Need-To-Know: How do I keep the learning student-centred in my online classroom?
Student-Centred Learning in a New Reality
After teaching shifted online in response to the global coronavirus pandemic, we reached out to our schools to find out how we could help. In a survey of around one thousand teachers across our Network, how to keep the learning student-centred online came up time and time again.
With many schools pushing ‘live’ lessons via tools such as Zoom and others mandating asynchronous learning, the approach to teaching and learning online has been wide and varied. So how might it be possible to involve students in the learning process to ensure that content continues to be delivered in a way that is both meaningful, engaging and student-centred?
“Tell me and I’ll forget.
Show me and I may remember.
Involve me and I learn.”
The New Tech Network defines the key elements in student-centred learning as follows:
• An emphasis on higher order thinking and / or contextualised learning
• An emphasis on collaboration & discourse
• Supportive of the development of academic mindsets
• Support for all learners
How do we make this happen in an online classroom?
The School Reform Initiative offer many learner-centred protocols that can easily be adapted for online use (Socratic Seminars via breakout rooms, or ‘Question, Suggestion, Praise’ using discussion boards for example) to promote student collaboration and intellectual discourse. You may also wish to read an earlier blog post ‘How do I foster collaboration online?’. However, what we’re all missing as teachers is being able to be amongst our students; to witness the lightbulb moments, overhear conversations during group tasks, the furrowed brows as they grapple with something challenging. Teaching face-to-face is usually an overwhelming assault on the senses and while teaching online is no less exhausting for teachers (and no doubt students alike), teaching in the virtual classroom has become two-dimensional. What’s missing? The VIBE. It is very hard to read a Zoom room, and almost impossible if your students are learning asynchronously.
What does the ‘vibe’ have to do with student-centred learning?
New Tech Network schools strive to make their Project and Problem-Based Learning units of work both academically rigorous, engaging and real world. One of the key elements in meaningful and engaging teaching and learning is the teacher’s ability to respond to the learning needs and interests of the students in front of them. Information about student learning needs may come from any form of formative assessment such as pre-tests, drafts, student journals, student interviews, you name it. It can also come from a feeling a teacher got which prompted a conversation or question with a particular student or group of students.
Our experience in the field of Deeper Learning suggests that students will be more engaged and learn more deeply when they can see that the teacher is actively seeking out and most importantly responding to their learning needs. That’s why we believe that involving students in the PBL process is so important in the following three ways:
Student-Crafted Problem Statements
This involves allowing students to craft their own problem statements once they know a little about the project they will be working on. So long as the problem statement they create answers the Driving Question and prompts them to need to access the key areas of the curriculum and learning outcomes, you may well be amazed by the wonderful variety your student teams come up with and, most importantly, own. More experienced PBL classrooms may also see students creating their own project calendars and co-creating benchmarks with their teachers.
Formative Assessment and Optional Workshops
Using formative assessment to hone in on the workshops you’ll need to run to help your students master the content. Not everyone needs to hear you lecture on a particular topic, some students need that lecture twice (or even ten times in their own time). Offering optional workshops and alternate ways of accessing the learning empowers students to take the reins over their own learning and the all important ‘voice and choice’.
Student Need to Knows to Drive the Learning
In Project-Based and Inquiry-Based Learning, having students create Need-to-Know lists is common practice. I know from my own experience as a PBL teacher that this is often one of the last times the NTK list sees the light of day. This lesser appreciated tool should actually be the star of the show. Here’s why:
Getting your students to complete a Need-to-Know list based on all your project documents (including the rubric) enables them to think more deeply about the project you are presenting to them and the prior knowledge they will need to draw upon to be successful.
As with the Problem Statement, you, as the teacher, get feedback as to how well your students have understood what’s required of them and where particular strengths may lie within your classroom.
At the end of each lesson, your students get to reflect on their progress and replace teacher-determined ‘Learning Intentions’ with their own ‘Need-to-Knows’ for the following lesson. If your students can see you responding to their interests and learning needs related to the project, that goes a long way towards fostering positive relationships and student motivation.
Remembering that not every ‘Need-to-Know’ needs to be answered by a teacher-led workshop is important too. A useful exercise can be getting students to categorise their own Need-to-Knows into the following three columns:
What can I find out for myself?
What do I need my teacher to help me with?
What will I need external expert advice on?
If it’s something a student can find out for themselves, don’t make them wait 2 weeks with a burning question - allow them to jump online and find out straight away, then feed back what they learned to the others in the class wondering the same thing.
Teachers can anticipate the Need-to-Knows the students will raise and develop workshops and resources in advance, which will address the major (non-negotiable) content areas but ideally leave some space and flexibility for student input.
Student Voice in an Online Learning Environment
We’ve had success with running small group discussion protocols in breakout rooms but find whole class discussions pretty difficult via Zoom. We find that programs such as Slack or FlipGrid work better for collaborative discussion boards and providing peer feedback. However, our friends at Emmanuel College, Melbourne were one step ahead in developing a series of ready-to-use Exit Cards to share with all the schools in our Network. You can see a few examples below and any teacher in our Network can find the full range (18 in total) in our Online Educators Toolkit (request access below) which also includes resources for collaboration online and running student-centred protocols online. With thanks to Edwin Farmar-Bowers and his Humanities Department for the resources.
