Across the nation, educators are being charged with the challenge of moving their face-to-face classroom environments to a virtual setting to ensure learning continuity. Although some of us have had the luxury of time and training to make this move, today’s climate is tasking teachers to complete this jump in a few weeks or even days. We at Graduation Alliance would like to share some starting points as you are planning for your online learning environments.
Community: As you know from experience, teaching in successful classrooms relies on student engagement. Today’s students are constantly pulled in different directions depending on their life circumstances and priorities. Creating a learning community and connecting with students will be key to students engaging and remaining a part of your online classroom.
Instruction: Facilitation in an online environment means utilizing synchronous and asynchronous strategies. The way you deliver your content can be flexible and adapted to your strengths as a teacher in both synchronous and asynchronous modalities.
Assessments: The beauty of brick and mortar is the ability to obtain instant feedback from students. With a nod of the head or verbal acknowledgment, teachers can check for understanding. Teachers facilitating online lessons will need to plan for gathering this information quickly in a new environment in order to inform their instructional delivery, sequence, and pace.
Engagement: Planning for feedback, followup communication, and continuous support can be overwhelming if a teacher simply tries to move brick and mortar strategies to online settings. However, there are practices you can implement which will provide the ability to reach large groups of students without compromising individualization and personalization of those interactions.
Below is a set of suggestions and best practices aimed at helping you make this leap under current circumstances that require quick solutions.
- Creating connections with students
- Developing a sense of community
- Delivering content information
- Identifying learning targets
- Developing assessments
- Facilitating discussion
- Creating rubrics
- Knowledge of Learning Management Systems (LMS)
- Analyzing spreadsheet data
- Running a virtual meeting room
- Utilizing screen capturing software
- Mass communication features
- Teacher mentor/buddy
- LMS training
- Open Education Resources
- Webinars
Webinars
Graduation Alliance will host free webinars designed for classroom teachers who are converting to online platforms. All sessions will include tips from our veteran online teachers. We encourage you to attend and connect with your colleagues!
Click on the links below to watch our past webinars.
- Building community in a blended environment
- Delivering instruction synchronously and asynchronously, simple to use technology
- Formative and summative assessments in blended environments
- Communication, outreach, and student engagement
- Practical examples of strategies shown earlier this week:
More webinars coming soon!