Session 8 Changing practice
Introduction
Figure 8.1 Plan your online or blended learning, deliver your plan, reflect on it and make necessary changes to improve it.
This course provides opportunities to think about making changes to your work practice to plan and deliver education online. Session 8 introduces ways to start planning to do this. Being aware of debates about how people use digital technology and the effects it has on them will help you to think about ways of combining technology and pedagogy effectively.
Practitioner reflections
This session begins with a video from Sarah, who talks about changes she made in her teaching and the implications of these for her and for her learners. As you watch the video or read the transcript make a note of the changes that Sarah made when she moved online and decide which you might consider using or encouraging others to try.
Transcript
How have you made a change in your teaching?
SARAH:
Today I want to share with you two ways that my teaching has changed since I moved so much of my work online.
The first thing I want to talk about is really purely a new tool I use, and that is video. Just as I’m talking to you today, I make these little videos quite regularly to use with my students. I use them always if I’m meeting and greeting a new group. And I find it really helpful, because it makes coming to a new class considerably less intimidating if you have met your new teacher and you can picture what they look like. So for that reason, I do that every single time I have a new class.
I also use it more generally just to mix things up a little bit. If I want to read for some points or I want to summarise a class, I will often speak directly to the camera very casually, like I’m doing just now, complete with errors in the system. But at least it means I’m talking to my pupils in their own home, and I think it just adds a different dimension to my teaching.
The second thing that’s changed with my teaching online, I think, is that I am actually much more organised, organised in the sense of classroom management. I’m aware that I need to constantly check that my students are on the right page, or that they’re using the right book, that they have understood what I’ve just said, that they understand what their homework is. Because I don’t have the visual cues of speaking to a class, I’m checking all these things much more regularly. And actually, that is really helpful for lots of different students.
Specifically, for somebody, for example, that’s got ADHD [Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] it keeps them on track. It keeps them in the right place within the lesson. But more generally, it just keeps bringing people back. And I’m not making any assumptions about what I think people understand. And rather, I’m creating almost more of a dialogue.
You would think that working online using microphones and software would create less of a dialogue, but in that sense, for me, the way that I have fundamentally had to change my teaching I think has opened up more of a dialogue, and I retain this conversation almost constantly with my classes now and check that everybody is still with me.
So that is quite a – it is a fundamental change, really, in the way I teach. And I find now that when I do teach face to face, that the techniques that I have used in that respect go with me.
So, two very different things, but two ways that I think my teaching has changed quite dramatically with the work that I’ve been doing online. Thank you.
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Learning outcomes
By the end of this session, you should be able to:
- identify the benefits that an internet connection can offer learners;
- understand the difference between ‘digital residents’ and ‘digital visitors’;
- incorporate support for student study skills within your practice;
- explain why learning design is used when developing and reviewing courses.
