#39. Remote 3.0

This week my district transitioned back to remote instruction. This is the third time that we switched modalities this year. I can honestly say that this was the smoothest transition that I experienced in the past 7 months. Since I was already teaching using a HyFlex model all of my lessons were already designed with the virtual student in mind. In this post, I will share some adjustments that I have made to make Remote Learning 3.0 more successful and share what those changes will look like in my next unit.

I believe that teaching is both a craft and a science. As a teacher, I use data about my students' learning and engagement to tailor my instruction to meet their needs. Teaching in a remote setting requires the same sort of adjustments I would make any other year. I have found myself making administrative and instructional adjustments to my instruction as a result of teaching online.

From an administrative standpoint, I have made the following adjustments:

• Labels: I label my modules and pages uniformly. Each label indicates the unit and the day of instruction. For example, the first day of unit 4 is labeled 4.1. Everything is labeled with that indicator - discussion posts, practice quizzes, presentations, etc. It is at the top of worksheets and at the beginning of everything posted in Canvas.

• Weekly Calendar: I provide the students with a weekly calendar. It includes links to everything that they need to successfully complete for the week. However, I do not always want them to work ahead of time so I do lock access to assignments until the day of instruction. In a traditional setting, I prefer a unit calendar so the students can see the big picture but I have found that this structure overwhelms students in a remote setting. You can see an example of my labeling and weekly overview in the image to the right.

• Parent Communication: I email my students' guardians at the beginning of each week. I include a progress report, an overview of what we will be learning during the upcoming week, an overview of assignments and when they are due. This is a new practice for me. I have struggled with how often to communicate because parents are being overwhelmed with emails. I also want my students to be responsible for their own learning. However, as a parent, I have found these communications to be extremely helpful. I have not received a single complaint from a parent about communicating too much!

From an instructional standpoint, I have made the following adjustments.

• Less is More. My students could potentially be logged onto Zoom from 7:25-2:05 every single day. I want their time in my class to be effective and efficient. Therefore, I am assigning fewer but more targeted assignments. Once they know the material, they are done for the day.

• Mastery Checks. I am assessing differently using smaller assessments that occur more frequently. I pulled this idea from the Modern Classrooms Project. Mastery Checks are summative assessments that can be taken until mastery is achieved. The students can see if they answered a question incorrectly and are immediately provided remediation to help them learn the concept and reassess. I love that this not only assesses students mastery of the material but it also provides them with incentive to relearn the material that they missed the first time around. This also helps to reduce the amount of stress experienced by the students during the assessment process.

• Variety. I design every unit with a balance of online, offline and teacher-led instruction. Due to the sheer nature of remote learning, a lot of instruction has to be online. I try to limit my direct instruction to 1-2 times per week (which is really hard in an AP class!) and make it as interactive as possible using tools like Pear Deck. I have also created self-paced Pear Decks that allow the students to progress through the material at their own pace.

• Limit Outside Work. I do not ask my students to do a lot of work outside of class. The last thing that I want for my students is for them to be online doing homework every evening. I assign one reading assignment per week. I ask them to hand write their answers and post a picture in Canvas. I was really fearful that I would not be able to cover the majority of content in my course. What I have found was that this shift in perspective has really just required me to cut the fat. I have had to forfeit some of my favorite in class activities and hone in on the essentials.  If you haven't read the Grecian Urn post yet, you are in for a treat. 

• Sustainable. I have said this before but I cannot emphasize it enough, use what you already have developed. I am just tweaking my materials to better fit an online format. For example, I am turning my practice worksheets into practice quizzes on Canvas. I am adding Pear Deck slides to my existing presentations. I am not creating entirely new units. I am also very lucky to have another AP Psychology teacher in the building with me. We plan our unit and divide and conquer!

Exemplar Unit: Learning (AP Psychology)
The next unit that I will be teaching in class is Unit 4: Learning. My district reevaluates our learning model every 14 day so it is possible that we will transition back to in-person learning during this unit. Therefore, this unit is designed to work in a HyFlex or Remote modality. As I began to plan this unit, I used the following questions to guide my instruction.

1. What do the students need to know?
2. What have the students struggled with in the past?
3. How will I know if they know it at the end of the unit?

I then repackaged what I have used in the past to target these areas. Here's an overview of how I broke this unit down into manageable chunks for myself and the students: 

Whole Group Instruction: I have three lessons in which I utilize whole group direct instruction. I am using this time to introduce topics like classical and operant conditioning and to target concepts that the students struggle with like schedules of reinforcement. After the whole group instruction, the students practice applying these concepts on assignments that provide immediate feedback. 

Self-Paced Instruction: I like to offer the students choices in their learning whenever possible. For this unit, I adapted a lecture on John Watson into a self-paced Pear Deck. This particular presentation had a number of video clips, required a lot of student participation and covered a limited amount of new content. The students can choose when they interact with this content.

Practice Opportunities: As I mentioned previously, I moved my practice handouts to Canvas quizzes. Typically, we would go over practice handouts in class to check for understanding. This practice has not translated well to remote learning. The students are less likely to share their answers when they have to physically un-mute. Moving my old practice questions into Canvas quizzes helps them identify misconceptions immediately. It also provides me with data to inform my discussions with them and the class as a whole.

Mastery Checks: I will not administer a "unit exam" for this unit. Instead, the students will be demonstrating their knowledge of the material using three Mastery Checks. Each Mastery Check is between 15-20 questions long, is taken in class and can be taken multiple times. I tried Mastery Checks for the first time in my last unit as a part of my station rotation.  I was pleasantly shocked at the amount of information that the students retained after completing the flipped videos and mastery checks.   

In conclusion, here are some of my takeaways from the last seven months. Less is more. Our students are doing the best that they can in this challenging environment. Keep it simple and consistent. They appreciate predictability. Use what you have already got and tweak it to make it more accessible online. Lastly, rely on each other and share the workload. I'd like to thank my teacher partner, Mindy Garis, for always being willing to collaborate, share, and offer insights into the needs of our students.  I am a better teacher because of her.

Please let me know you have any questions or comments. I would love to hear from you.