AIPS Learning

Course ID

The Curriculum

At AIPS, in our initial stage, we have followed the National Primary School Curriculum. However, we understand that gaps exist which may prevent students from holistically developing into the best they can be. As such, we are constantly looking for ways to address these gaps.

The Feedback

We held online engagements during the first stage of the COVID-19 lockdown and discovered there are a number of challenges with the way online classes are normally held and conducted.

Students need to have access to recorded teaching resources if they missed were not able to be attentive during live sessions.
Live sessions that are too long means students spend too much time behind a screen. It also results in a loss of interest from the students themselves, and therefore learning does not take place.
Learning resources need to be interactive for students to fully engage and become interested in learning.
In using resources that required students to fill out and send back completed assignments, there was low engagement.

Our Answer

Our solution to these challenges is the introduction of a new platform and a change in methodology:

We have begun to digitise our schooling online on a platform called NEO LMS, which allows students to access all teaching and learning materials.
We’ve also adopted a flipped classroom approach to teaching; where students access teaching recordings of lessons and engage in learning activities at their own pace on the platform itself, to reinforce their understanding.
After this process, the students will engage in live teaching sessions to facilitate feedback and address issues they may be having, rather than attending the live session to be taught the lesson; hence the flip.

In adopting these changes, we are confident in overcoming the challenges of online teaching and to be able to engage students in the most beneficial way possible.

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Features

Flipped-classroom methodology to gain better benefit from live teaching sessions.
On-demand lesson recordings that can be accessed at students’ pace and convenience.
Recorded lessons with worked examples.
Engaging, learning activities done on the platform itself to reinforce learning.
Feedback is given automatically.
Numerous types of activities are provided for each lesson to cater for varied student learning styles.
Full online platform with resources, requiring no textbooks.

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An online education is presently required by individuals who may not be able to make it for classes in a traditional brick and mortar kind of school due to the current pandemic.

Flexibility & Reduced Cost

1. Flexibility
Students have the freedom to learn at their own pace because they aren’t tied down to a fixed schedule. In a traditional classroom setting, class meeting times are set, and the student has no power over this, forcing them to work their schedules around these dates.

2. Reduced Costs
Online education can cost less due to a variety of reasons. For example, there is no cost for commuting. Assorted costs that are related to transport, such as fuel, car maintenance, and public transportation costs don’t affect the online student.

Networking & Documentation

3. Networking Opportunities
Online education also provides students with the chance to network with peers across nations or even different continents. This often leads to other opportunities in terms of collaboration with other individuals. At the same time, it makes them culturally sensitive and able to fit into other environments easily given their exposure to other cultures.

4. Documentation
All the information that you will need will be safely stored in an online database. This includes things like live discussion documents, training materials and emails. This means that if there’s ever anything that needs to be clarified, the student will be able to access these documents fast, saving valuable time.

Increased time & Access to Expertise

5. Increased Instructor – Student Time
Students in traditional classrooms may not get the personalized attention they need to have concepts clarified. Although class sizes are small at Al-Ihsaan Institutes. This is not a problem for this type of education because online guided discussions and personal talk time with their teachers is a hallmark of online classes. This increases the chances of a student performing well due to the time their instructors give them. This also enhances their problem-solving and communication skills, as well as knowing how to defend their arguments to superiors if needed.

6. Access to Expertise
An online system might give students access to specialized activities that may not be available in an easily accessible or local institution of learning. Online classes allow the sharing of expertise that helps more people have access to education that is not readily available in certain geographic locations.

What is Methodology?

In the formal education system there is a curriculum (content) that needs to be learnt by learners. The technique of learning or teaching this content is the method. Some examples of methods are chalk & talk, inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, and problem-based learning. These different methods carry some inherent advantages and disadvantages. For example, most educators use chalk & Talk because it is practical timewise. However, since chalk & talk is instructor-centered and it is usually carried one-way (instructor to students), it becomes boring for learners and creates motivational problems.

Over the years the method of teaching became more important than the content in education, because the diffusion of communication and network technologies made a vast amount of different content readily available to many people.
Traditional formal education is based upon a paradigm generally called “knowledge reproduction model.” The methods used in this model are verbal lecture, printed handouts, drill and practice sessions, structured classroom activities. In this model, students are seen as passive learners. The purpose of teaching is to transfer a static body of knowledge from sources, like instructors and books, to learners. On the other side, the research findings claim that all kinds of learning are promoted when the methods of teaching favor active learning.

Computer mediated communication and online learning in general support this kind of active learning. According to Imel (1997) the most important distinguishing characteristic of WBI is the emphasis on instruction and not just on information delivery.
For this reason, WBI would be designed by basing it upon the cognitive-based theories of learning, where learners purposefully interact with the environment, solve real-world problems, practice the knowledge, and thus become an active learner

Active Learning Strategies in Online Learning

Multiple strategies can be used in an online course to support the active role of the students. Among these different strategies the role of teacher, practicing the knowledge, collaborative learning, and feedback.

The role of teacher would be that of mentor or supporter in online classes, teachers would not be talking heads like they used to be in traditional teaching. In this sense, presenting video clips of a teacher in an online course as the only source of information is a bad practice. This leaves the learner in a passive state. Such video clip resources can be utilized in a more active way. For example, learners and teachers can participate in online chat discussions after watching these video clip resources. In addition to facilitating online discussions, the instructors might focus on students’ learning. For example, they can send supporting e-mail messages to encourage learner participation in class activities

The online learning environments afford the opportunity to shift the role of instructors from “delivering” to “listening and supporting”.

Learners would be provided collaborative learning opportunities recently, learning theories that emphasize collaborative learning are on the rise. For example, the situated view gives importance to activity rather than knowing and emphasizes the reciprocal character of the interaction through which individuals, as well as cognition, are considered socially and culturally constructed