Constructive Methodologies to Overcome the Technological Barriers in Online Teaching-Learning Process

Abstract

Over the past few years, technology-driven learning has gained a lot of momentum in every spectrum of education, more so in the field of engineering education. Most of the engineering educators often get inclined towards technology to deliver their courses effectively. While teachers have started leveraging Learning Management Systems (LMS) effectively, some of the technological innovations still need a little refinement. This study intends to explore the limitations of Canvas which is one of the popular LMSs being used today. Although Canvas is an excellent tool to manage the course content effectively and has proved to be very user friendly, it still has some nagging issues which have been analyzed through this study. The ways to overcome these limitations have also been put forth to ensure that the potential adopters of Canvas may have a seamless experience. The participants of the study were 56 second year Post Graduate students who were undergoing the course titled Professional Communication and Report Writing. A handful of students ran into unknown issues while taking up the Multiple- Choice Questions (MCQ) based quiz designed in the second module of the course. The issue was then traced, and corrective measures were incorporated to ensure that all students can take up the quiz. The analysis proved that MCQ quizzes developed on Canvas were not compatible with older versions of Android. Hence, students using such phones were unable to take up quiz-based assessments. To overcome this issue, the quizzes were dished out using tools like Google Forms, Kahoot, Quizizz, etc., and the links were posted on Canvas for the students to take up the quiz. While this approach worked relatively well, it was observed that each of these tools had their own set of limitations. In a nutshell, there is no technology that is perfect in all situations. In such circumstances, it is imperative that the course instructor takes centre stage and selects the technology that best suits a situation.