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OP, I'd be curious to hear more how you structure your lessons for an online environment. This post mostly details how you [technically] teach online classes. F

OP, I'd be curious to hear more how you structure your lessons for an online environment. This post mostly details how you [technically] teach online classes. For the many teachers who are now in a remote environment, what should they know about online learning vs traditional classroom learning?

rectang 7y ago
I enjoyed this paper by Doug Schmidt of Vanderbilt on what it was like to teach a comp-sci MOOC at Coursera: http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/POSA-MOOC.pdf http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/POSA-MOOC.pdf Section 3.1.1 "Filming High Quality Video Lectures" is especially good: > After teaching courses on object-oriented software patterns and frameworks for two decades, it's become second nature to present lively and inspiring lectures despite minimal rehearsal and ad hoc slides. This haphazard model of preparation does not work in a MOOC since there are no students to interact with while filming the videos in the studio. As a result, we needed to produce much tighter scripts and highly structured lecture material.
pdm55 7y ago
NSTA teachers have been given some advice http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2020/03/teachers_sharing_resources_online_coronavirus.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2020/03/teache... One tip was "Teachers are using the hashtag #virtualschool on Twitter to share resources." Other tips from https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-teachers-china-have-learned-past-month https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-teachers-china-have-le... were -- Start by continuing to use lessons that are clear and simple, and don’t introduce new programs for teachers and students to learn if you can help it. -- When building digital lessons, it’s helpful to reduce the number of external links on your online learning platform. For example, if you want students to read an article, it’s safer to upload a PDF (to OneDrive or GoogleDrive), rather than a link to an external site that may or may not work. -- Many of our classes at school intentionally used workbooks and paper-based tasks instead of laptops to reduce students’ screen time.
- pdm55 7y ago
  I recall listening on the radio recently to an adult learner describing her positive online experience. She said (1) the collegiate atmosphere was what made it so "wonderful", aided by initial exercises they did which were about cooperating with other students; (2) she liked being able to fit in her learning around being a mother; and (3) doing peer assessment of other students' draft assignments really helped the students to bond. I had a similar experience to point (3) when an online course I did included being given other students' short computer programs to comment on and make suggestions about.
  - pdm55 7y ago
    I have been thinking about the simplest, quickest way to tutor online. It might be some adaption of what I have been doing 1-on-1, face to face. There would usually be some problem that couldn't be worked out in the tutoring session, so I would go home and write out the solution on paper (using pencil), scan it into my computer, put it in OneDrive and send my tutee a link. Anything else took too long.
    - pdm55 7y ago
      Smart videos for curious kids (curated site) https://thekidshouldseethis.com/ https://thekidshouldseethis.com/
      - pdm55 7y ago
        Resources for shifting instruction online https://illustrativemathematics.blog/2020/03/14/links-to-resources-for-shifting-instruction-online/ https://illustrativemathematics.blog/2020/03/14/links-to-res...
solresol 7y ago
One odd property of remote teaching is that you can use notes a lot more; you can have a pile of papers on your desk with your lesson plans written out -- and you can refer to them without your students really noticing anything odd. So you can make lesson plans by piecing together piles of things that you have lying around and still have a coherent and useful lesson. Then there are things you can do face-to-face that are really difficult remotely which you just have to avoid. These include: - students doing anything long on their own - teaching interactive programs These are related problems. If students are going to do an exercise on their own, it needs to be small enough that it's possible for them to post the whole thing that they've done into the chat channel. So it's nearly impossible to teach how to use an interactive program that has a lot of hidden screens. (e.g. teaching Qlik remotely is hard; Tableau tends to be easier because you can post a screenshot). (If you want to teach those things, it's better to create a simulation for it e.g the kind of thing that e-learning authoring tools like Articulate does.) So put together, you end up with short-ish theory session followed by a 30 second exercise, followed by another short-ish theory session, and so on until the end of the time. If there is substantive work to be done (e.g. some mathematics practice work), that needs to be students submitting something into a LMS (learning management system), not something you do in a classroom. That kind of thing works for me because I've only got adult learners; I don't know how it would work for younger students. Of course you follow all the guidelines from whoever is sponsoring the course, which often entails wrapping everything in a pre-defined sandwich of "this is what we did last lesson; this is what you will learn; this is what you just learned; this is what we will cover next lesson" -- if that's the kind of thing the sponsor wants to see.
maher_au 7y ago
I use this process to design learning online learning experiences. I think it gives a nice balance of being lead with prepared resources and engaged with rapid feedback and peer learning to solve hard tasks. https://figshare.com/articles/Collaborative_Learning_Framework/11991198 https://figshare.com/articles/Collaborative_Learning_Framewo...

rectang 7y ago

I enjoyed this paper by Doug Schmidt of Vanderbilt on what it was like to teach a comp-sci MOOC at Coursera: http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/POSA-MOOC.pdf http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/POSA-MOOC.pdf Section 3.1.1 "Filming High Quality Video Lectures" is especially good: > After teaching courses on object-oriented software patterns and frameworks for two decades, it's become second nature to present lively and inspiring lectures despite minimal rehearsal and ad hoc slides. This haphazard model of preparation does not work in a MOOC since there are no students to interact with while filming the videos in the studio. As a result, we needed to produce much tighter scripts and highly structured lecture material.

pdm55 7y ago

NSTA teachers have been given some advice http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2020/03/teachers_sharing_resources_online_coronavirus.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2020/03/teache... One tip was "Teachers are using the hashtag #virtualschool on Twitter to share resources." Other tips from https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-teachers-china-have-learned-past-month https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-teachers-china-have-le... were -- Start by continuing to use lessons that are clear and simple, and don’t introduce new programs for teachers and students to learn if you can help it. -- When building digital lessons, it’s helpful to reduce the number of external links on your online learning platform. For example, if you want students to read an article, it’s safer to upload a PDF (to OneDrive or GoogleDrive), rather than a link to an external site that may or may not work. -- Many of our classes at school intentionally used workbooks and paper-based tasks instead of laptops to reduce students’ screen time.

pdm55 7y ago
I recall listening on the radio recently to an adult learner describing her positive online experience. She said (1) the collegiate atmosphere was what made it so "wonderful", aided by initial exercises they did which were about cooperating with other students; (2) she liked being able to fit in her learning around being a mother; and (3) doing peer assessment of other students' draft assignments really helped the students to bond. I had a similar experience to point (3) when an online course I did included being given other students' short computer programs to comment on and make suggestions about.
- pdm55 7y ago
  I have been thinking about the simplest, quickest way to tutor online. It might be some adaption of what I have been doing 1-on-1, face to face. There would usually be some problem that couldn't be worked out in the tutoring session, so I would go home and write out the solution on paper (using pencil), scan it into my computer, put it in OneDrive and send my tutee a link. Anything else took too long.
  - pdm55 7y ago
    Smart videos for curious kids (curated site) https://thekidshouldseethis.com/ https://thekidshouldseethis.com/
    - pdm55 7y ago
      Resources for shifting instruction online https://illustrativemathematics.blog/2020/03/14/links-to-resources-for-shifting-instruction-online/ https://illustrativemathematics.blog/2020/03/14/links-to-res...

solresol 7y ago

One odd property of remote teaching is that you can use notes a lot more; you can have a pile of papers on your desk with your lesson plans written out -- and you can refer to them without your students really noticing anything odd. So you can make lesson plans by piecing together piles of things that you have lying around and still have a coherent and useful lesson. Then there are things you can do face-to-face that are really difficult remotely which you just have to avoid. These include: - students doing anything long on their own - teaching interactive programs These are related problems. If students are going to do an exercise on their own, it needs to be small enough that it's possible for them to post the whole thing that they've done into the chat channel. So it's nearly impossible to teach how to use an interactive program that has a lot of hidden screens. (e.g. teaching Qlik remotely is hard; Tableau tends to be easier because you can post a screenshot). (If you want to teach those things, it's better to create a simulation for it e.g the kind of thing that e-learning authoring tools like Articulate does.) So put together, you end up with short-ish theory session followed by a 30 second exercise, followed by another short-ish theory session, and so on until the end of the time. If there is substantive work to be done (e.g. some mathematics practice work), that needs to be students submitting something into a LMS (learning management system), not something you do in a classroom. That kind of thing works for me because I've only got adult learners; I don't know how it would work for younger students. Of course you follow all the guidelines from whoever is sponsoring the course, which often entails wrapping everything in a pre-defined sandwich of "this is what we did last lesson; this is what you will learn; this is what you just learned; this is what we will cover next lesson" -- if that's the kind of thing the sponsor wants to see.

maher_au 7y ago

I use this process to design learning online learning experiences. I think it gives a nice balance of being lead with prepared resources and engaged with rapid feedback and peer learning to solve hard tasks. https://figshare.com/articles/Collaborative_Learning_Framework/11991198 https://figshare.com/articles/Collaborative_Learning_Framewo...