Creating an Inclusive Learning Community to Better Serve Minority Students

As campuses become increasingly diverse, it is important that faculties maintain inclusive classrooms. Students of underrepresented ethnic/racial groups are more likely to experience disengagement in an academic setting (Nagasawa & Wong, 1999), which can lead to underperformance (Major et al., 1998). Students with LGBTQA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or asexual) identities are at higher risk of poor mental health and lower academic performance compared to cisgender and heterosexual students (Aragon et al., 2014). These detrimental experiences can lead to even more harm in a remote learning environment, where students have fewer opportunities to feel a sense of belonging and connect with their peers and/or instructors. This paper will consider strategies of inclusiveness in the online classroom and in-person learning environment within a social psychology framework to better support underprivileged students to improve academic performance and the overall educational experience. The suggestions and discussions provided apply to both in-person learning as well as remote delivery.

APLIKASI PEMBELAJARAN ABAD KE-21 DALAM TALIAN: CABARAN GURU PENDIDIKAN MORAL [21ST CENTURY ONLINE LEARNING APPLICATIONS: THE CHALLENGE OF MORAL EDUCATION TEACHERS]

The Covid-19 pandemic phenomenon has unfolded in Malaysia since 2020, it has brought far-reaching changes to all aspects of society includes education. Due to the Movement Control Order (PKP), educational institutions in Malaysia were ordered to close, student started fully learning online from home. This situation has become a challenge to the implementation of the 21st Century learning approach inteaching. As this fully online teaching and learning are happening for the first time in Malaysian education, this study aims to explore the challenges faced by Malaysian Moral Education teachers on the implementation of the 21st Century skill in an online classroom. This study uses a qualitative method by interviewing 5 Moral Education teachers as respondents. The findings of this study show that the change of online teaching and learning has caused unexpected challenges to Moral Education teachers, the traditional teaching techniques which have been applied in face-to-face classrooms are not effective when moving to online teaching and learning. To achieve the objectives of Moral Education which involve aspects of cognition, feeling, and action, the factors of internet access at home, cooperation from the parents, and the teacher’s skill of using technology need to be considered.

Incorporating Socially-Relevant Teaching Strategies in the Online TESOL Classroom

Conducting online TESOL class is always both a challenge and opportunity for teachers to effectively support English language learners. Specifically, this study explores socially relevant teaching strategies to facilitate an engaging and equitable online classroom for educators with ELLs with diverse backgrounds. This research contains online language teaching strategies in the context of multicultural environment. Overall, three strategies are elaborated. One strategy is organizing whole-class discussion and various activity based on learners' cultural background. The second strategy is choosing and using socially relevant teaching materials with online technology, including neutral and authentic materials and giving learners timely prompts. The third strategy is counteracting inequitable relationships in society and in class, managing student emotions to create supportive relationships among students and the teacher. These strategies expand literature on how to conduct online program that are relevant and sustaining for culturally and linguistically diverse adult language learners.

A Review on Online Classroom Attendance Marking System Using Face Recognition, Python, Computer Vision, and Digital Image Processing

The face is that the identity of someone. The tactic to appear out this physical feature has seen an exquisite change since the advent of the image processing method. Attendance is monitored in every school, college and library. The regular method for attendance is for teachers to call student name & mark attendance. Nowadays, AI has been explored for computer vision-related applications. So, we use the neural network concept in Face recognition for automatically attendance marking systems. This project will perform the face recognition and face detection algorithms, to generate the computer systems strength of acquiring and recognizing human faces fast, accurately, and precisely in live streams so that the systems can be used in the marking attendance

Fluctuations in willingness to communicate of an EFL lecturer: An observation study in Indonesia

Despite the growing number of research on Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in English students, research of teachers’ WTC in English is still scarce. At the same time, the fluctuations of WTC in English in authentic classroom interactions are still under research. This study aims to observe the fluctuations in WTC of the English lecturer in the Indonesian context. The data were collected through video recordings during an online classroom learning session where participants were teaching their students. The data were then transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically by drawing from MacIntyre et al.’s (1998) Heuristic Model. From the results of the analysis, WTC fluctuations in English are divided into four factors: (1) modeling the use of English in the classroom, (2) the power of affirmation, (3) focusing on the message, and (4) showing language similarity. The implication of this study is also discussed. DOI: 10.26905/enjourme.v6i2.5983

Barriers to Teaching English Productive Skills in Online Classroom: A Study at the Private Universities in Bangladesh

This paper aims at investigating the barriers to teaching productive skills in English in an online platform in the private universities of Bangladesh and attempt to find out the solutions regarding this issue, focusing mainly on the private universities outside Dhaka. Since English is a significant communication tool, it is indispensable to speak and write correctly in English. However, the students have often struggled to speak fluently and write well. As a result, it is necessary to find the main barriers to teaching these two productive skills. In addition, due to the COVID-19, teaching and learning have shifted from real life to virtual classrooms. The existing problems underlying teaching English productive skills have been more crucial in a virtual platform. Therefore, through questionnaire for teachers and classroom observation data was collected from six private universities outside Dhaka, and it has been found that the problems lie mainly in the inability to change the teaching methods and techniques according to the need of an online classroom alongside network issues interrupting effective communication and time management. In an online classroom, the teachers cannot involve the students in pair and group work for speaking and writing activities and provide feedback. Based on the study's findings, it is recommended that more speaking and writing practice in the classroom, interesting visual materials, constant motivation, feedback, and teachers' training were essential to overcome the challenges faced by the teachers for teaching productive skills in English in an online classroom.

Online Classroom Teaching Quality Evaluation System Based on Facial Feature Recognition

With the rapid development of computer big data technology, online education in the form of online courses is increasingly becoming an important means of education. In order to objectively evaluate the teaching quality of online classroom, a teaching quality evaluation system based on facial feature recognition is proposed. The improved (MTCNN) multitask convolutional neural network is used to determine the face region, and then the eye and mouth regions are located according to the facial proportion relationship of the face. The light AlexNet classification based on Ghost module was used to detect the open and close state of eyes and mouth and combined with PERCLOS (percentage of eye closure) index values to achieve fatigue detection. Large range pose estimation from pitch, yaw, and roll angles can be achieved by easily locating facial feature angles. Finally, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to evaluate students’ learning concentration. The simulation experiments are conducted, and the results show that the proposed system can objectively evaluate the teaching quality of online courses according to students' facial feature recognition.

The dominant features of the internet linguistics

This research aims at the modern Internet linguistics features by carrying out linguistic analysis using descriptive statistics of students in distance learning. A linguistic analysis found that most students used lexical, orthographic, paralinguistic, and graphic features when communicating in an online classroom. A total of 452 messages, containing a corpus of 6,340 words, were analyzed and found that only 23.72% of the total corpus was found with lexical, spelling, paralinguistic and graphical features at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 22.63% at Stanford University, 21.78% at Harvard University, 24.58% at the California Institute of Technology and 22.76% at Oxford University.

Decolonising development practice pedagogy: ways forward and persistent challenges in the synchronous online classroom

Although decolonisation is a pressing goal for many front-line instructors, there are few pedagogical resources for how to do this in the online environment. This article provides a set of strategic approaches that can help combat dominant power dynamics in the classroom and open opportunities for transformative learning. The research draws on instructor focus groups and student surveys from the synchronous, online Master of Development Practice programme at Regis University, USA. Six pedagogical approaches are described in light of their successes and remaining challenges: building community, learning from each other and co-creating knowledge, opening spaces for participation, de-centring Western voices and epistemologies, focusing on the critical thinking, reflection and action cycle and creating connection in virtual spaces.