Amid all the worries of the ongoing nationwide lockdown and social distancing, the team of educators at Bodhi International School (BIS), Jodhpur — ranked #1 international day school in Rajasthan for three consecutive years in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings and a winner of the EW Grand Jury Award for Leadership and Career Counselling — had been looking forward to welcoming the students to the new academic session from March 23, 2020. Despite students not being physically present in the classrooms, BIS teachers geared up for the virtual classroom sessions right from the first day of the new academic year.
It all began with planning – the BIS leadership team foresaw the critical situation by the second week of March 2020 and formed an E-learning cell BISEduHub. The facilitators were then trained to use EdTech platforms phase wise. Starting with the upper and senior school, followed by middle school, then the primary years, the teachers explored various platforms like Lark, Easy Share, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Goto Meeting and Zoom. Demo online sessions were conducted by the teachers and the platforms were tested for its quality, ease of accessibility and teaching/learning support tools. Google Classroom was integrated with school’s ERP BIS-Edusprint for maintaining the continuity of marking attendance, learning and sharing.
Finally, through a three-stage implementation process (detailed below), BIS went live with its virtual learning initiative.
Phase I – As scheduled, BIS welcomed its senior school students on March 23 through Zoom face-to-face sessions. A scheduled time table is helping the teachers in maintaining the flow of the planned curriculum and allocation of classwork and assignments. With three hours of dedicated training on ‘Virtual Classroom Tools and Online learning ethics’, the students started using the platforms virtuously and the teaching-learning is rolling on smoothly than ever expected in such situations.
Phase II – The biggest challenges were to familiarise the students and the parents of primary years programme and middle school with the LMS and designing their learning schedule with integrating fun activities into it. Again, the team could successfully orient the parents through face-to-face Zoom sessions and the second phase of the school reopened on the April 1, 2020.
Phase III – BIS believes e-learning is not only about sharing academic content, materials and resources through LMS’s or grading the assignments over Google Forms. Incorporating Physical Endurance and Fitness sessions into the daily routine of the students as well as the parents was the next step. Online sessions begin early morning with the sports teachers training students online.
“BIS facilitators have received positive feedback from the parents. The children of EYP and the early years, have also started attending the virtual classroom sessions with the hand holding of their parents and grandparents. Though this turns out to be the need of the hour, BIS team is also ensuring that the screen time for the children is balanced. The thoughtfully designed activities involve the students in household chores also as a part of their learning,” says Dr. V.B. Pillai, principal, BIS.
BIS affirms that quality is never compromised. Dr Pillai and the virtual learning coordinators regularly monitor the sessions by participating in them.
“Parental support at this time is very crucial and BIS is blessed to have parents who are understanding and cooperative.They are connected to the educators through class wise broadcasting groups. The technical support team of Bodhi offers Remote Access Troubleshooting to parents and students who have problems accessing our virtual classrooms,” adds Dr. Pillai.
The e-library portal of Bodhi supports the time and the cause. Students can easily access the National Library portal, Open Books Resource Center as well as dailies through the portal: https://bislearnershub.weebly.com/