Q&A: How Do I find Time in Online Learning for Remediation?
A student asked me a question that essentially came down to, “How do I find time for remediation online?” Me being me, I gave her the long answer, and I’m sharing it with you here.
First, I hope you know that I really admire teachers such as yourself that are taking the time to go beyond “Zoom school” and find a way to make online learning work for K12 kids. When I read about how online school is failing, I get very frustrated that “Zoom school” and proper online instruction are lumped together as the same thing; this isn’t fair to people like yourself that are taking the time to do this right. When I make the distinction between the two, I talk about how pre-pandemic we saw that hybrid classes were rapidly making the change from instruction during face-to-face time/practice online to the flipped model of instruction online and practice/remediation/small groups/etc. during face-to-face. I then talk about how when the pandemic started, those who wanted to go beyond Zoom school (we quickly saw that didn’t work very well) immediately adapted the hybrid model to synchronous/asynchronous time instead of face-to-face/online time. We found over the last two semesters that the online version of the flipped model worked worked best, with students getting instruction asynchronously then getting remediation and practice during synchronous time, which I’ve been calling an online flipped classroom.
Long story short, I think this model helps you in a few ways: students seem to do better with initial instruction online when they can learn at their own pace (asynchronously) and take their time with the material, and while we don’t have the data to back this up yet, I strongly suspect they’ll need less remediation in general. The second way it should help is that you have that automatic time built-in for remediation after initial instruction, and if you have them do an assignment that’s due before then (formative assessment) you’ll have a good idea of what you’ll need to do during that coming live session. Last, just like in a traditional classroom, you have total freedom to change dates on when new material is pushed out to students (or simply changing due dates), just like you might set aside a lesson plan for a few days. At first it does feel like online learning is more rigid, but when you’re doing instruction asynchronously you actually have a lot more freedom for differential instruction. I don’t think most teachers are ready for this just yet, but when you think about it, you can do things that would seem totally impractical in a regular classroom, like teaching *only* in small groups, or even short one-on-one sessions all day long (in theory anyway). You can use your time in very creative ways without having to worry about classroom management, etc.
A great thing about having been through a program like this one (ed. note: this reply is to a student in the MS eLearning program at Cal State East Bay) : you’ll be confident that you can make changes in the curriculum to fit your students’ needs. My kids are in an online school with a functional (not great, but functional) curriculum, but since the teachers have never taught online before and have minimal training, they’re afraid to make any changes in the LMS. Once you get into the flow of teaching online you’ll feel comfortable making day-to-day changes just as you would in a physical classroom.
