For this week’s section of my Blended Learning course, I have broken it into three parts. This first part focuses on how to design an effective online classroom and considerations teachers should have when implementing an online classroom.
As I was reading through the course materials for this section I found myself slip out of the mindset of a teacher and back into the mindset of a student. I took all of my first year classes for university online and that was probably the hardest year of schooling for me. First year courses are meant to be academically challenging, but it wasn’t the material that made it tough. It was the fact that I was learning in an extremely isolated and disconnected environment. In some classes I had synchronous learning time where I would meet on Zoom with my classmates and professor for our lecture. However, in other classes I never received a Zoom lecture or lecture video the entire semester. As a student, that lack of connection was really difficult to overcome. Further, it was really tough to stay motivated and excited to learn. As I read through the Blended Learning course I have discovered that online classrooms do not have to be this way!
To start, teachers should work to establish their online presence early on via an engaging welcome video or something to grab students attention. Then, that presence should be maintained through weekly video or text updates (or a combination of both). With just that presence alone their is an immediate connection made for the students. All of the sudden students understand they are being taught by a human, not a screen.
To keep connection strong in online classrooms, teachers should start the year or semester by building community amongst the students. Community can be created in a lot of fun ways online such as polls based on their likes/dislikes, Kahoots, or breakout rooms. Just like students introduce themselves in a face to face classroom, they should be introducing themselves in an online one. This is something that definitely wasn’t done in my online classes and so we went the whole semester as little zoom boxes interacting with strangers in breakout rooms.
The hardest thing for me to combat in online school was the “Zoom fatigue” and online burn out. There were days that I would finish online school and want to toss my devices out the window because I was so tired of interacting through a screen. To (hopefully) prevent these feelings, it is important to take breaks in an online classroom, specifically mental breaks. One of the key considerations highlighted in the blended learning course in mindfulness. Mindfulness can be integrated through daily or weekly gratitude journals and setting goals for the term. Teachers should also be acknowledging and authenticating students’ feelings whether it be about online learning or otherwise. I know as a student who took online classes that it didn’t always feel like my professors understood the toll online learning was taking on students. I appreciated the professors that offered time for students to check-in and share how they were doing. Finally, teachers should be incorporating thoughtful breaks into their lessons. In face to face classrooms breaks are taken through things like recesses and lunch, but online classrooms don’t naturally create the same kinds of breaks. After staring at a screen and sitting through Zoom meetings all day we can forget to stop, take a break, and breath. Teachers need to be aware of this and build in time for students to stop, breath, and refocus themselves.
Mindfulness is something that needs to be practiced by us all regardless of if we’re spending our days online or not. Check out this mindfulness breathing exercise created by the National Health Service in England. Their Every Mind Matters campaign is intended to encourage people to take care of their minds and mental health.
That’s all for now! Come back next week when I dive into Inquiry based learning!
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