This post is part of Eduscape’s Remote Teaching Series.
Monthly, the Eduscape team is bringing together tips on how we can support our students across pillars of remote teaching: Community, Communication & Collaboration, Assessment and Accessibility.
For more hands-on remote teaching help, try our Remote SchoolWorks program!
The Latest Crowd-Sourced Tips
1. Community
Engaging parents as an authentic and valuable stakeholder in our community can be supported by hosting Office Hours for parents. Choose alternating times throughout the year when parents/guardians are able to schedule an appointment to check in with you about their student, ask questions and preview upcoming learning. This is a great strategy for ensuring open and consistent parent outreach as well as collaborating with parents about how to best support their students in your classroom.
2. Communication & Collaboration
To deter information and cognitive overload, consider planning out the communication you will have with students and families during the week. Ask yourself – “What is all the information students (and families) need to know this week?” Then, determine which days, and through which platforms, you will communicate information with students and parents. You might even consider how communication is coordinated as a grade and/or department team. This way, when and how information will be communicated is intentional, and in turn, increases the likelihood of your messages being received!
3. Assessment
For lower stakes and/or formative assessments, consider using formats such as short response and multiple choice. For higher stakes and summative assessments, consider project or problem based learning as an assessment format. Through projects and performance tasks, students can be provided options on how they engage with and demonstrate their learning, supporting a more authentic engagement with the content and skills they are learning.
4. Accessibility
To support access to virtual content, determine how you can find consistency in how you post and name assignments in your learning management system (LMS). Students are working to access content independently and often with more complex technologies – whereas before they may have just had to look up at the classroom board to find out what their assignment was.
By critically evaluating how we assign work to students through virtual platforms, we can begin to determine where potential barriers to learning might be. Think through the student perspective about how you access the class information, where to find assignments, as well as other resources students are being asked to utilize. Beginning with common naming conventions can be a great way to start to streamline information and help students recognize assignments they are expected to engage with.
Thank you for your commitment to education and we look forward to sharing the next tips for remote teaching—brought to you by educators who are working to rethink learning!
Have tips for remote teaching? Share what you’ve learned with us! Click here to submit your Remote Teaching Tips.