hankyoreh

A teacher at an elementary school in Seoul’s Mapo District holds online classes on Apr. 16. (Baek So-ah, staff photographer)

“Who’s the one who just wrote ‘ha ha ha’ in the chatting window? Don’t do that. We may be online, but this is an official class right now.”

Song Mi-gyeong, homeroom teacher for the “Creativity” class of fifth-grade students at Yongsan Elementary School in Seoul’s Yongsan District, met her 22 students for the first time on the video communications program Zoom on Apr. 16, which marked the beginning of the semester online for all South Korean students apart from those in the first to three grades of elementary school. During the first-period class, she explained to the students about “class etiquette,” which included dressing neatly and not playing games during lessons. Even so, she could periodically see evidence of lax attitudes across her screen, including students engaging in unnecessary chatting or yawning.

In the case of elementary schools, many had initially predicted that schools would make relatively greater use of real-time interactive classes, with students experiencing the curriculum and speaking directly -- in contrast with middle and high schools, where progress in the subject is seen as paramount. Yongsan Elementary School also plans to hold at least one hour of real-time interactive classes per day. But the approach of students to their classes has been lax. Concentration levels only go up when teachers encourage active participation, such as giving quizzes or having students raise their hands to speak.

Accordingly, the importance of parents and other guardians has been highlighted; indeed, so many have been sitting by the students providing help that some have described the lessons as “school for parents.” In the case of the Creativity class, it was the mother who apologized to the teacher on behalf of her child who had yawned just before the start of class. One student from a dual-income household whose parents were both at work had their grandmother helping them with lessons, but she was unable to resolve the issue when the teacher’s voice couldn’t be heard on the computer. The teacher finally called the grandmother after the class and explained to her about how to turn the sound on.

“It seems like the remote classes can only be done when you’ve got a digital-literate guardian right by [students] all the time,” said the parent of a sixth-grader in Seoul.

With the two-stage start of the spring semester, some 3.98 million elementary, middle, and high school students nationwide began remote classes that day. The scale was four times larger than the first stage for 850,000 third-year students in middle and high school. In terms of number of people connected simultaneously, the figures for that morning stood at 675,000 for Online Class and 664,000 for Cyber Learning System. Education authorities and related agencies noted that all of the targets for the opening of the online semester had been able to use the services without major issues.

“While interruptions of video content shouldn’t be happening from a user perspective, it’s a good thing and a sign of success that the system wasn’t a complete disaster from a service provider perspective,” said one official. The authorities predict the biggest test of platform stability will come on Apr. 20, when the number of online classes will reach its peak.

But the government’s views were significantly at odds with those among educators, who have been vocal in their complaints. While there were no server stoppages or other major incidents, some problems were reported with being unable to log in to the Cyber Learning System, which is mainly used by elementary schools, or play videos developed by teachers and posted to Online Class, which is mainly used by middle and high schools.

Wedorang, a class community service operated by the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS), had to halt its service that day for an emergency system checkup after its webpage remained inaccessible around 9 am. One school that had intended to use Wedorang to check attendance and receive assignments had to shift platforms to its own website amid the service’s suspension. When even that didn’t work, attendance was finally checked by text message and assignments received via the KakaoTalk messaging app.

Access to the privately operated service Classting was also troubled that morning. In some cases, individual schools’ websites were blocked. Amid the general difficulties with remote learning, a number of complaints have been posted on social media platforms. “How am I supposed to confirm attendance when I can’t connect?” wrote one user. “The record indicating that I viewed the lesson video has disappeared,” another lamented.

Users also shared disappointment and concerns about the online classes. A sixth-grader in Seoul’s Gangdong District said, “It’s a school lesson, and the teacher tells us we need to build our study habits by attending at the same time, but some of my classmates get up late and watch their classes all at once.”

“The teacher only sees that they saw the lesson and doesn’t realize they just turned it on and did other stuff. It’s just like attending internet lectures during our school break,” the student complained.

After watching their daughter’s remote class, a 44-year-old telecommuting parent surnamed Hong said, “They could have just watched an EBS [Educational Broadcasting System] lecture. The lessons per period are only 10 to 20 minutes, so they can watch four periods’ worth of classes in an hour.”

“It was also unfortunate to see them having students self-studying without really communicating with the teachers,” Hong added.

Another student parent said, “We lifted our internet restrictions for the sake of online classes, and now we’re worried our child will be exposed to harmful videos.”

By Lee Yu-jin and Choi Won-hyung, staff reporters

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