Excerpt: With pandemic and online education, WhatsApp became an everyday term through which schools tried to do their administration. Here are some problems that you can face while managing school through WhatsApp.
Read Time: 5 mins
Digital Education
Since the pandemic started, education has gone online. Both students and teachers were struggling through it. Zoom and google meet came in but not many knew about them. Hence, WhatsApp became the resort to solve it as it was easy to use, and most had access to it. But managing the school programming is a total mess.
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Problems of Managing School via Whatsapp
Here’s a quick look at what are the problems of running a school via Whatsapp. Simply speaking, administration overall became a total mess only through Whatsapp.
- Credibility
Administrating a school requires lots of documentation from attendance sheets, test sheets, tuition fees, and many more. With software like photoshops and no record options available Whatsapp loses out on the credibility of the documentation of things like attendance, assignment, tuition fee payments, and many more.
- Tuition Fees
Paying and collecting tuition fees became a real problem via Whatsapp, especially for the government schools and schools catering to the needs of economically backward ones. Earlier there was no option of integrating payments via Whatsapp. Also, many people didn’t know the use of UPI apps or have access to these apps. Also for the lower section of the society, there was no payment during the lockdown. Tracking and recording these payments became another problem for the school administration
- Attendance
An open spot on an org chart is left by someone who has gone missing, either out on medical leave or on vacation or just late, or perhaps even fired, and in his or her place is a sign reading Absent
Throughout the online education process, taking and maintaining attendance became a real pain for the teachers. With students leaving the group at any point in time and tracking those and bringing them back to class, recording attendance was a huge task. With no option of tracking who is present and who is absent, proxies became very easy and the teachers didn’t know how many students are there in her class.
- Scheduling Classes
Online Education For Student: The entire pandemic ruined our proper timetable. So, scheduling classes or getting a proper timetable and joining the classes accordingly was very difficult on Whatsapp. There are high chances among the number of messages, students miss the timetable of their different classes and their links. Also, for teachers, while maintaining several groups they miss the scheduled class or even miss scheduling classes with proper meeting links.
- Notes, Assignments, Tests, etc.
Online Education For Student: Among so many people sending messages throughout the day, it is quite predictable that students miss the notes that the teacher has shared or a deadline/topic of their assignments and tests. Similarly, it is quite obvious for teachers to miss out on someone’s assignment. Most people use Whatsapp on the phone hence doing assignments or correcting assignments on phone can be difficult. Clicking pictures of the notes, assignments, and tests can’t be a solution at all, since sometimes it can be hazy or blurred. Also without a proper tracking system, the teacher doesn’t know who has sent the works when they can send them to the group because the late ones can easily copy from the early submitted ones. Hence the teacher will have to go to each personal chat and download the students’ work.
- Bye-bye discipline
Online Education For Student is the major problem to Maintaining discipline and decorum of a class in a digital space like Whatsapp can be a big headache. Students keep sharing memes, and jokes; chat or leave the group which can be difficult to maintain the discipline or decorum of the classroom. Bringing the left ones back to class or stopping sharing or chatting is such a hot mess for the teachers.
- Accommodating a Large Number of Students
Online Education For Student: Whatsapp groups allow only a limited number of people. So in case you are dealing with a huge number of students at a time which is often the case in government schools so accommodating them can be a great problem. It may lead to multiple groups for one class. Hence, navigating through so many groups will be a headache. Also during assignments when you have groups divided then too, you navigate through the innumerable number of WhatsApp group chats. Arrgghhh…That can be annoying for a teacher!
- Privacy
In a real classroom or school, it won’t be the case that all children have numbers of their teachers (though their parents might have) or even of each other. Now with Whatsapp once you are in the group you can easily find that and can easily breach privacy by sending irrelevant or unwanted messages. Hence chances of getting harassed or getting annoyed are very high. Second, WhatsApp is not that encrypted that each one of us is aware of. Hence getting the entire administration done through Whatsapp is no less risky or problematic.
- Everyone doesn’t have access to smartphones
In the case of government schools or schools catering to the needs of people from the lower rungs of life, remember that many students don’t have access to smartphones. Even though now every household has a smartphone but in such cases, the children might not have the smartphones, rather belong to their parents. In case if they go to work, children again don’t have access to smartphones. Hence, without smartphones, and no WhatsApp so for these students getting communication might get super difficult.
- Unwanted Goof-Ups
We are all accustomed to typos or sending messages in the wrong chat window. With WhatsApp and so many groups, it is quite obvious that either from the student’s or teacher’s side some goof ups are happening every now and then, creating it a lot messier.
- Untimely Messages
With WhatsApp suddenly everyone thinks they can text you or call you whenever they want. Students drop questions, assignments, notes or doubts or some irrelevant messages at any point of time. This can be annoying.
- Unwanted Interventions of Parents.
In a normal school, it’s always the students and the teachers. Now with online education via WhatsApp, you will see a lot more interventions from the parents. Sometimes it goes up to a level of annoyance where they text you about the classes and children doubts at any point of them or make an unnecessary chat or just come in between of the teacher-student interactions or just complain about everything.
Conclusion
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TagsDigital Education, Online Education, School Administration, School Management, Whatsapp
