are at home isolated“And not only that. It has also increased the dedication of the teachers.” We have incredible stress. We have had to double the working hours. I have two little girls at home. Imagine what it cost me to teach the classes via digital “, he laments.
The organization of the telematic classes varies between faculties and courses depending on the number of students and the incidence of the pandemic. Between the second half of March 2020 and the end of last year, most of the 82 Spanish universities took refuge in digital education. As of October, the online modality has been combined with the face-to-face one in many of the specialties. In many classrooms, cameras so that half of the students follow the teacher’s explanations from home every other week.
David Ballesteros: “With digital classes you don’t get involved in the same way. You lose confidence and you become inhibited”
The students welcomed the new situation with uncertainty and disparity of opinions. Many value the convenience of being able to take classes without having to leave home. But they also highlight its drawbacks. It is the case of David ballesteros, 20 years old and a student of Labor Relations at the UCLM, for whom the telematic mode “is very distracting” and disturbs “concentration”. “We are not used to it,” he remarks. “With digital classes, you don’t get involved the same way. You lose confidence and you inhibit yourself. In face-to-face questions, more to the teacher. Most think like me, although many prefer them for convenience.”
David Ballesteros also does not activate the camera when interacting with the teacher. “Nobody turns it on”, he remarks. He is aware that for many teachers, giving the class to a black screen is a practice, at least, annoying. “I know that the teachers want the camera on. And I see it logical. The faces of the students say everything and give information to the teacher. But it is an invasion of privacy. We are in our private rooms,” he points out.
Ana studying third year of Teaching at the University of the Basque Country (EHU). In their specialty they follow what they call “bimodal system”. Two groups of 25 people who take turns each week to receive alternative classes online or in person. You don’t seem very satisfied with the result. “It looks terrible. The camera is of very poor quality and the board can hardly be guessed,” he protests. Ana criticizes the frequent failures in the system and is particularly contrary to a mixed model that combines digital and face-to-face education. “It’s not effective. Either everyone at home or everyone in class,” he suggests.
His is a case similar to that of the UCLM student. Nobody starts the camera. And, when a student from home intervenes, the black screen is projected in the foreground and the teacher or the blackboard can no longer be seen. “You miss everything that is happening at that time,” he says. At the beginning of the course, a teacher asked the students to activate their camera. Without any success. And Ana understands the reluctance. “It does not make sense to put it, because it gives quality problems.” Not all students have a high capacity connection and with the camera turned on the image tends to collapse. Ana is a fictitious name to preserve her privacy.
Nor does a professor of Marine Engineering at the University of the Basque Country want to reveal his name. But his opinion on online education leaves no room for doubt. “It’s a disaster”, he assures. “We can’t stay the same for another year.” In his opinion, the telematics classes could have been avoided if a mechanical ventilation system had been chosen in the classrooms, which would have dissipated the threat of the transmission of the coronavirus by aerosols. And this is demonstrated, according to him, a scientific study that he has carried out in collaboration with a student and that was released months ago. “The problem is badly raised from the beginning,” he laments.
The law requires since 1994 to install air renewal mechanisms in classrooms
To begin with, the law already required since 1994 to set up classrooms with air renewal mechanisms, which would have been effective against COVID. But, according to it, the majority of constructors did not respect the normative prescriptions. “It would not have been necessary to even reduce the capacity,” he argues. To have alleviated that deficitAccording to his calculations, it would have cost about thousand euros per class, a sum similar to that which public administrations are spending on computer equipment. “It was all an absolute improvisation. The telematic transmission systems hang. They do not work well.”
Only in heating, the cost will be higher, warns the UPV professor. The anticovid protocols recommend airing the classrooms through the windows from time to time and in winter or in cold areas it will force to multiply energy expenditure. Without prejudice to the fact that natural ventilation in no way guarantees environmental purification throughout the room.
And what is worse: the consequences have been negative for the quality of teaching and the health of teachers. “Psychologically, it causes phonics problems. Teachers do not modulate the voice correctly because they do not see the students or perceive their reaction. They lose control of their voice. We are not television presenters, “he says by way of example.
González sees “very difficult to ensure that they do not communicate with each other through WhatsApp”
And then there is the dilemma of exams, the only scenario where students are required to activate their cameras. But is it possible to control that the students are not copied to the other side of the screen? Mara González doubts it. “I find it very difficult to ensure that they do not communicate with each other through WhatsApp,” he says. The same is the opinion of David Ballesteros, a student of Labor Relations. “Online exams are not a good instrument. The teacher’s control is less. And many students they cheat“, recognize.
Fourteen months after the pandemic, the mechanisms set up to maintain teaching activity have not yielded the expected results. The entire university community is aware of the enormous difficulties that have had to be overcome in a short time. But the effects on the quality of teaching are obvious. There are still students no computer at home, despite the efforts made by the universities. Some use the mobile for their connections. “Students with fewer resources are being relegated”, Nunzia Castelli alert. The provisional situation has sowed uncertainty. And everyone fears that if vaccines do not arrive in time this summer to immunize hundreds of thousands of young students, the school year could start with renewed doubts.
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