Online teaching can be challenging for K-12 students, especially if they are not used to learning in a virtual environment. As a teacher, you need to modify your online teaching strategies to suit the needs, interests, and abilities of your students. Here are some tips on how to do that.
Before you start online teaching, you need to assess your students' readiness for online learning. You can use surveys, quizzes, or interviews to find out their level of digital literacy, access to devices and internet, learning preferences, and motivation. Based on the results, you can group your students according to their needs and provide them with appropriate support and guidance.
Depending on whether your online learners are synchronous, asynchronous or online in a hybrid class, ensure your assessments for learning will provide you with valuable and quality data to work from. Data points such as time to complete a task and independence in completing that task (eg. Did they have outside help you’re not aware of?) are important considerations in the method of diagnostic assessment chosen.
One of the best ways to modify your online teaching strategies based on feedback is to collect feedback regularly and consistently. You can use various methods to gather feedback from your students, such as surveys, polls, quizzes, discussions, reflections, and self-assessments
Planning your online lessons is essential for successful online teaching. When doing so, you should consider the learning objectives, content, activities, interaction, and assessment. To ensure that the objectives are met, you need to make sure that the materials and resources are engaging and relevant for your students. Additionally, you should assign tasks and exercises to practice and apply their learning, making sure to differentiate them according to each student's level and interests. Interaction is also key; you should decide on the communication tools and platforms that will be used to facilitate collaboration and feedback. Finally, you should think about how you will measure and monitor progress and performance, as well as what tools and methods will be used to collect and analyze data.
Online teaching offers a range of tools that can enhance your teaching and learning experience. Learning management systems (LMS) like Google Classroom, Canvas, and Moodle can help you manage your courses, upload materials, assign activities, grade them, and track students' progress. Video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams enable live online sessions with your students. Interactive tools such as Kahoot, Quizizz, and Nearpod can create interactive content like quizzes, games, polls, and simulations to increase student engagement and participation. Utilizing these online tools can create, share, organize content and motivate students.
Choosing a consistent platform for online learning is probably one of the most important technical aspects of a successful online learning experience. The platform needs to have the features and structure that can scale to your requirements and provide students with equitable access. It needs to be easy for your teachers to manage and administer and be accessible to as many students as possible. The ability to "plug in" experiences and applications will give your teachers ownership of their teaching and provide enriched engagement but keep the data in one platform. Making the technology fade into the background and to focus on the teaching and learning is the goal. By having it on one platform, you have more control of your data.
Feedback is an essential part of online teaching, as it helps students understand their strengths and weaknesses, improve their learning outcomes, and stay motivated and connected. To provide effective feedback, you should use various methods and channels. For instance, rubrics are criteria that describe the expectations and standards for students' work. They can be used to evaluate and grade assignments as well as provide specific and constructive feedback. Additionally, comments are written or oral remarks that can be given to students individually or collectively to praise, correct, or suggest improvements. Lastly, peer feedback is when students give each other feedback on their work with guidelines and prompts provided by you. This encourages collaboration, reflection, and learning from each other.
Timely feedback is so important. In the gaming world the time between action and response is called lag. The longer the lag, the less satisfying it is and the more uncertainty you add to the game, it is the same with teaching.
Self-regulation and autonomy are essential skills for online learning, as they empower students to take the lead in their own learning process. To encourage self-regulation and autonomy, you need to provide your students with opportunities and support. Examples of this include goal setting, which helps students identify and articulate their own learning goals; scaffolding, which provides temporary and adjustable support and guidance; and self-assessment, which helps students evaluate their own learning outcomes. Through these methods, you can guide your students' learning path, measure and celebrate their achievements, help them complete tasks, overcome challenges, develop skills, foster awareness, encourage reflection, and promote responsibility for their learning.
To engage students in a virtual space, especially young students, use TPR and realia to capture attention and communicate clearly. Come prepared with props. Include movement to appeal to kinesthenic learners and avoid monotony. On Zoom, the breakout rooms tool is indispensible. Also on Zoom, let students present dialogues in various virtual settings, such as the ski lift, etc. Enable students to write and draw together on screen. Music, videos, internet materials, prepared screenshares and powerpoints are all at your fingertips, so use them. One of the benefits of online learning is controlling (muting) the mics, which makes classroom management easier. Students only see you through a tiny window. Smile. Know basic troubleshooting.