The 9 Keepers: Pandemic-Time Teaching Methods to Preserve
A note about this article from the Acadly team
The COVID-19 pandemic was, and continues to be, a global tragedy. We could not help but wonder if “silver lining” articles such as this one could seem facetious or opportunistic, so we wanted to add a foreword this time.
Not to sound philosophical, but in times of loss and strife, one often finds a way to grow. In the last two years, we’ve seen it happen in education much more than we did earlier. As teachers transitioned to online classes en masse, there were many missteps, failures, issues… so inevitably, there was growth. It’s easy to brush it off and say “well, everyone else adapted too” but we’d argue that that statement lacks nuance. The video conferencing person-hours logged in the last two years have been higher for education than for all other use cases put together, so even in terms of numbers, there’s little equivalence between teachers and “everyone else”.
This article is a reflection on what the global online learning revolution has taught us because we think the discussion could help some people. It is finally a “marketing” effort — every blog post published by every company is — but we hope you’ll see it as a well-intentioned one ❤️
We’re still shaky from the whirlpool of trying to teach in a pandemic era — juggling students, technology, devices, administrators, assessments and an utterly courageous attempt to maintain a balance. While the pandemic may have thrown us into the deep end, we’ve emerged from it with more ammunition than we’d started with. Here’s what we’d like to hold on to:
Rethinking the powerpoint
Visual and interactive mediums have always been the king. At first, we had sketches on the blackboard; then, we had Powerpoint. Now, the pandemic has brought to us a plethora of options for interactive learning — from collaborative whiteboards to interactive videos to lecture capture to engagement software. Teachers have gravitated towards more adaptive tools which allow them not only to teach, but to also engage learners with polls, assess their understanding with quick tests and quizzes, let backchannels bring up important themes of discussion and above all, keep it digitised and documented.
Allowing asynchronous “attendance”
We are no longer stuck up on the idea that teaching a class means all students have to be present at the same time, same place, together. Differences in timezones, access to resources, capabilities and willingness to learn — these are all factors that the pandemic made us account for in our teaching experiences. Studies have shown that students prefer having flexibility in how they choose to attend class, and learning outcomes will greatly benefit from retaining this practice.
Backchannelling
For most teachers, it came as a pleasant surprise how rapidly the quieter students found their voice when they had the ability to ask questions or give opinions without fearing the judgement of their peers, thanks to online discussion forums and (at times) the optional anonymity. Making the experience equitable to all learners while being inclusive of their personalities is greatly facilitated by backchannels — and it doesn’t hurt to feel the pulse of the classroom with a free-flowing chatbox.
Polls and quizzes
Interactivity has been a bag of mixed feelings since the pandemic — Frontiers in Education reported that 64% of students indicated that a lack of interaction with peers often or always impacted their learning experience, and 44% reported the same about a lack of instructor interaction. However; while the lack of in-person interaction has also been a pain point to many, virtual platforms have given rise to several innovative ways of engaging students (polls, quizzes, discussions, breakout rooms). Bringing online engagement and in-person interaction together will be quite the game-changer!
Mental health check-ins
Staying considerate of mental health — both for teacher’s own selves and their students’ — might have been a rising theme in the pandemic, but it has been a need since long before then. Timely check-ins and accounting for mental health breaks during the term is a beneficial practice for any given time, and we hope to see it thrive.
Reducing the reliance on exams
With students situated across locations and modalities, traditional exams have long been put away to make way for more qualitative assessment styles such as class assignments, discussions, group projects, participation. Tracking learning over time and factoring in performance beyond one-time tests is not only efficient but also easier on the students’ minds.
Being available for post class discussions
Talking to a teacher outside of class can be both intimidating as well as helpful. The pandemic brought this need to the forefront, where timezone differences required teachers to stay available for communication at atypical hours. As we return to in-person teaching, having drop-in hours can be amazing for students who wish to address afterthoughts, consult in anonymity, or are simply too polite to disrupt class with their questions.
Using your instructional designers
Imagine building a website without a UX designer. Not the greatest fun, is it? Instructional designers bring in the best expertise to optimise the learner experience — from redesigning courses, developing entire curriculums and creating training materials, interactive elements and implementing feedback. Without them, eLearning would’ve just been text on a screen. For the bucketloads of pedagogical support needed for switching to online teaching during the pandemic, interaction between teachers and instructional designers has shot up over the last 2 years — and we hope it continues!
Talk about teaching
And we mean, really, talk. The pandemic compelled all teachers to pivot strategies faster than ever, and we were universally talking about the teaching challenges, the work-life balance struggles, the overload of administrative chores, and what we were doing to battle it all. Seeing this around-the-globe community talking, relating and supporting each other was beautiful, and it is something we hope will continue. Teachers, wherever they are, helping their peers do better, learning from each other’s experiences.
For educators grappling with the complex set of education-related challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the #remoteteaching and #remotelearning Twitter hashtags offered access to various kinds of potentially beneficial supports. As they struggled to adjust their pedagogy and manage changes in their home lives, educators may have drawn succour from the ideas and camaraderie available to them in these online spaces… help connect people so that they can “discuss, learn, and tackle common problems together”
- Source: Jeffrey P. Carpenter, Torrey Trust, Royce Kimmons, Daniel G. Krutka, “Sharing and self-promoting: An analysis of educator tweeting at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic”, Computers and Education Open, Volume 2, 2021.
About Acadly
Acadly is a student engagement and attendance automation platform for in-person, online, and hybrid classes. For online and hybrid teaching, Acadly leverages integration with Zoom.
