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Too often, teachers are trapped at the front of the room, transferring information. This information typically takes the form of a teacher-led whole-group lecture or mini-lesson. Unfortunately, live lectures and mini-lessons present myriad barriers that may make it challenging for students to acquire and comprehend the information presented.
Students may have been absent and missed the lesson before and feel lost as new information is presented. They may be tired, distracted, and struggling to stay attentive. The pace of the information being presented may be too fast or too slow. Students may not have the background knowledge or language proficiency to understand the material. These barriers are one reason to question the value of spending large chunks of precious class time at the front of the room transferring information.
It is also frustrating as a teacher to spend significant time covering content and unpacking complex concepts, issues, and processes for students and realize a large chunk of the class does not understand the material. Often, this results in teachers spending even more time reviewing content they’ve already gone over.
When teachers carry the burden of transferring the bulk of the information in a class, they do not allow students to discover information for themselves, work collaboratively with peers to make meaning, or control the pace of their learning.
If your classroom is teacher-directed, you take the responsibility for the design of instruction and the transfer of information to students. This influences students, as they internalize that it is the teacher’s job to share information and it’s the students’ job to observe their own education.
–Tucker & Novak, The Shift to Student-led
In The Shift to Student-led, Dr. Katie Novak and I unpack ten teacher-led, time-consuming, and often frustratingly ineffective workflows and reimagine them to allow students to lead the learning. Workflow shift #1 focuses on moving from information transfer to student discovery. The chapter establishes the challenges of transferring information to a whole class, dives into research, and presents multiple strategies teachers can use to position students as active agents in the learning process. The goal is to give students more opportunities to work individually and collaboratively to discover information and make meaning for themselves.
That doesn’t mean teachers won’t ever present information in the form of a lecture or mini-lesson, but we would love to see a more balanced approach where learners cultivate the skills necessary to acquire and process information on their own.
To learn more about this shift, check out our new book, The Shift to Student-led. If you are interested in a discounted bulk order of 10 or more books, complete this form.
I am thrilled to announce that Dr. Katie Novak and I teamed up to write a second book exploring the synergy between Universal Design for Learning and blended learning! In this second book, The Shift to Student-led: Reimagining Classroom Workflows with UDL and Blended Learning, Katie and I wanted to accomplish two goals. First, we want teachers to rediscover their joy and reengage in this profession. Second, we want students to develop into expert learners capable of sharing ownership of learning so teachers are not doing the lion’s share of the work.
The last few years have left many teachers exhausted, frustrated, and disillusioned with this profession. They are drowning in work and unrealistic demands. The status quo is not serving them or their students. They need concrete strategies and resources they can use to reimagine their approach to this work so that it is sustainable and rewarding.
Students also need to learn how to engage in the learning process fully. In many classrooms, students are still occupying the role of silent observer and consumer. They are not challenged to develop their metacognitive muscles, assess their work, provide each other with substantive feedback, and communicate their progress with the people in their lives. That translates into students who are not invested in their learning. Learning is something that is happening to them. They are much like fans sitting in the stands watching a game unfold on the field. Instead, students must be active, engaged participants in the learning process. This is the only way to cultivate expert learners who are resourceful, strategic, motivated, and self-aware. The more students actively engage in all parts of the learning process, the less pressure there is on the teacher to do all the work.
This book identifies 10 time-consuming, teacher-led, and frustratingly ineffective workflows and reimagines them using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and blended learning. The goal of each workflow shift is to position the student as an active agent and blossoming expert learner to make these workflows more sustainable and effective! We want teachers to view students as partners in learning and arm them with the strategies and skills necessary to share the responsibility for learning with us.
This book is jam-packed with specific strategies, templates, and resources teachers can use to take what they are learning and implement these shifts immediately! We include “reflect or discuss” questions and application activities at the end of every chapter, making it the perfect read for a single teacher or a great book study text for a group of teachers!
A few highlights ✨:
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opcache bug during Web update #4629, update.freshrss.org#4curlopt options for HTML+XPath #4759template.css to frss.css #4644Too often in education, students are given answers to questions they did not ask and solutions to problems they have never encountered. This can lead to learning experiences that feel irrelevant to and disconnected from their lives beyond the classroom. To combat this reality, I encourage teachers of all grade levels and subject areas to check out the 5Es instructional model to promote and support student-driven inquiry, discovery, and problem-solving.
If you are thinking, “Isn’t the 5Es instructional model a science thing?” You are correct. Roger Bybee and his team originally designed the 5Es for the sciences, but it is a flexible model that can be used across grade levels and subject areas. That flexibility is what I find so exciting about this model.
Even though the 5Es instructional model is not listed in the taxonomy of blended learning models, it can fall under the umbrella of blended learning if teachers design the experience to strategically combine active, engaged learning online with active, engaged learning offline. This model also invites teachers to blend individual, self-paced tasks with collaborative group tasks to encourage the learning community to construct meaning.
Let’s look at what a blended learning approach to the 5Es Instructional model might look like in your class!
In this first stage, we can engage our learners by piquing their interest, encouraging them to access and share their prior knowledge, and asking them to brainstorm questions, wondering, or predictions.
Offline Activities
Online Activities
This engagement stage is ideal for connecting learners and encouraging them to engage in conversation or collaborative tasks that set the stage for the rest of the inquiry cycle.
Exploration takes time, so I always caution teachers not to rush students through the explore stage. Ideally, exploration combines online and offline activities to provide learners with various resources to draw from as they attempt to understand complex topics, issues, or problems.
Offline Activities
Online Activities
Exploration may be more accessible for some students to do independently or with a partner. Teachers can include student agency and meaningful choice by allowing learners to decide which resources to explore and whether they want to work alone or with a classmate.
During the explain stage, students must articulate their learning in a clear and cogent way. They also need to listen actively to their classmates so that they can learn with and from each other. The explain stage allows students to test their ideas against the group. It can help to reinforce their ideas or challenge them. This stage is critical to the process of meaning-making.
Offline Activities
Online Activities
It is important to remember that real-time discussions may present barriers for some learners. Students may need more time to process or struggle with anxiety. Giving students a choice to discuss their learning as part of a small group or post their thoughts online provides flexible pathways so all students can share their learning in a way that works for them. I suggest you ask students to capture their learning from these conversations in notes or a visual/written reflection.
After students have had time to share, listen, and process, it’s time to take that learning and do something with it. You can ask students to make connections to synthesize and surface their learning, challenge them to apply their learning individually or collaboratively, and/or engage in review and practice to reinforce the new learning.
Offline Activities
Online Activities
The elaborate stage is a challenging stage of the inquiry cycle because students are attempting to organize their learning mentally and transfer it. As a result, this stage benefits from differentiated tasks at different levels of academic rigor and complexity or levels of support and scaffolding.
The fifth and final stage focuses on assessment. The primary goal is to measure student progress toward learning objectives and desired results. My favorite approach to assessment at the end of a 5Es student-driven inquiry is a performance task or project. I prefer these authentic forms of assessment that allow students to demonstrate their learning more dynamically. We can provide learners with agency and meaningful choice at this stage of the inquiry cycle if we present a simple choice board with a few options for how students demonstrate their learning. That way, all students feel confident they can communicate their learning effectively.
In addition to evaluating students, we can use this final stage of the inquiry cycle to encourage students to reflect on their learning and provide feedback about their experiences.
Offline Activities
Online Activities
Including a reflective practice requires students to pause to think about what they learned, how they learned it, and what they are still wondering. Student feedback provides critical information about what worked well, what was unclear or challenging, and what we might modify before the next inquiry cycle.
A 5Es instructional model can enhance a unit by inviting students to investigate a high-interest question or problem they are curious about. It can run parallel to instruction providing students with opportunities to control the pace and path of their learning. Alternatively, it can be the sole focus of several classes, freeing teachers to conference with students or conduct side-by-side assessments.
La pandemia de COVID-19 ha afectado al funcionamiento de las bibliotecas de todos los ámbitos, incluidas las sanitarias. El objetivo de este estudio es analizar su impacto en las bibliotecas especializadas de Ciencias de la Salud de hospitales públicos en España. Metodología: Estudio descriptivo transversal realizado desde junio a noviembre de 2020, mediante cuestionario de 35 ítems enviado por correo electrónico donde se recogieron datos respecto al funcionamiento de las bibliotecas, personal, servicios y colecciones antes y durante la fase 0 del estado de alarma. Resultados: Se identificaron 137 bibliotecas. Se analizaron 100. Durante la fase 0, un 72% de las bibliotecas permanecieron cerradas, el 76% del personal teletrabajó alternando con modalidad presencial. Los servicios más demandados fueron el de obtención de documentos y la búsqueda bibliográfica. Las colecciones no sufrieron cambios. Destacan las oportunidades colaborativas surgidas entre las bibliotecas. Conclusiones: El sistema bibliotecario hospitalario ha experimentado un proceso de adaptación y de reinvención que conlleva cambios en la relación con los usuarios, la forma de trabajo y de colaboración.
En base a información bibliométrica de Scopus para el período 1996-2019, este documento caracteriza la evolución de la producción científica uruguaya y establece las áreas en las cuales el país posee una ventaja comparativa revelada (VCR). Metodológicamente, se propone que se cuenta con una VCR en un área si esta área tiene una participación en la producción científica nacional mayor que la participación del área en la producción científica mundial. La evidencia presentada considera dos mediciones de producción científica (artículos publicados y citas) y tres niveles de agregación en las áreas (una menor con 5 grandes áreas, una más detallada con 27 disciplinas y otra aún más granular con más de 300 desagregaciones). Dentro de Ciencias de la salud se cuenta con VCR en Veterinaria, Enfermería y Medicina. Dentro de Ciencias de la vida se tiene VCR en Ciencias agrícolas y biológicas, Inmunología y microbiología y Bioquímica, genética y bilogía molecular. En Ciencias físicas sólo se tiene VCR en Ciencia medioambiental y en Ciencias Sociales sólo en Economía, econometría y finanzas.
El acceso abierto es un pilar fundamental para entender la comunicación científica de las últimas tres décadas, tanto a nivel mundial, pero especialmente desde América Latina. Su crecimiento, fundamentalmente a partir de la ruta dorada, ha generado cambios importantes en los modelos de negocio de la industria editorial científica. Uno de ellos ha venido con la aparición de los cobros por publicación (APC), lo cual se ha ido posicionando por el auge del acceso abierto y las políticas universitarias y gubernamentales para la evaluación de la investigación y los sistemas de recompensas. En este sentido, se ha hecho necesario reconocer las dinámicas asociadas a este fenómeno y atacar la falta de datos y la transparencia de los costos que implica el APC. Por ello, este artículo propone una metodología de seis pasos para analizar estos cobros en cualquier universidad, y presenta el panorama para el caso de las instituciones de educación superior colombianas. Se puede evidenciar el aumento de la producción científica en abierto a partir de la ruta dorada pero también el aumento de los gastos de las instituciones en los últimos años.
Las redes sociales se han utilizado durante mucho tiempo para difundir información y ayuda relacionadas con la salud, y este uso ha aumentado con la aparición de las redes sociales en línea. El objetivo de este estudio es realizar un análisis bibliométrico de la información sanitaria en el contexto de la India. La literatura disponible en PubMed es la fuente del estudio. El objetivo de este artículo es desarrollar una mejor comprensión de la literatura sobre la información de salud basada en las redes sociales utilizando el análisis bibliométrico en el contexto de la India. El software utilizado para el análisis bibliométrico es un software de redes de investigación de perfiles de la Universidad de Harvard y Vosviewer. Del estudio, queda claro que las redes sociales son importantes en el contexto de la salud pública. También descubrimos que aunque el número de publicaciones en revistas es mayor, se ha citado más contenido de video-audio. Aunque hay un aumento significativo de la publicación durante 2020, el número de investigadores sigue siendo muy reducido. Está claro que las redes sociales son de mayor importancia para las personas marginadas. Los proveedores de atención médica y los reguladores deben tomar precauciones para evitar posibles resultados negativos.
El objetivo del presente estudio es analizar la relación entre la presencia de mujeres en estructuras directivas de la organización colegial de Psicología y el nivel de feminización del colectivo a través de la información recogida en diferentes fuentes documentales como páginas web, actas, memorias, estatutos y revistas científicas editadas o co-editadas por el Colegio Oficial de la Psicología. Los resultados indican una clara segregación horizontal en el caso de la Psicología con respecto al estudiantado matriculado, egresado y colegiado. Además de una segregación vertical en favor de los hombres en los colegios de salud y en las direcciones y comités editoriales de las revistas editadas por los Colegios Oficiales de la Psicología, si bien cabe destacar los cambios efectuados en materia de lenguaje inclusivo. Se puede concluir que en un área tan feminizada como la Psicología en España se observan desigualdades asociadas al género en algunas áreas de la estructura colegial.
Este artículo evalúa los sistemas de indización automática SISA (Automatic Indexing System), KEA (Keyphrase Extraction Algorithm) y MAUI (Multi-Purpose Automatic Topic Indexing) para averiguar cómo funcionan en relación con la indización realzada por especialistas. El algoritmo de SISA se basa en reglas sobre la posición de los términos en los diferentes componentes estructurales del documento, mientras que los algoritmos de KEA y MAUI se basan en el aprendizaje automático y las frecuencia estadística de los términos. Para la evaluación se utilizó una colección documental de 230 artículos científicos de la Revista Española de Documentación Científica, publicada por el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), de los cuales 30 se utilizaron para tareas formativas y no formaban parte del conjunto de pruebas de evaluación. Los artículos fueron escritos en español e indizados por indizadores humanos utilizando un vocabulario controlado en la base de datos InDICES, también perteneciente al CSIC. La indización humana de estos documentos constituye la referencia contra la cual se evalúa el resultado de los sistemas de indización automáticos, comparando conjuntos de términos usando métricas de evaluación de precisión, recuperación, medida F y consistencia. Los resultados muestran que el sistema SISA funciona mejor, seguido de KEA y MAUI.
Se presenta un análisis bibliomético de las tesis doctorales (TD) españolas sobre medios de comunicación y salud (1979-2020). El objetivo es evaluar el peso de esta temática en el ámbito académico e identificar a los actores clave. Las bases de datos consultadas fueron Teseo, Dialnet Plus y Google Académico. Se encontraron un total de 70 TD. La mayoría fueron defendidas en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (20%) y la Universidad de Alicante (12,9%). Los temas más estudiados fueron el tratamiento mediático de temas de prevención y/o promoción de la salud pública (32,9%) y de nutrición (22,9%). Existe gran dispersión de directores-as y el alcance de las TD es moderado en términos de citas. En términos globales, las TD sobre esta temática han sido escasas respecto al total de las TD defendidas en este periodo. La dispersión de los directores-as puede implicar falta de referentes académicos especializados en esta materia.
Last week, I began a training session on universally designing blended learning by asking teachers to reflect on and discuss the following question. “What is your biggest pet peeve about staff meetings?” This question led to a vibrant and boisterous conversation! The teachers had no shortage of gripes about staff meetings.
The group said sitting through long-winded presentations covering too much information was overwhelming and boring. They pointed out that much of the information could have been delivered via email. The information provided often felt irrelevant to their particular teaching assignment. They were frustrated that meetings were frequently derailed by questions specific to a single teacher’s experience and agreed that the same teachers seemed to talk at every meeting. They groaned when describing the tediousness of sitting through endless questions because teachers were not paying attention during the first explanations, requiring that administrators repeat themselves and the content. They wanted time to interact with colleagues, take the information provided at the meetings, and act on it. The teachers agreed that their time would have been better spent elsewhere.
After facilitating a share out of their thoughts and feelings about staff meetings, I made the point that many students have the same complaints about their experiences in classrooms. Teachers spend too much time presenting information and not enough time allowing students to interact or apply what they are learning. The information is not always specific to their needs. They point out that the same students dominate discussions, asking and answering questions while the rest of the class is quiet. They are often bored in classes because they are not actively engaged in the learning.
#1 Be strategic about what you present in person.
When coaching teachers, I encourage them to ask themselves, “Do I plan to say the same thing, the same way to all students?” If the answer is “yes,” I encourage them to record a video explanation or model and allow students to self-pace through it. If the answer is “no,” I suggest they facilitate small group differentiated instruction in a station rotation lesson at their teacher-led station. You’ll notice there isn’t a whole group instruction option.
The whole group, teacher-led, teacher-paced approach to instruction is rife with barriers that make it challenging for all students to access the information presented. Students may have auditory processing challenges or attention deficit disorder. They may not have the background knowledge or vocabulary to understand the information. The pace at which the information is presented may be too fast or too slow. They may simply be daydreaming, distracted, or absent. Many of these barriers can be eliminated when we use other forms of media to transfer information. Can the information or instruction be delivered via a digital text, video, or podcast? If students read an online text to acquire information, they can expand the size of the text, look up unfamiliar words, or translate parts of the text if English isn’t their first language. If they are watching a video or listening to a podcast, they can pause, rewind, and rewatch or relisten to sections.
If our goal is to make learning accessible, inclusive, equitable, and engaging, we must be strategic about how we use our class time. Technology transfers information exceptionally well, so let’s leverage that to free ourselves from the front of the room and encourage learners to engage actively in learning activities.
#2 Prioritize Interaction and Application in Class
Like teachers in a staff meeting, students crave opportunities to engage with one another. Learning is, in part, a social process. Students need time to interact with each other in class. They must discuss and collaborate with diverse partners to develop a deep understanding of complex concepts. They are also more likely to successfully hone specific skills if they can access peer and teacher support as they practice and apply. The key is to design lessons that position the students, not the teacher, at the center of the experience.
#3 Differentiate the Experience
It’s tempting to tune out of a staff meeting when it feels like the information isn’t relevant. I have sent my fair share of emails and text messages during staff meetings when I was bored and disengaged. The same thing happens in classes when teachers present information or assign tasks that are not within their students’ zones of possibility. We have to collect and use formative assessment data to differentiate lessons to ensure we are meeting students where they are at in terms of their needs, skills, abilities, and language proficiencies. Without assessing prior knowledge and regularly checking for understanding, it is nearly impossible to effectively differentiate the learning experience.
From Whole Group Lessons to Blended Learning Models
Using blended learning models is an effective way to shift control over the learning experience from teachers to students. Blended learning is the combination of active, engaged learning online with active, engaged learning offline to give students more control over the time, place, pace, and path of their learning. These models allow teachers to design student-centered learning experiences that prioritize student autonomy and agency, differentiate effectively using informal and formal data, and give students more control over the pace and path of their learning to remove barriers.
All of these pillars of high-quality blended learning–student agency, differentiation, and control over pace and path–can ensure our classes do not feel like students are sitting through a staff meeting. Instead, these models encourage learners to be active agents in the classroom involved in every aspect of the lesson.
| Station Rotation Model | The station rotation model is composed of a series of learning activities that students rotate through, including a teacher-led station, an online station, and an offline station. This model frees the teacher to work with small groups, differentiating instruction, models, and support while creating opportunities for small groups of students to work together to discuss, investigate, collaborate, practice, and create. |
| Whole Group Rotation Model | The whole group rotation model rotates the entire class between online and offline learning activities. The whole group rotation encourages teachers to pair each learning activity with the best learning landscape for that activity–online or offline. This model allows the teacher to guide whole group modeling sessions or present mini-lessons while also freeing them to work with individuals, pairs, or small groups during the online learning activities. Online learning activities can also be differentiated and personalized for learners at different levels. |
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Flipped Classroom Model |
The flipped classroom model inverts the traditional approach to instruction and application. Teachers record video instruction, and students self-pace through the recordings, pausing, rewinding, and rewatching as needed. Class time is used to encourage students to practice and apply with teacher and peer support. This model frees the teacher to guide practice and application with additional scaffolds, reteaching, and feedback. |
| Playlist or Individual Rotation Model | The playlist model is a sequence of learning activities designed to move students toward a clear objective or desired outcome. A playlist can be used to teach a concept, strategy, skill, process, or walk students through the parts of a multi-step performance task or project. Students control the pace of their progress through a playlist with periodic check-ins or conferencing sessions with the teacher. This model encourages the teacher to focus on providing individualized support as learners progress through the playlist. |
Staff meetings are a part of every educator’s life, but they are so tedious to sit through because they often fail to feel relevant, engaging, or a great use of our precious time. Students may feel the same way in classrooms where the lessons are teacher-centered and teacher-paced. They are much more likely to lean into the lesson if they have meaningful choices, the information is presented at a level they can access, and they have opportunities to interact with each other. Exploring other models designed to blend online and offline learning provide pathways to providing students with a much more dynamic, differentiated, and equitable learning experience they enjoy.
Classrooms with clear systems, routines, expectations, and workflows run more smoothly, eliminating behaviors that can derail a class. Our work as educators is not simply to teach students content and skills related to our subject areas. It’s our responsibility to cultivate independent, self-directed learners capable of sharing the responsibility for learning with us, their teachers.
As we integrate more technology and online learning into our courses, students must develop stronger self-regulation skills and the ability to drive their learning. This is easier to do when students know what to expect in both their physical classroom and online learning environment. This is why establishing and maintaining clear classroom routines and procedures is critical. It helps students develop confidence in navigating both the space and the learning activities.
When I coach teachers who request help with classroom management, the first question I ask is, “Do you start each class with a welcome routine?” Beginning class with a consistent student-directed welcome routine is the best way to eliminate unproductive behaviors at the beginning of class and maximize our time with students.
The goal of a welcome routine is to get students to 1) enter the room and take a seat, 2) access the activity (online or offline), and 3) get started without any prompting from the teacher.
The benefits of a student-directed welcome routine include:
The activity or task can change daily, but the routine of entering the classroom and accessing the welcome task must be consistent. Some teachers use the welcome routine for retrieval practice or spiral review, others encourage students to write in response to prompts, while others use it to develop metacognitive skills, like goal setting and reflection.
Clear workflows, protocols, and procedures eliminate unnecessary chaos and confusion in a classroom. It is critical that students know where to:
It is helpful to provide video overviews of these workflows and post them in your LMS or on your class website so students and families can review the expectations for accessing and submitting work. Teachers can create short video tutorials with Screencastify or Loom to provide a clear explanation. If a student joins the class late or needs to revisit a workflow, they can watch the video.
In addition to the literal and digital workflows in a classroom, students need to know where to get supplies and how the technology and materials in a classroom should be used, treated, and sanitized.
Students need to know:
Students need to know:
Teachers using blended learning models should consider how they will transition students between learning activities. For example, if teachers are using the station rotation model, they can project a timer so students can track how much time they have for a task. When the time allocated for a specific task is over, teachers can use a simple 1-2-3 transition strategy like 1) wrap up and clean up, 2) stand behind your chair with your belongings (until everyone is ready), and 3) walk to the next station. Without clear transition strategies, movement around the room can suck up precious instructional minutes.
When setting up our classrooms, safety and accessibility should be top priorities. Some teachers have more room to work with than others. In a perfect world, teachers want to arrange their rooms to:
Once teachers have set up their space to increase physical safety and accessibility, it’s helpful to think about how we are arranging the furniture to support learning. When I coach teachers, I encourage them to set up the furniture so it reinforces the task students are doing. For example, tables grouped together suggest that students will be collaborating so conversation and interaction are encouraged. By contrast, if desks are arranged in rows, it suggests that students will be working independently.
I realize teachers do not always have access to furniture that is flexible or moveable. For years, I had bulky two-seater desks that were heavy and hard to move. I positioned them in an L-formation running the length of both sides of my classroom. When students were working independently, the desks stayed in the L-formation. When they were working in groups collaborating around a shared task, they swung one side of the desk around to create one big table group. It wasn’t ideal, but teaching is one make-it-work moment after another. So, when you are planning your lessons, think about whether the furniture is set up to reinforce the task or create management issues.
As a coach working in various classrooms, it’s not uncommon for me to observe students packing up with several minutes left in class. Once they’ve put their instructional materials away, many spend the last minutes of class chatting or crowding by the door. Given how short on time teachers always feel, this pattern of student behavior doesn’t sit well with me. I want teachers and students to maximize their time together, and an exit activity can keep students working until the end of class.
An exit activity should provide closure to the lesson, collect formative assessment data teachers can use to measure how successful the lesson was at meeting learning objectives, and/or encourage a reflective practice. You can end class with a simple 3-2-1 activity that asks students to share 3 things they learned, 2 questions they have, and 1 thing that surprised them. You can tailor the actual prompts to work for your specific lesson or group of students. Alternatively, you can have students complete an exit ticket designed to gather formative assessment data or ask students to reflect on what they learned, how they learned it, and what they are still confused about.
The goal of the exit activity is to have students pause to think about their learning in an intentional way before packing up and heading off to the next class. This routine can create a higher level of awareness about the impact the work they are doing in class is having on their content knowledge and skill set, while also providing you with useful information about their progress.
It does not matter what grade level you teach–kindergarten or 12th grade–students need to practice routines and procedures. Like most things in education, the more time we invest on the front end in establishing clear systems and workflows, the more effective and efficient our classrooms will run. Not only will we have more time to dedicate to working directly with learners, but they will have the structures in place to be more confident, independent, and self-directed.
You probably spent significant time setting up your physical classroom to welcome your students back to school. Did you dedicate the same time and intentionality to setting up your learning management system (LMS)? You’re not alone if the answer is a sheepish “no.” The good news is it’s not too late to set up your LMS to support your students this year!
Your LMS is your digital classroom and should complement and enhance students’ work in your physical classroom. You’ll want to set it up so students can confidently navigate that space to access resources, check due dates, submit work, communicate with you, and engage with one another asynchronously.
This post will review important things to consider as you organize your LMS.
Backward design your units and organize them in digital folders. Using backward design to plan and organize your units:
Begin by identifying the learning outcomes or desired results for a unit. What do you want students to know, understand, or be able to do at the end of the unit?
Once you have clarity on what you and your students are working toward, decide how you will assess student progress toward those learning objectives. What assessment evidence can you collect to measure their progress? Aligning your desired results with your assessment strategy (formal or informal) makes it easier to organize the path (or sequence of learning activities) to move students toward those desired results.
Finally, use the folders in your LMS to organize the video instruction and models, learning activities, and resources students need to progress through the unit. Consider using subfolders for each week labeled with the dates that students will be working on items in that folder. This allows for a higher degree of self-pacing and helps students stay organized.
Depending on the LMS you are using, you can explore features like “completion rules” in Schoology or “requirements” for modules in Canvas that require students to complete particular tasks in the folder before progressing to the next task. For example, you can require students to watch a video and then take a quiz or participate in an online discussion to assess their comprehension of the content. You can set up your completion rules or requirements to require that students earn a particular score on the quiz or post their response to the discussion question before advancing to the next task in the folder. These features make it possible for you to transfer control over the pace of their progress through a unit to students.
You and your students are juggling a lot! Your calendar is the best way to keep everyone on the same page and reduce confusion about assignments and due dates. Use your class calendar to make sure students and their families can see:
As you create events, remember to utilize the features inside your calendar to provide the necessary instructions, information, descriptions, resources, etc., that students and their families will need to navigate an assignment or participate in an event successfully.
Your online calendar can also double as your digital planner. Check out this blog post to learn how you can transform your Google calendar into a flexible and robust digital planner.
Your LMS is not only an excellent place for organizing course content and transferring information, but it can be a space where students engage with one another in meaningful ways. Your online discussion functionality presents an opportunity to give every student a voice in the class dialogue. We all know that whole group discussions do not provide all students with the opportunity to participate. The same vocal students often dominate discussions, while our shy students, those who need more time to process, and students struggling with anxiety may never have the opportunity to share their ideas. That’s why balancing in-class discussions with online discussions can create avenues for all students to have a voice in the conversation.
Online discussions:
When you design your online discussions, I suggest incorporating the following five tips to increase student participation.
Students will need support and practice (lots of it!) to get good at engaging with each other online, so you’ll need to provide explicit instruction on what you expect from their interactions. How long should their responses to the initial question and replies to each other be? What strategies can they use to ensure their responses are substantive and meaningful? How can you encourage students to assess their participation in online conversations regularly?
Your LMS should also provide a space for you to interact with students and support their progress toward learning objectives. Feedback may be the most powerful (yet underutilized) tool in our teaching toolbelts. Despite the powerful impact that feedback can have on student progress, it is easy to neglect because it is time-consuming to give. Utilizing the digital feedback tools in your LMS (e.g., audio and video feedback) can help you streamline the feedback process and support students as they work on an assignment or task.
Research suggests that using media beyond text comments positively impacts the student’s perception of the quality of feedback. Students who received audio feedback perceived that feedback as more thorough, detailed, and personal than text feedback (Voelkel & Mello, 2014). Students also reported being more motivated by audio and video feedback because it was clear and personalized (Voelkel & Mello, 2014; Henderson & Phillips, 2015). Interestingly, teachers also reported higher levels of engagement when giving video and audio feedback. Explore the audio and video options for providing feedback in your LMS to maximize the impact of that feedback while saving you the time it takes to type out detailed explanations.
Your LMS should be a digital extension of your classroom that empowers students to drive their learning. The time you invest in setting up your LMS and understanding the functionality available to you and your students will pay dividends this year!
Are you interested in learning more about setting up your digital classroom to empower students? You can watch the free webinar I presented for the Modern Classroom Project!
A few highlights ✨:
Detailed tracked changes.
Full changelog:
(author:Alice OR intitle:hello) (author:Bob OR intitle:world)!((author:Alice intitle:hello) OR (author:Bob intitle:world))search:"My query" or search:QueryA, or by ID: S:3pg_trgmdata/config-user.custom.php #4360archive.today #4530rename_attribute() instead of removing attributes to better be able to style/hide content of articles #4175,status_code type for PHP 8.1+ simplepie#728"ab cd" and ab-cd #4277& #4287' in the address #4330htmlspecialchars() warnings with PHP 8.1+ #4411freshrss_user_maintenance in CLI #4495errorMessage() which exists on some platforms #4289entry_before_insert to change entry->isRead() #4331php-openssl (used by PHPMailer) and php-xml (used by SimplePie) #4420freshrss/freshrss:newest to PHP 8.2 #4420base_url to avoid some common configuration bugs, especially via Docker / CLI #4423lib_phpQuery by PhpGt/CssXPath library for full content retrieval #4261
a[href*="example"] CssXPath#181.gitattributes export-ignore #4415attributes (JSON) for entries #4444A few highlights ✨:
Detailed tracked changes.
Full changelog:
(author:Alice OR intitle:hello) (author:Bob OR intitle:world)!((author:Alice intitle:hello) OR (author:Bob intitle:world))search:"My query" or search:QueryA, or by ID: S:3pg_trgmdata/config-user.custom.php #4360archive.today #4530rename_attribute() instead of removing attributes to better be able to style/hide content of articles #4175,status_code type for PHP 8.1+ simplepie#728"ab cd" and ab-cd #4277& #4287' in the address #4330htmlspecialchars() warnings with PHP 8.1+ #4411freshrss_user_maintenance in CLI #4495errorMessage() which exists on some platforms #4289entry_before_insert to change entry->isRead() #4331php-openssl (used by PHPMailer) and php-xml (used by SimplePie) #4420freshrss/freshrss:newest to PHP 8.2 #4420base_url to avoid some common configuration bugs, especially via Docker / CLI #4423lib_phpQuery by PhpGt/CssXPath library for full content retrieval #4261
a[href*="example"] CssXPath#181.gitattributes export-ignore #4415attributes (JSON) for entries #4444This is the final blog in this social-emotional learning (SEL) series designed to create clarity about the five SEL core competencies identified in the CASEL Framework and how to develop these skills in your classroom. I believe SEL skills should be integrated into our curriculum and class culture, not treated as an add-on or separate from the learning in our classrooms. Cultivating SEL skills benefits academic success, mental health, quality of relationships, self-regulation, and classroom management. So, the time we invest in developing these social-emotional learning skills will pay dividends over a school year.
This final blog focuses on social awareness and helping students to appreciate the diversity of people, perspectives, cultures, and social norms around them.
CASEL defines social awareness as the ability to “understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts.” Social awareness includes the ability to:
To help students cultivate social awareness in classrooms, educators should consider the following questions:
Heightened social awareness can reduce friction and help students to appreciate their peers’ perspectives and strengths, making collaboration and group work positive and productive. Research indicates that developing social awareness can:
So, how do we help students develop social awareness?
Strategy #1: Cross the Line
Cross the Line is an exercise designed to help students appreciate the diversity of experiences held by a group of individuals. It highlights the similarities and differences between people and their life experiences. This activity helps students understand the impact of prejudice, stereotypes, and bullying.
The activity requires a high degree of trust between the teacher or facilitator and the students involved. The students line up against one side of a room or open space (e.g., yard, gym). Then the teacher or person facilitating the activity reads a series of statements, ranging from the relatively innocuous “You play a sport” to the more personal ones such as, “You have been picked on our bullied at school.” After each statement, students who have had that experience walk across the Line and stand facing the other side of the room. As students stand facing each other, they can see who has had a similar or different experience from them. This can help them develop empathy and compassion for one another.
After the exercise, asking students to reflect on their experiences is essential. You can encourage them to write or draw their reflections. Regardless of the strategy you use, provide students with prompts to guide their reflection.
This exercise can be emotional for students, but it is a powerful strategy for raising awareness about the other individuals in their class community. Operation Respect has a resource that teachers can reference to learn more about this activity.
Strategy #2: 4-Corner Debate
The 4-corner debate strategy helps students appreciate the variety of perspectives and opinions in a class. During this activity, each corner of the classroom is labeled: 1) strongly agree, 2) agree, 3) disagree, and 4) strongly disagree. The teacher will read statements like, “Most people are good,” “The United States should limit immigration,” or “Solar energy is the most promising renewable energy source.” Students consider their perspective on the statement and stand in one of the four corners of the classroom that aligns with their point of view.
After students have clustered in the corner that aligns with their thinking, the teacher facilitates a share-out, inviting students in each corner to share their perspectives. The goal is to help students appreciate different points of view and understand how a person’s culture, past experiences, and background have shaped their thinking about various topics.
Like the Cross The Line activity, the 4-corner debate should be followed by a reflective practice to encourage students to think more deeply about the experience.
Strategy #3: Peer Feedback
Peer feedback can help students to recognize and appreciate each other’s strengths and demonstrate compassion. Too often, feedback is viewed as a “teacher responsibility.” However, in a learning community, all members should play a role in providing thoughtful and substantive feedback.
Peer feedback is most effective and constructive when it is focused. To ensure students are successful in recognizing each other’s strengths and providing each other with specific suggestions for improvement, they need clear guidelines for giving feedback.
Teachers can use sentence frames to structure focused feedback, provide students with a choice board of options for how they can respond to their peers, or they can transform a rubric into a vehicle for peer feedback.
If you want to learn more about how to structure peer feedback, check out this blog.
We have an opportunity to approach this school year differently with a focus on building strong learning communities and helping students to develop the skills necessary to thrive socially and academically. Cultivating social-emotional learning skills can happen in the context of our curriculum to deepen our students’ understanding of themselves, the content, and their communities.
The previous posts in this social-emotional learning series focused on self-awareness, self-management, and responsible decision-making. These skills fall under the umbrella of intrapersonal skills. Intrapersonal skills are cultivated inside a person. We’ve explored strategies designed to help students:
This post on relationship skills shifts the focus to interpersonal skills, which require a person to interact with others. Interpersonal skills include our ability to communicate and collaborate, engage in negotiation and compromise, manage conflict and listen actively, and understand another person’s experience and feel empathy for them.
CASEL defines relationship skills as the ability “to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups.” Relationship skills include the ability to:
To help students cultivate relationship skills in classrooms, educators should consider the following questions:
Strong relationship skills are fundamental to the healthy functioning of any group or learning community. Positive relationships “create an environment in which children feel competent, independent, and akin to others, which increases their motivation” (Thijssen, Rege & Solheim, 2022). Research indicates that developing relationship skills impacts:
So, how do we help students develop relationship skills?
Strategy #1: Academic Discussions
When students engage in academic discourse, they have an opportunity to exchange ideas, ask questions, and make meaning as part of a learning community. However, the whole group, teacher-led discussions are not equitable. They do not allow all students a voice in the class dialogue. Instead, I would encourage teachers to explore small group, student-led discussions, and online asynchronous discussions.
The benefits of discussion include:
4 Corner Conversations
Teachers can use a “4 Corner Conversations” strategy for in-class small group discussions. As the name suggests, each of the four corners of the classroom has a small group of 6-9 students engaged in a conversation. The teacher can supply the discussion questions or ask students to write a couple of questions they would like to discuss in the small group. When they join their discussion group, the expectation is that students will:
4 Corner Conversations give every student a chance to participate in the discussion without each idea being filtered through the teacher. This helps students develop their communication skills while also improving their grasp of the topics they are studying.
Online Discussions
Online asynchronous discussions can be text-based in a learning management system (LMS) or video-based with a platform like Flip. Online discussions, unlike in-person conversations, allow everyone an equal opportunity to participate. Students who are shy, need more time to process, or are managing social anxiety may find it easier to respond thoughtfully to a discussion prompt and reply to peers online.
Below are four tips to ensure your online discussion questions are engaging and provide multiple entry points into the conversation for learners at different levels.
If students are going to be successful engaging in small group student-led discussions or online discussions, they need explicit instruction, modeling, and practice, practice, practice! These discussions will take time to develop depth, but the payoff is students who are able to communicate effectively in order to learn with and from each other.
Strategy #2: Collaborative Group Challenges
Collaboration and teamwork are critical relationship skills. Students need regular opportunities to work together around shared tasks that require creative problem-solving, social negotiation, and clear communication. As pictured in the table below, there are several strategies teachers can use to engage students in collaborative tasks designed to position them at the center of the learning experience.
| Jigsaw Activities | This cooperative learning strategy requires each person in a “home group” to become the expert on one aspect of a topic or one section of a text. All students in a class assigned the same subtopic or section of text work together to build their expertise. Then they return to their home group so each member can share out what they learned and teach their group members. |
| Reciprocal Teaching | This instructional activity asks groups of students to engage in a reading session where each person focuses on employing a different strategy as they read the text together. The four strategies or roles include summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. |
| Building Background | Instead of transferring information to students via a lecture or mini-lesson, a building background activity positions the students to work in small groups researching a topic, moment in history, famous person, scientific phenomenon, literary movement, etc. Students work collaboratively to make sense of the information they are finding online and create an artifact to share their learning (e.g., digital document, slide deck, infographic, or artistic timeline). |
| Real-world Challenges | Linking student learning to real-world problems, issues, or challenges makes learning more relevant and interesting. Real-world challenges encourage groups of students to tackle complex and often messy problems using strategies and processes they have practiced in the classroom. For example, a quirky website called YummyMath.com has a huge collection of bizarre math problems. They are perfect for encouraging students to apply their mathematical thinking to real-world situations. |
Strategy #3: Conflict Resolution Role Playing
Conflict is unavoidable. Students bring their past experiences, cultural norms, personalities, and personal preferences into the classroom. It is essential to help students build empathy for each other and resolve conflicts in a kind and constructive way.
Role-playing exercises position the students as active agents in the learning process and provide them with the opportunity to be creative. Role-playing also encourages students to evaluate situations and consider how they might respond.
| Step 1: Group students and have each group write a scenario where two or more students encounter conflict. What is the situation? Who is involved? |
| Step 2: Ask groups to exchange scenarios and practice performing a short skit or scene acting the scenario out. |
| Step 3: After each group performs their skit or scene, encourage each group to huddle up and discuss the scene. What was causing the conflict? What information did the different people involved need to understand the other perspectives? What misconceptions or assumptions were causing the conflict to escalate? What would have helped the people involved to understand and empathize with each other? |
| Step 4: Allow each group to share their thoughts about the scene and what was really happening. Then brainstorm a list of strategies the participants could have used to avoid the conflict or work through it in a kind and constructive way. |
| Step 5: Encourage students to spend a few minutes reflecting on the exercise and what they learned. |
These routines and strategies help students develop the skills they need to interact with other members of the learning community in a kind, constructive, and productive way. Developing these relationship skills creates learning communities where students are comfortable sharing their ideas, engaging in collaborative tasks, and taking academic risks.
My next blog post will focus on the final competency of social awareness!
