Dousay (2017) argued that when planning a course, delivery format is considered. Will the instruction be synchronous online, synchronous face-to-face, asynchronous online, or some combination of these formats? In the fall of 2020, K-12 teachers began living a designer’s worst nightmare. Just before starting the school year, teachers (designers) planned for a situation that was mostly unknown.
In previous years, my school’s courses were self-paced, flexible, and student-driven. Students enrolled in two academic courses and two electives. Usually, they attended two mandatory blocks and two flexible blocks per day. The Covid-19 pandemic; however, forced a quick change to a quarter system with two courses per quarter and two blocks per day. Classes became two-and-a-half hours long, with no flexible movement within the school. Students were scheduled for either math/science, English/socials, or a combination of two electives. In the first quarter, I was assigned to a math/science cohort. Although I offered students more guidance within our self-paced program, they were completely overwhelmed.
This week’s LRNT 524 readings about the various design models affirmed my belief that successful course design and delivery depend on the learners. Because today’s learners need skills necessary to navigate a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Bates, 2015), entire course design and planning cannot be complete until a course begins. Many different conditions influence learning (Dousay, 2017), and due to the fragile situation we face right now, the agile learning design model is the obvious choice.
As my new cohort of students and I begin our second week of quarter two, I will resort to more of an agile design for learning. After all, these students just finished a course combination of two electives and many of the students have not read anything other than social media posts since the pandemic lockdown in March 2020. Their behaviour in the classroom on day one was proof they need time to adjust to a classroom again. I need to be flexible and focus on one thing: form the relationships needed to make meaning and transfer learning. That’s it; that’s all.
Bates, T. (2015). Chapter 4.7 ‘Agile’ Design: flexible designs for learning. In Teaching in the Digital Age. BCcampus. http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage
Dousay. T. A. (2017). Chapter 22. Instructional design models. In R. West (Ed.), Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology (1sted.). https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations
Attribution: Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
Thank you for your perspective, Wendy. I can see you’re facing a complex school term with students who are, in my ways, unprepared for this style of learning. I can mirror many of these feelings, even though I teach in post-secondary. Many of my students are not prepared for online delivery. It is outside of their prior educational experience and they haven’t been prepared in how to create a schedule for learning outside of “be at this class at this time.”
How have things been going in the classes and have you found that prior methods for creating those connections with students have still worked, or have those had to adapt as well?
In the classroom, I’m trying to practice the digital skills they will use in the future. For example, the week’s work is handed in by uploading one document. The document is their choice- a pdf, PowerPoint, word document, etc.; although I recommend Word. Word on the phone is so slick. They insert their hand-written work by using the camera. (each pic gets a page). They can type in journal responses or speak it into the document. It’s been a challenge getting them away from handing in paper copies or just uploading separate pics from their camera roll. They always want the quickest route, but I don’t want the paper shuffle in a pandemic. Also, individual pics take so long for me to wait for each pic to open, so I refuse to mark it if they do that. I am so thankful that I can walk them through the digital part live. It’s amazing how much they do not know and try to refuse to learn. I actually enjoy working with messaging in Teams- fast communication. Just today, I went through their first assignment and messaged them the feedback right away. I’m also going to direct parents there as well. If all high school students develop these skills before grade 12, you won’t have the problems you see now!
That’s fantastic! Those are such important skills for them to know and I’m glad Teams is working out as a communication tool. We use it with our students and it’s been great, though it can be tough for them to understand the idea of boundaries (e.g., weekends). Understanding how to create and submit digital assets for assignments is so important. I also love how you’re being strict about them not submitting a pile of individual images.
Waiting for those images to load is painful. I let it happen in the first quarter and promised I would never do that again!