Is modular learning effective?

It has been 2 months already since the effectiveness of this modular learning and it has already been quarter 1 modules given to our students already and counting but there is just one question popping out into my head a hundred times already: Is modular learning really effective? Let me share with you my personal experiences with this new normal way of teaching/learning we have right now due to this pandemic and please respect my opinions since all of my though here are based on my personal undertakings.

As a mom…

I have a step-daughter and of course, I am also one of those moms out there who were very active in getting the modules in their respective schools. I witnessed the events since day 1 up until recently and if I am going to tell you the truth, I think my daughter is never really learning but she is competing and stressing herself out because of the bulk of the modules given (she is already Grade 10 in Special Science).  At first, I was confident that she can manage everything since I know the capacity of my daughter and she was and still one of the top-performing students in her class (actually their class is the highest class in the school because they were homogenously picked and all of them has average Grade of 90 and above and you can already imagine their competition during ranking). Now, the worst-case scenario here is that I observed that all of her classmates including her of course, will sleep late at night every day as if they were running out of time answering all the modules and doing the experiments needed 9I already told you they were special science class so this is it). I can feel she is stressed out if all her classmates are done and she is left alone with no answers on her modules, the reason I and my husband find time to really help her a lot especially in her experiments. She always told me that their modules were too many and the time is not enough which is why they were always sleeping late. No matter how many times I told her to sleep it out and continue it the next morning, still, she would not sleep until such time she finished what she is targeting to finish at the moment. She also told me that there were lots of topics which they find very difficult to understand. As a parent, I don’t want to spoil her and answer the activities instead of her because we want her to experience being independent. The good thing is she never let us answer her modules, unlike every other student out there. We never stooped our support in everything she does. If I were to rate the module effectivity in this scenario it’s going to be 50 percent of 100.

As a Teacher…

I am not only a mother but also a teacher as well. I have been in the field of teaching for almost 10 years already and it’s only now that I really felt something is not working with, my students. I am a TLE teacher so I am used to giving skill tests and hands-on activities after the theory or discussion but now, it is really very hard for me to deliver properly the topics wherein all my students can comprehend very well. Our students are group heterogeneously so you can expect a diverse level of learning. In the face-to-face interaction, if the students cannot understand easily the discussion, then the demonstration of skills will do the explanation so they will still understand it but now since we are giving them modules, it is very hard for us to give them the necessary skills from the topic. One of my students messaged me telling me that most of them really don’t understand well the modules, but according to them, they were just trying to answer it since they don’t want to have failing grades this school year. One student also told me that they have a group chat and it’s where they share all their answers. So, it means only those who are willing to learn are really doing their modules properly, the rest was just waiting for the intelligent ones to answer it so they could copy their answers. We can already figure out the effectiveness of the modules on this. My rating as a teacher is 40 percent out of 100.

Generally…

Modular learning may not be effective to all of the students but this is the only way that all of us can restore the balance brought to us by this pandemic so let us just make the most out of it. It is never easy but at least we tried and we still manage to cope up with life despite all of the struggles we experienced now. The best lesson that our students learned through this modular learning is that: it is not the heaviness or the score they get from the module that matters because, in the end, our students learned how to cope up with the difficulties of life, learned so many lessons that this pandemic has brought us not just academically but the lessons for life that no one can snatch away till they grow old. Let us all remember that it is not the papers or the scores of the modules which make a student, but how the students learned their lesson because they experienced modular learning. This pandemic taught us great lessons in life which we all will reminisce in the next years to come. – Clea | helpline PH