Designing for Interaction Part 1: Student-to-Teacher Interaction in Your Digital Lessons

 This is Part 1 in a three-part series of blog posts on how to design for interaction in your digital lessons. 

Three Types of Interaction 

Online learning does not have to be an isolating experience. As a matter of fact, the online environment can be leveraged to create opportunities for meaningful, personalized, and frequent collaboration and connection. In every digital lesson that I design, I try to incorporate three types of interaction.

• Student-to-Teacher
• Student-to-Student
• Student-to-Content

Let's dive into designing for student-to-teacher interaction!

During Synchronous Instruction

When we think about our live instruction online (or in a socially distanced classroom environment), student-to-teacher interaction is fairly inherent. The thing to remember, especially when delivering instruction through video-conferencing, is to be sure that the interaction is both ways and not simply content delivery from the teacher. 

Prioritize Small Groups

One of the most difficult tasks online is to provide whole group instruction in a synchronous format (it's why I prefer that type of online teaching for individualized or small group instruction). If we are not intentional about ensuring that students are interacting with us as much as we are interacting with them, it is likely that we will lose the attention of many of our students. 

Prioritizing small group live instruction and leveraging asynchronous learning for whole group instruction can help with naturally increasing the amount of two-way teacher and student interaction. It is easy to fall into a lecture style format with 30 muted participants in a Google Meet or Zoom, but a small group will naturally feel more conversational and encourage participation from all students. 

Every Student Responds Techniques

Another strategy is to be intentional about creating opportunities for all students to respond to you during live instruction instead of simply calling on individual students. 

Incorporating these "Every Student Responds" techniques into direct instruction is not a new idea. Many of you facilitate these types of activities in your face-to-face classrooms daily. For example, you may have students participate in a Four Corners routine where they answer questions by moving to one of four corners of the room to indicate their response. However, when we move online (or are forced to stay seated because of social distancing protocols), activities like the Four Corners routine are impossible. 

That is, they are impossible unless you rethink those activities in a digital format! My colleague Amanda Moore has shared a Google Slides template with various Every Student Responds techniques that students can participate in from a distance. Check out the video below for information about this template and access the slides by clicking on the image below the video. 

Slides for Synchronous Interaction - Select the Use Template button at the top right to make your own copy. 

During Asynchronous Instruction

Interaction between the students and the teacher during on-demand or independent online learning is paramount to the success of your asynchronous instruction. High quality student-to-teacher interaction in this space will involve your presence in the content and learning environment and your timely feedback. 

Your Presence

Your presence in the digital learning environment impacts student engagement and motivation, academic achievement, and even has a direct impact on academic integrity. When I refer to your presence, I mean everything from your face in the videos you share, efficient feedback, audio, participation in online discussions, messages, announcements, and more. The research tells us that the closer you are to the learning, the more motivated, engaged, and academically honest your students will be. 

One study from 2015 (Belcher, Hall, Kelley, and Pressey) found that simply interacting with students online more than once per week resulted in higher levels of critical thinking present in their interactions with their classmates.

Some quick tips for increasing your presence online:

• Use a screen recording tool like Loom or Screencastify to record quick instructional videos or videos that do a tour or overview of the lesson. 
• When using videos from YouTube that others have created, leveraging an interactive video tool like EdPuzzle not only allows you to ask students questions and collect data on what they understand from the video, it also allows you to interject audio recordings with your own thoughts. Supplementing the instructional video with your own audio directly connects you to the instruction. 
• Use the announcements and messaging tool within your learning management system, if applicable. Where you can, record video messages instead of relying only on text. 
• Participate in all learning activities in the same way that you would in-person. You would never initiate a discussion in class and then walk out of the room to let the students facilitate it without you. In the same way, your role online is just as critical. 

Feedback

Timely and actionable feedback is a critical component of high quality student-to-teacher interaction. Regular feedback can come in multiple forms:

• Audio and video feedback
• Interaction in online discussion spaces (discussion boards, Flipgrid, Padlet walls, etc.)
• Dialogue with students in collaborative documents
• Feedback on assessments
• Whole class announcements with feedback on collective understanding and performance
• Live conferencing based on asynchronous work
• and more!

As a matter of fact, in the near future, look for a blog post on ideas for scaling up and providing efficient feedback. Stay tuned! 

In the comments or on Twitter using the hashtag #PerfectBlendBook, share additional ideas for increasing or improving student-to-teacher interaction in your online or blended classroom.

Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 where we will take a look at student-to-student and student-to-content interaction in both synchronous and asynchronous online instruction. 

 

What to Teach In-Person in a Hybrid Model Part 1: Integrating Modalities

This is Part 1 in a three-part series of blog posts on making decisions about what to teach live and in-person while working within a hybrid classroom. 

Photo by Julia M Cameron from Pexels

For teachers working within a hybrid model of blended learning right now (students spending part of the week in person and part of the week at home working online to minimize class sizes), the task of teaching in this new environment can feel daunting. I understand the overwhelming feeling of having to be a good full-time in-person instructor while simultaneously being a good full-time online instructor.

However, if we think holistically about the hybrid experience for our students, we can integrate the two modalities to work together instead of against each other. When we do this, we can begin to think about our role as a hybrid teacher as one job and not two disparate and equally time-consuming positions.
So, how do we choose what is online and what is taught in person to maximize our time as teachers and to optimize the learning experience for students?

Our Opportunity

The first step is acknowledging that this can be done well. I have been so inspired by the many teachers I have spoken to who are starting to see success and looking forward to taking what they have learned in this environment with them to their future post-pandemic classroom. Before we were all forced to teach within the constraints of a pandemic, several schools and classrooms experienced success with various blended learning models, including some hybrid options. Teachers across the country explored blended learning as a way to improve academic outcomes for students. There are a lot of examples and case studies to support this type of model to improve learning when implemented with intentionality.

If you are interested in some of these case studies, I encourage you to explore the Evergreen Education Group and the Christensen Institute's collection of case studies and profiles on blended learning successes in K-12 institutions. These districts and schools all demonstrated increased test scores and graduation rates attributed to the redesign of their programs using blended learning.

Proof Points: Blended Learning Success in School Districts

I want to first remind you that our work with students now, even with the challenges we face teaching during a global pandemic, doesn't have to be subpar. As a matter of fact, there are some things you can put in place now that you might find works better for students. We can adapt these practices and continue to use them when we are operating at capacity again. We all have so much to learn, and it can feel like we are building the plane while it is in the air so-to-speak, but we at least know this learning will help us improve the educational experience for our students moving forward.

What We Know It's Not

So let's start with taking a look at what we know our hybrid structure shouldn't be. Katherine McEldoon, PhD and Emily Schneider, PhD share the two approaches to hybrid learning that we should avoid in their article 7 Tips from Research for Effective Hybrid Teaching. When we do have some in-person time with students, we don't want to create a learning experience that is simply your normal course translated to an online course. We also don't want to just recreate our normal course in the live time we have with students while adding online components. 

This image was taken from a presentation I did with our junior high and high school staff. The slides template I used for the presentation was created by Slidesgo, including images from Freepik.

It's Not Your Normal Course Translated Online

To meet the needs of both students at home and in your classroom concurrently, you might be tempted to run your class like an online course. Students at home work through online lessons while their peers in class also work through online lessons. In this scenario, you would function almost entirely as an online teacher, overseeing work completion of the students physically in your classroom at any given time. 

While we can absolutely create incredible learning experiences for online students, and that is the right environment for some students, it doesn't leverage the face-to-face time you are afforded in this hybrid model adequately. Having time in person with students is a gift. 

When we think about the many functions we serve as a teacher, there are certain things that are best done by a live teacher (whether that is live online or live in-person). Stop and reflect about the many jobs you do in the classroom. Which ones can only a trained professional do? Which ones require high levels of human connection? Those are the things we should be doing during our live time with students. 

Additionally, when we don't leverage the live time we have with students, we miss an opportunity for relationship and community building. Again, while this can be done online, one of the strengths of the physical classroom is the way in which we can connect with each other in real-time. 

Right now students are living through a pandemic and dealing with the implications of that. They are trying to process and live with the trauma caused by the issues of racism that our country is currently facing and has historically always faced. They are being bombarded with the stress and political rhetoric of an election year. All of this plus the additional stressors and trauma that our students may be facing at any other time means there has never been a more important time for us to be building relationships with students and focusing on social emotional learning.

Extensive research shows the importance of relationships. Specifically we know that strong relationships in schools reduce risk factors for our students. We need to keep this in mind as we prioritize our time live with students. How are you making decisions about what is taught in person that helps build connections and community? 

It's Not Your Normal Course with Online Components

If we don't feel comfortable with creating learning experiences online, we might also be tempted to try and fit all of our instruction into the limited live time we have with students while giving online homework to complete on the days students are working remotely. This model doesn't work best in a hybrid environment for a couple of reasons. 

If we don't shift our thinking to see both in-person and at-home learning time as opportunities for instruction, we will never get through our entire curriculum for the semester or the year. This mindset limits what we consider "real" instruction to 2-3 days a week without leveraging the potential for online learning to provide students with equally as effective instructional experiences. 

Additionally, when we try to fit all of our content delivery into limited time, we can often default to all direct instruction being in-person. This can lead to a lecture-based face-to-face learning model. Similar to the thoughts from earlier, if we really sit down and reflect on the most important role we take on as a teacher, lecture with quiet students listening is probably not at the top of the list. Our hybrid model should reflect this. 

Two Equal Parts of the Whole

Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels

Ultimately, neither modality of learning should exist within a vacuum. To do that, we have to consider what is best done in-person versus online and what needs to be done in real-time versus what students can do with flexibility over time and pace. To find success within a hybrid model, both modes of instruction must be viewed as equally important. 

Share your ideas in the comments below or on Twitter using the hashtag #PerfectBlendBook. What is working well for you in terms of your in-person instruction within a hybrid environment? What are you prioritizing for your live face-to-face time with students?

Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 where we will dive deeper into models and structures to implement as you optimize your in-person instructional time with students.