Tag: Online Teaching

Moving online: Some thoughts

The pandemic has forced so much of our lives to move online.   Meetings moved to Zoom, Teams or Google Meet so we could meet online.   Lessons and teaching moved online.   General working moved online.   And so did Continual Professional Development, with educational conferences and summits all moving to a virtual rather than face to face experience.   But what were the implications, benefits and drawbacks?  And what are the implications for training in schools using video content?

Benefits

The first clear benefit in moving conferences online was simply the fact that it allowed conference events to continue even where it was no longer possible to meet face to face due to the pandemic.    The last face to face conference I attended was Digifest 2020, in March, just before the 1st lockdown came into force in the UK, but since then I have attended a number of events all online.     It wasnt until the other week that I returned to a face-to-face event.   If the events hadnt moved online I would have missed out on the learning opportunities I have received through online events.

Access to events may also be a benefit in that virtual events overcome geographical boundaries where attendance would be difficult and/or costly to overcome if events are face to face only.   As such, on reflection, I may have accessed a more diverse range of opportunities because of the move to online events than I would have otherwise accessed had events remaining as they were pre-pandemic.

Drawbacks and Challenges

Motivation is one of the key challenges in my view in relation to online events.    I registered for several events over the last year, with these happily taking up allocated space on my calendar, reminding me of their existence.  Yet, when time came for a few of these events, the immediately pressing work I had to do meant that I didn’t always attend.   All I needed to do was click a link and maybe just listen in, or flick in and out of the event, but I didn’t even do this.   Had these been face to face events, this wouldn’t have happened.   I may have had to book travel or book accommodation; I may have arranged to meet people, or I may have planned activities in and around the event for before or after.   Basically, I would have had intrinsic motivation to ensure I attended to avoid financial or opportunity losses, beyond the loss of the learning opportunities presented by the event.   This intrinsic motivation just doesn’t exist to the same extent with online events.    I suspect event organisers will have plenty of data to show the drop off rate or non-attendance rate for online events is significantly higher than that for face-to-face events.

Video based training in schools

One of the key challenges for conferences is engagement.   We may create awareness or training materials but how do we ensure that teachers or other staff actually engage with the content, and watch it?    Having the content isnt enough if it isnt being watched or if it isnt then resulting in changes in teaching or other behaviours.    Personally, I don’t have an answer to this other than to suggest the below:

  1. We need to make the cost of watching low, by keeping content short and simple.   If the cost is high, it is likely staff will always prioritise other work which is immediately to hand over training materials which may have an unknown future benefit.
  2. We need to vary the content or style of materials such that they do not become boring or predictable.    Where content is always the same or presented in the same way it quickly becomes boring and predictable and therefore disengages users.
  3. We need to seek ways to engage users and make watching content worthwhile and interesting.  This could for example be through extrinsic motivation associated with prizes, electronic badges or department-based competition.
  4. We need to build in opportunities for collaboration and discussion beyond the content materials.   Content has a greater opportunity of sticking if it is internalised and discussing and debating with others is likely to be one of the best ways of helping this happen.

Conclusions

I suspect online events and online based training is very much here to stay.   If we consider it as simply another tool, I think this is a good thing, but I think we need to be careful of considering it as “the” tool.   I have long seen the enterprise world push staff towards online based training content, with staff complaining and then proceeding to find creative ways to complete the training without actually spending the relevant time or actually learning anything.   I have seen the same in some schools with data protection and even safeguarding training becoming an online tick box exercise rather than a valuable learning experience.

I am also a little concerned regarding the potentially high costs of developing lots of good training content only to receive limited engagement from busy staff.

I have a positive view regarding the potential, in an ideal world, of well-developed video and online training materials for use in schools.   I also have a realistic view to temper this, in relation to likely engagement given the busy lives of staff in schools.   Is mandating the number of hours content consumed per year per teacher a possible option?   Have seen this before, and I my view no, but let’s leave that one here for now.

For now online training and events are here to stay and for me, as long as they are part of a balanced programme of opportunities, also including face to face events, then I think this is a good thing.

Is online teaching as good as IRL?

I have read a lot about how online teaching isn’t as good as classroom teaching.   I myself agree that this is the case however I have come to realise that I have fallen into the generalisation trap.    I have bought into a simple argument that online teaching is either better or worse than real life, classroom, teaching, that there is a binary judgement to be made and that the world, in this case, is simple.    The world however isn’t simple and is seldom binary.     The line should read that online teaching isn’t generally as good as in real life teaching.

So, what brought me to this realisation?

I have seen some students absolutely excel in remote lessons, and not students who were previously excelling, but students who were struggling.    I am not sure if it is the added independence they have found online teaching has provided, the lack of peer pressure or something else, but they have excelled in terms of work rate, engagement and work quality.    Clearly for these students online teaching works better than teaching in a classroom.    These are the students who prove the assertion as fact, that “online teaching isn’t as good as real-life teaching” to be false.

Here for me lies the challenge as we move forward; How can we take these successes and translate them to the world of education as it will exist once we return to a semblance of normal, post pandemic?   How do we make sure that the students who have gained from online teaching, who find online teaching suits their needs, don’t lose out when we return to the bricks and mortar classroom?

Online Teaching: More tips

Following on from my previous post on remote teaching tips, I thought I would post a little bit more on what works for me and on some of the things I have found in carrying out online teaching of students.

Keep it simple – Likes

I had been looking at ways to get feedback from students and had looked at MS Forms as a solution before I was put on to Polly as a solution.   It was then that Sarah Clark ( @sfm36 ) suggested using the Like functionality in Teams.   In my search for wiz bang and something fancy, I had missed the simple and obvious, being the ability to simply post a comment, question or learning objective in Teams and have the students use the available Like options to respond indicating if they were happy, etc.  

The moral of the story being, keep it simple!

Agility – Use analytics where possible

I have been using Stream to create some little 2 or 3min video guides and other support materials for students in addition to recording the lessons for students to review post lesson or where they missed or had trouble accessing the lesson.   I normally make the recordings available for a week before removing them.

When using stream I can easily see the number of views individual videos have received which can give me a steer on how useful or not they are.   I am always conscious of the need to work Smart rather than Hard, and therefore if particular resources are not being watched by students it doesn’t make sense to continue spending time and effort producing them.   

And this is exactly what I have found with my little additional support video guides; students simply aren’t watching them, and instead are viewing the recorded lessons instead.   As such am going to produce fewer of these video guides going forward, focussing more on guides for difficult concepts or key areas only.

I think Insights within Microsoft Teams is also worth a look, however as yet I havent played much with it so this may be for a later post.

Questioning

This is difficult in an online space, especially where cameras might have to be turned off for bandwidth reasons, or due to school policy regarding online teaching.  You don’t have access to the normal body language info you would have in a classroom to help however I think the tips for questioning in an online classroom are similar to those in a traditional classroom.

I keep a list of the students and record who I have asked questions to and who has responded; That way I can randomly pick students to answer while ensuring I try to engage all students.   I also record whether student answers were in line, exceeded or were below my expectations, which can help me in later questioning, allowing me to identify where certain students may need a little scaffolding of the questions, etc. 

I also acknowledge that some students don’t want to talk in live lessons and therefore I invite them to use the chat functionality in Teams if they prefer this to speaking via their mic (or maybe they don’t have a mic in some cases).   This also works for where the lesson is delivered asynchronously, with students leaving their answers/comments as posts within Teams.

Engagement

I have read a few posts from educators over the years talking about the importance of engaging the students and of the stage craft which teaching inherently involves much like the stage craft required from actors.    In our current world of online education, I think this isnt as easy for reasons similar to those mentioned above in relation to questioning, including the lack of access to body language and other non-verbal communication.     I think it is therefore important to try and find ways to add a little engagement, fun and comedy to lessons.    One of my approaches to this in face to face lessons has been to start lessons with lateral thinking problems; This is something I now plan to restart within my online lessons.   I am also planning to make use of different backgrounds to my video sessions and a “where is he now” style lessons segment.   Overall, this isnt an area I have done much with so far however it is something I plan to address in the coming weeks.

Conclusion

The above are a just 4 more thoughts or ideas in relation to online teaching.   They may work in some contexts, in some classes or some of the time.    As this lockdown progresses it may be that I may change my mind in future and suggest that some of the above no longer work for me.    This continues to be an evolving situation and my experience and understanding of it, of what works and what doesn’t, continues also to evolve.