(10 Min Read)
Teaching remotely has the same goals as teaching face to
face. Some of these goals are:
- Transfer of declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge (skills)
- Engagement with learners
- Assessment of learning
- Covering the curriculum and beyond
- Highlighting misconceptions
- Supporting learners to achieve the learning outcomes
- Safeguarding and pastoral care
However the way in which teachers achieve these goals
remotely is different. McAleavy et al (2020) succinctly state that "online
teaching should not try to mimic the entirely synchronous teacher-student
engagement of the conventional school." We also need to consider access to
technology and teacher's digital literacy. We cannot assume that all students
will have access to a desktop or laptop, some may be accessing remote learning
through a small mobile phone or tablet. A simple, structured approach is always
better than trying to use as much tech as possible.
McAleavy et al's report available here
focusses on ensuring that remote teaching maintains structure, adaptation and
assessment. The key takeaways from the report are:
- Teaching presence - Social interaction needs to be intentional with
high levels of engagement and teacher visibility. This visibility can take
several forms e.g. live modelling and explaining content and thought processes
in an engaging way, asking questions, assessment, diagnostic feedback, and
adapting resources / learning sequence in response to students' progress.
- Remote learning traps - Excessive personalisation and self-paced study
can lead to underachievement. Give opportunity for students to work
independently with some real-time Q&A.
- Blended learning - Use of both live (synchronous) and asynchronous methods.
Consider the use of printed materials instead of purely online digital content.
- Assessment - Use of automated self-marking quizzes e.g. Google Forms,
Microsoft Forms, SMHW. Use of paper-based assessment e.g. pupil self-assessment
against teacher supplied models and mark schemes.
- Community focus - Building a collective identity and sense of
belonging. Do not allow students to become pre-occupied with competitive
achievement.
- Minimising workload - Use of centralised resources either created by
the school or sourced externally. Then modifying these where necessary.
- Realistic transition - Do not expect to go 100% remote, online and
synchronous straight away. Consider virtual office hours, fixed times when
teachers can provide one-to-one support.
- Continuity for all - Maintaining education for all students in the
cohort, particularly the vulnerable and disadvantaged is the number one
priority. If an initiative might alienate learners or be inaccessible due to
technology issues, then a simpler alternative needs to be sought.
An area which may be controversial is the suggestion that
teaching needs to be engaging and interactive. However, for students it is very
easy to cognitively switch off or multi-task when learning experiences are not
cognitively engaging. We need to consider how much passive time there is in our
teaching activities.
From a personal experience, finding a balance between
lecturing for 50 minutes and providing students with sufficient time to work
independently is key. While students are working independently, students need a
method to be able to ask questions, a chat/message feature on Microsoft Teams
or Google Meets is fine or this. Some classes may work fine with audio Q&A,
other classes you may want to limit to the text-based chat.
Once students have completed some independent work, the
teacher needs to somehow assess this. It may not be realistic for teachers to
read 30 pieces of work, so they may take a sample and offer whole-class
feedback.
Teachers can also set an automated online test (this needs
setting up in advance). These low stakes tests are fairly easy to setup on Show
My Homework (Tutorial here) ,
Google Forms (Tutorial here) or
Microsoft Forms (Tutorial here). I
would advise using the platform which your school already currently uses - for
our school, SMHW Quizzes work well, they can be accessed via the app and all
students have a login which they use daily. All platforms can provide immediate
data to the students and teachers. Alternatively, teachers may want to ask a
hinge question with multiple-choice options as answers in the chat feature.
Multiple-choice is more likely to increase student participation and the
teacher can announce how many students have given an answer and encourage
others to do so. Once answers have been submitted, the teacher may ask a
student to explain their choice.
One of the best ways to resolve access issues is by using
printed resources alongside some online content, the printed resources will
mean that students are not reliant on a fast internet connection to access
video and software to download or view files. Of course, if we're trying to
increase teacher visibility then there are several ways of doing this. One way
could even be on a conference call, alternatively the teacher could use e-mail
or SMS to check-in on vulnerable or disadvantaged students. The idea of virtual
office hours which could include scheduled phone or video calls is also worth
considering. If access issues are resolved and engagement remains low, teachers
and pastoral leads need a way of contacting these families to help students
break down some of these barriers to learning. In some cases students may need
to be encouraged to come into school (if it is safe) where they will receive
more direct support with their learning.
For teachers in schools that have decided to go with
synchronous or asynchronous video lessons, there are a few considerations in
Brame's literature review (2016) available here. The
report focusses on three areas:
- Cognitive load
- Student engagement
- Active learning
Practices to maximize student learning from educational videos
The three areas work together. If the video input is short, snappy and well designed, student engagement is maintained, and there is a focus on keeping learners cognitively active and involved, then lessons are likely to be more successful. A full table of recommendations by Brame is reproduced below. The examples are quite helpful.
Element to consider
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Recommendation
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Rationale
|
Examples
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Cognitive load
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Use signaling to highlight important information.
|
Can reduce extraneous load.
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Key words on screen highlighting important
elements
|
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Can enhance germane load.
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Changes in color or contrast to emphasize
organization of information
|
|
|
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Changes in color or contrast to emphasize
relationships within information
|
|
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Brief out-of-video text explaining purpose and
context for video (e.g., learning objective for video)
|
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Use segmenting to chunk information.
|
Manages intrinsic load.
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Short videos (6 minutes or less)
|
|
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Can enhance germane load.
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Chapters or click-forward questions within videos
|
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Use weeding to eliminate extraneous information.
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Reduces extraneous load.
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Eliminating music
|
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Eliminating complex backgrounds
|
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Match modality by using auditory and visual
channels to convey complementary information.
|
Can enhance germane load.
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Khan Academy–style tutorial videos that
illustrate and explain phenomena
|
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Narrated animations
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Student engagement
|
Keep each video brief.
|
Increases percentage of each video that students
watch; may increase total watch time.
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Multiple videos for a lesson, each ≤ 6 minutes
|
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May decrease mind wandering.
|
|
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Use conversational language.
|
Creates a sense of social partnership between
student and instructor, prompting the student to try harder to make sense of
the lesson.
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Placing the student in the lesson by use of
“your” rather than “the” during explanations
|
|
|
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Use of “I” to indicate the narrator’s perspective
|
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Speak relatively quickly and with enthusiasm.
|
Increases percentage of each video that students
watch.
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Speaking rates in the 185–254 words per minute
range
|
|
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May increase sense of social partnership between
student and instructor.
|
Expressions of instructor excitement, such as “I
love the next part; the way the feed-forward mechanism works is so elegant,”
or “Consider how the cell solves this tricky problem of needing to regulate
three genes in sequence; it’s really cool.”
|
|
Create and/or package videos to emphasize
relevance to the course in which they are used.
|
Increases percentage of each video that students
watch.
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Videos created for the class in which they are
going to be used, with instructor narration explaining links to preceding
material
|
|
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May increase germane cognitive load by helping
students recognize connections.
|
Explanatory text to situate video in course
|
Active learning
|
Consider these strategies for promoting active
learning:
|
|
|
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Packaging video with interactive questions.
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May increase germane cognitive load, improve
memory via the testing effect, and improve student self-assessment.
|
Integrate questions into videos with HapYak or
Zaption, as described by Obodo and Baskauf (2015)
|
|
|
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Follow short videos with interactive questions
within an LMS, as done by Keithly and colleagues (2015) ,
or within Google Forms, as done by Caudel and colleagues (2015)
|
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Use interactive features that give students
control.
|
Increases student ownership and may increase
germane cognitive load.
|
Create “chapters” within a video using HapYak or
YouTube Annotate
|
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Use guiding questions.
|
May increase germane cognitive load, reduce
extraneous cognitive load, and improve student self-assessment.
|
Senchina (2011) provides
guiding questions for videos designed to introduce physiology students to
professional ethics related to experimenter–subject interactions, such as the
following: “Observe the subject’s behavior and responsiveness during the
dehydration period. What changes as the subject becomes dehydrated? What
problems does he have? Observe the experimenters’ behavior and responsiveness
as dehydration progresses. What do they do differently? Why?”
|
|
Make video part of a larger homework assignment.
|
May increase student motivation, germane
cognitive load, and student self-assessment.
|
Package videos with a series of questions or
problems that ask students to apply the concepts from the videos. iBiology
Education videos (e.g., What Can You Learn with a Light Microscope?)
provide one example (iBiology, 2016 )
|
By weeding out un-necessary information and keeping
teacher input concise, students are also more likely to avoid
zoom
fatigue - a phenomenon highlighted by Torrey Trust
here.
One common piece of advice from the sources above and
anecdotal evidence from teachers is to incorporate paper-based resources during
remote teaching. Having taught for over 6 months remotely this year in a school
which uses paper-based booklets, I can confirm these are ideal for schools and
students who do not have 1:1 laptop/desktop devices at home. The booklets are
well-structured and low tech.
Example workbooks for Computer Science can be found here.
You will notice that there are paper-based low stakes tests built into the
booklets in the form of Do Nows either with the lesson or at the back of the
booklet. There is text content with optional videos followed by at least 20
minutes of independent practice.
There are also hundreds of workbooks for various
subjects here:
- Science curated by CogSciSci here
- More Science resources here
- English by Douglas
Wise here
- Geography by internetgeography (£60 subscription) here
- Search or post on Twitter as there are always teachers willing to
help
Technology
For many schools in the UK, high quality remote teaching will
include some video. I will try to highlight the minimum requirements in terms
of technology. If your laptop has a built in webcam, this will suffice. If you
have a desktop, a webcam from a reputable company such as Logitech or Sandberg are
recommended. Some teachers may also want to teach remotely with a visualiser,
we use Ipevo visualisers. I do not currently use a separate microphone, as the
webcam and visualiser have these built in. I do advise using headphones. The last piece
of technology which may improve call quality is an Ethernet cable. This cable can
be plugged directly into your router at home and will provide a stable and fast
connection, particularly if you experience WIFI or other connectivity issues. Regarding
software, for live lessons, use the platform that your school currently uses.
Do not assume students can train themselves to use a new platform i.e. if you
are a Google school, use Meet, Microsoft schools should use Teams. Some schools
use Zoom, which is the least secure of the three platforms. For safeguarding
and to avoid "Zoom bombing" where uninvited guests join a lesson and
take over the broadcast, you should:
- Change screensharing to “Host Only”.
- Disable “Join Before Host” so people can’t cause trouble.
- Disable “File Transfer” so there’s no digital virus sharing.
- Disable “Allow Removed Participants to Rejoin” so booted attendees
can’t slip back in.
- Use Mute All during teacher input (students can ask Qs in the
chat).
- Be aware that students can still record or screenshot the lesson
even with recording disabled.
Tips via Ana
Agneshwar
What this section highlights is the significant preparation and technology
that all teachers need access to. Thankfully, my school bought all this
hardware for teachers and dedicated a morning of CPD to training teachers back
in September. If you need to buy time to provide training and create
paper-based booklets, a temporary measure could be to use lessons on Oak National
Academy or BBC Bitesize.
In Summary, consider vulnerable and disadvantaged students in your
provision. Be wary of cognitive load, engagement and keeping students
cognitively active. Consider using paper-based resources. Try to include live
modelling, questioning, low stakes testing and diagnostic feedback. Lastly, be
prepared to adapt resources and the learning sequence in response to students'
progress.
Further reading:
https://edtechhub.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/remote-teaching.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5132380/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fGZfTGOWu4vlH_bKnzn1i45i5kuAgh5M/view