Ability to engage students and encourage participation
Having the students learn from home for an extended period of time without constant contact with the teacher posed a challenge of effectively engaging the students and urging them to participate in the project. It was difficult for the agricultural science coordinator to monitor whether the students where completing the required schoolwork from home because they were not able to communicate with the students regularly. It was imperative that the students where self-motivated to undertake the project and/or had someone available in their home to assist or enforce them to undertake the project. However, if the students lacked that motivation or someone in their home didn’t have the skills or time to assist the student with their work, then this could result in a reduced number of students participating.
To resolve this problem, the agricultural science coordinator contacted the student’s parents/guardians via email if these activities had not been ‘opened’ online to assist and encourage the student to complete the project activities. It was expected that the students would complete the activity as part of their on-line lessons but because there was no way of enforcing participation, the activity was not assessed.