(Newswire.net — February 7, 2021) — The abrupt transition from brick and mortar education to distance learning caught various learning institutions and teachers at different preparedness levels. Some are immersed in a sea of confusion, while others have proactively provided students with online infrastructure to ensure smooth learning.
Regardless of where it’s taking place, learning requires clarity, feedback, and understanding. But with remote learning, distance adds an extra layer of challenges inherent in the face-to-face setting. Research has shown that remote learning doesn’t work well compared to traditional learning, even with the best preparedness.
Teachers are an integral cog in the remote learning puzzle. And just like everyone, most teachers were caught flat footed by the pandemic, by the rushed shift from what was considered “normal.” With this in mind, remote learning hasn’t been easy on teachers, especially those with family duties and network challenges.
However, despite the above challenges, remote learning can be improved by centering focus on teachers. Below are pointers to help teachers and support professionals craft a working virtual learning experience.
Short sessions
Generally, human beings have a short attention span. And this applies to students, especially the young ones. To avoid losing your students’ concentration, divide your online sessions into smaller sessions.
In between, students can break to undertake assignments related to the concept you just taught.
Choose the best tools, and keep them
Various schools utilize various online learning platforms. These include video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google, Skype, and so forth. While these tools’ prime objective is to communicate, some are more robust and ideal for remote learning. For instance, Google provides both a video communication option and a virtual classroom setup.
As a teacher, pick the tools that work best for you. Master their features to get the best out of them. Again, the learning platforms’ consistency isn’t only comfortable for you but for your students as well. Rotating tools adds confusion to everyone since much time is spent on familiarizing themselves with features.
Up your communication skills
Given the distance challenge, many students are likely to feel disconnected from their teachers. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Improve communication with your students to make them feel valued.
One way you can blur the distance challenge is by encouraging qualitative feedback. And feedback should be both ways. Allow students to give feedback on the online learning methods to gather learnings of how the experience can be improved. Similarly, provide feedback to the students regarding their performance.
Keep it simple
Simple instructions, directions, and expectations are pivotal in remote learning because the teacher can hardly gauge the confusion among students. Keep activities to a minimum and try to be a little bit conservative in introducing new concepts.
First, reinforce past learnings to measure students’ understandability and content retention rate. And when it’s time to introduce new content, connect with old learnings and provide examples. And even more critical, dole out new content in brief doses. It’s integral to limit the amount of new content that students get in any one session.
Be creative
Like mentioned earlier, students are likely to disengage as online sessions become longer. To put this in perspective, studies have shown that student attention drops significantly after 9 to 12 minutes of watching videos. That said, where sessions go on for longer than 15 minutes, make the session as interactive as possible.
Some platforms allow teachers to pose short quizzes with immediate responses. Another way is to record short videos explaining complex concepts to students. In between the videos, teachers can pose questions, which students can answer during live sessions.
Reach out to colleagues
It’s important you connect with your fellow teachers who are undergoing similar transition challenges. This way, you can brainstorm on mitigating distance learning challenges and devise strategies to make remote learning a success.
Schools should help, too
Given the ever-widening gap in the distribution of resources, some students may lack access to online infrastructure. One way learning institutions can help is by facilitating Wi-Fi hotspots and devices to students, enabling everyone to access online content.
Another way is increasing the number of educators to ensure that teachers are not overwhelmed and that students receive the much-needed attention.
To wrap it up
Remote learning is new to students and teachers alike. Unfortunately, that’s how it’s going to be, at least in the foreseeable future. As a teacher, dive in and refine things you need to engineer to improve the virtual learning experience. Over time, everything will sink in, and the transition to remote learning will become seamless and, perhaps, permanent.