Associate Professor Sarah Barrett at York University’s Faculty of Education was interviewed by CTV on adapting to a virtual classroom. Barrett surveyed 764 teachers and found that teachers felt online learning tampered with their ability to connect with students and properly assess their performance and learning skills.
“Teachers rely on relationship building in order to cater to their students’ needs,” says Barrett. “What they [teachers] were saying was that they had no control over the environment in which students were learning, and so as a result they were worried that there were some students who would be not be able to adjust, there were some students that didn’t have what they needed to do the work, and most importantly they felt they couldn’t get to their students.”