Designing for Effective Online Learning
The pandemic has changed our world in ways inexplicable. Just like everything else around us, it has redefined the field of teaching and learning. Overnight, the world “zoom”ed in, and even toddlers started to attend online classes. We un-learned the conventional design of education and moved from the chalkboard to presentations. Since this turn, a large number of teachers have asked — “how do I make virtual classes engaging and effective for my students?; what does it take to be a good online teacher? ”. This article suggests some ideas that can help teachers improve their virtual teaching experience and aid in reducing the anticipated learning gap.
Create active, relevant, and engaging learning experiences:
Decades of research has shown that people learn when they are-
- “interested and engaged in what they are learning and find it useful and meaningful.
- actively involved in the process of teaching and learning, comparing new information to previous ideas, constructing new understandings, and quite simply changing their own minds about how the world works.
- able to apply what they have learned to new situations, to check the completeness of their understanding, and to evaluate their own learning for themselves.” (How People Learn)
The first step to design these experiences is to let go of the ‘talk-at-you’ lessons. Teachers have often been seen emulating the exact same things that they were doing when in physical space. But now, the learners have a choice to turn off the camera and get distracted by things around them. So, what do we do?
There must be a movement from ‘consumption to construction’:
- In the learning plan, there should be a larger proportion of student voice than teacher talk-time. Learners must get ample opportunities to interact with the teacher, the content, and fellow classmates. Focus must be on ‘how to think’.
- Implementation of activity and project-based lessons can provide opportunities to make students wear their ‘creative hat’ and generate solutions (in and around their environment), making learning more relevant and exciting.
- Several contextual examples, opportunities to surface alternate conceptions, cases, analogies, group work, discussions, multiple modes of representation (audio, video, text) and student reflection enrich the quality of instruction. It is not necessary that all of these are included in the same lesson, but, instead, should be spread out to make the most meaning out of them.
- Online learning limits opportunities for immediate feedback and thus, it is important to plan for them. Providing effective feedback can educate the teachers about student progress and aid in making changes to the learning plan.
- Resourcefulness is highly valuable, especially when classrooms require hands-on practical experiences. For example, can physics practicals be replaced by online simulations? Can the students create a pulley-system using material at home?
- Plan keeping the learners in mind — more on this below.
- Share your plan (at least for a week) with the learners and their caregivers. It helps them be best prepared for the learning ahead.
- Plan for contingencies. Technology can surprise you in ways you don’t anticipate.
Tech-decision- making:
- Select the technology tools in alignment with the learning goal, instead of the technology driving instructional decisions. For example, if my students can read on their own, then I will use the asynchronous time to give them the opportunity to read the English literature lesson and use the synchronous time to unpack the essential rhetoric elements they found as they read the chapter; instead of reading out loud the entire chapter for 45 minutes to the entire class. In terms of the SAMR model, the focus must be to move from substitution to augmentation or modification, at the least.
- Pick the right mix of asynchronous and synchronous learning tools, based on objective and student learning needs. Synchronous time must be used judiciously.
- Decide which technology leads to passive consumption of knowledge amongst the learners as opposed to giving them opportunities to create, collaborate and have an equal, if not more, voice and choice.
Plan keeping the learners at the forefront:
An excellent learning plan focuses on student learning needs, their prior knowledge and conceptions, their cognitive-developmental needs, cultural requirements, and more. It is, thus, imperative that they are at the forefront while planning the experiences.
For the lesson:
- Some questions to consider — “who are my learners?, where are they developmentally — how much support should I give?, who are they culturally and how does that impact the design of my lesson?, what topics are relevant for them?, what in the lesson will be enticing for them?, will they be able to focus on the screen for so long?”. As a teacher, I used to focus a lot on making my lessons culturally contextual for the learners. My students found it un-relatable to use “avocados” as examples since they weren’t exposed to that as Indian learners. Hence, I would either change the fruit for ‘apple’ or make a word wall to explain what avocados were, depending upon the context of the lesson, of course.
- As mentioned in above, it is important to choose relevant technology tools from the viewpoint of your learners. Do the learners have access to the technology tools you are using? Can young learners do this on their own? Is this lesson even reaching to my kids (are they viewing the videos I am sending links of)? Does it make sense to use the open resources or should I prepare my own videos? Is my tool supporting “active” learning?
Creating a welcoming virtual environment:
- Lack of a physical space lends itself to making learning less intimate. Kids do miss their teachers’ ‘pat-on-the-back’ and their friends ‘fist-bumps’. It is easy, especially younger ones, to feel less belonged to virtual classrooms. Sense of belonging is critical and can be achieved by creating small spaces in the virtual environment. Beginning classes with “how are you feeling today? what did you do last evening?” or even encouraging learners to share a fun thing of their mind could comfort them.
- It is important to bring joy into the classroom and be silly (even if it means there is a small dance party right in the middle of the lesson!). This resource is helpful for some additional ideas.
- One of the big concerns of learners and their parents is “zooming out” or “zoom fatigue”. Less is more — Chunking the lessons into smaller pieces by prioritizing the relevant, important, and engaging content leads to better processing of learning and making further connections to prior concepts. Even within the lessons, participants must STOP — Stop, Take a deep breath, Observe and move, and Proceed.
- Teachers, as well, must make time for themselves to relax, exercise, and take a step back to be the most productive during the learning week.
Collaborate:
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
- Online teaching can be daunting without proper support, both for teachers and for learners. Peer learning helps in sharing knowledge, building collaboration, and organizing skills. Teachers must collaborate with colleagues from their institutions (and beyond) to gather innovative ideas and to share challenges in creating meaningful learning experiences. These conversations could, in fact, only be revolving around sharing things that work for them, benefitting the larger teaching community. Two 15-min conversations with two other teachers can be a great starting point. Similarly, students should work with their classmates on projects and discuss various concepts in groups or pairs to build on to their learning. This resource delineates ways in which the quality of online discussions can be enhanced.
- Teachers can build avenues to periodically interact with individual students. While this could be a time-consuming activity, it can reap great benefits in the long run in terms of student confidence, learning, efficacy, and simply, belonging. It is challenging to interact and learn about each student in a large virtual environment, to note how the student is feeling and what are some potential roadblocks. Individual check-ins have a huge potential of filling in for the larger gaps and are greatly encouraged.
- A larger proportion of student learning happens not in the classroom but outside of it. Thus, caregivers play a vital role in their ward’s learning, not just in the online environment but also otherwise. This calls for periodic conversations amongst teachers and students’ caregivers. These can strengthen student learning and feed improvements back into the system. It can also prepare the caregivers to support the learner in absence of teachers and in clearing misconceptions.
Leveraging its opportunities, online space can provide personalized, self-paced and differentiated learning for students. A thoughtful intersection of content and pedagogy with technology can help to promote student learning and engagement. Integrating some of the approaches above could help in building stronger learning plans, providing quality synchronous experiences for students, and moving towards deeper learning.
Acknowledgement- Ideas for this article have been drawn by thought-partnering with my friend and colleague, Sapna Shah.
References-
What makes an excellent online teacher?
Remote teaching good practices