The Boundless Classroom

Designing Purposeful Instruction for Any Learning Environment

Nathan Lang-Raad, James V. Witty

• Publisher: ISTE
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781564849311
• eBook ISBN: 9781564849366
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Discover how to plan effective blended instruction with purpose and intention with help from this definitive, practical guide to lesson design.

A global pandemic hit our world and education has forever changed. But have your instructional practices changed? Teachers must now leverage technology to provide students with high-quality teaching and learning experiences that transcend a traditional classroom’s walls. This is a historic opportunity to abandon antiquated teaching practices and reimagine instruction in ways that boost learning outcomes and prepare students for living and working in the digital age.

This book offers guidance for creating and sustaining rigorous and engaging blended learning solutions. Opening with lessons learned from the pandemic, the book addresses impacts on lesson design and delivery, student engagement, assessment, and teacher training and PD. The following chapters build on and address these experiences, with each chapter featuring strategies and examples of how to implement effective approaches to lesson design for blended and online instruction.

This book:

• Explores seven different blended learning models, with strategies and suggestions for implementing each one.
• Provides detailed guidance for planning a blended learning curriculum, from establishing a digital infrastructure to integrating students into a learning management system (LMS) to mapping a course scope and sequence.
• developing a pacing guide and creating effective blended and virtual lessons.
• Features downloadable templates, checklists and guided professional learning tasks in every chapter to help design virtual and blended lessons.
• Includes strategies for implementing authentic, student-led assessments.

The book is sure to meet the needs of varying practitioners who are eager to learn about designing successful blended learning courses and understanding what makes each course work.

Audience: K-12 teachers and instructional designers; faculty in higher education programs

CHAPTER 1

Learning Lessons from the Pandemic and Implications for the Future

Outcomes for Professional Learning

In this chapter, we’ll discuss:

• Teaching during the COVID-19 outbreak
• Learning and instructional strategies that were effective during the pandemic
• Identifying and maximizing effective remote learning practices to scale
• Planning for the post-COVID-19 classroom

CONNECTING TO THE ISTE STANDARDS FOR EDUCATORS

The content of this chapter relates to the following indicators:

Learner (2.1.c) Educators stay current with research that supports improved student learning outcomes, including findings from the learning sciences.

Facilitator (2.6.a) Educators foster a culture where students take ownership of their learning goals and outcomes in both independent and group settings.

Analyst (2.7.a) Educators provide alternative ways for students to demonstrate competency and reflect on their learning using technology.

Analyst (2.7.c) Educators use assessment data to guide progress and communicate with students, parents and education stakeholders to build student self-direction.

It’s clear that the time for considering major reform in education is now. After all, while the pandemic was temporary (although experts say we might be dealing with the effects for years to come), some things we’ve learned during this time might not be. Over the past year, we, Nathan and James, have reflected on the challenges and disruptions in America’s schools and also witnessed pockets of success in spite of these challenges. Here are our biggest observations and reflections on the most pressing needs of students—and their teachers.

Clarity and Simplicity

Clarity and simplicity are key. During the pandemic, there was a lot of confusion about how students would engage in learning or how assessments would be executed (or whether they should be). With any change, even in a “normal” year, educators need very clear expectations—and those expectations must be communicated concisely and consistently. When schools began to require remote and distance learning, a lot of ambiguity surrounded strategies and best practices. It seemed as if everyone was producing remote learning resources from scratch. San Gabriel Unified is a small Title I district in Los Angeles. During the pandemic, leaders reflected on what was happening to their students, their families, their staff, and their community. Leaders purposefully took time to talk to all of their stakeholders: students, parents, teachers, local business owners, outside experts, and educators from other schools and districts in Los Angeles and beyond. Leaders asked what was working and what wasn’t. Grounded with that information, the district quickly adapted their instructional approaches to meet the needs of all students. Leaders then quickly communicated changes to all stakeholders with clarity and simplicity.

Similar conversations are happening today regarding the future of teaching and learning. District and school leaders are now reflecting on the successes realized during the pandemic and questioning, “What do we want to see stick moving forward?” As future plans continue to formalize, educators need structure and a plan, and inside of that structure they needed digestible and implementable ideas that are clear and simple to implement.

Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning

A fundamental debate of remote learning revolves around one question: Which is more effective: synchronous (“live”) learning with students connected to a teacher live using Google Hangouts or Zoom, or asynchronous learning that allows students to access content and learn at their own pace? The latter option allows time during the school day for educators to provide synchronous support to students in critical need of direct instruction. During the pandemic, accessibility for all students and conflicting family commitments or responsibilities during the school day also factored into the effectiveness equation. Ensuring that students could watch lessons multiple times, as needed, while completing assignments was a struggle, as well. As a result, many teachers were tasked with, for the first time, creating on-demand instructional videos and other digital resources to support student learning.

For many districts and schools, a combination of learning opportunities and strategies was the best solution. Teachers found that student-centered “opportunity learning” was motivating and connected students to their everyday world, whether it was cooking with family members or trying to reason through a math problem about the shadow cast of an outside tree. Teachers quickly adapted, creating instructional videos and other digital learning resources so that students could engage in mini-lessons, think-alouds, and modeling. Synchronous meetings also became an effective social-emotional learning (SEL) opportunity, ensuring that teachers could connect with their students in meaningful ways during a traumatic time.

Professional Development

Because teachers were instructing from home, the professional development model of gathering in the library at the end of the school day (which wasn’t always effective anyway) needed to change. A new flexibility to engage in and access non-traditional professional development opportunities arose. Educators shared experiences, support, and ideas (often just in time) using tweets, social posts, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, vodcasts (video podcasts), webinars, and more. The pandemic afforded teachers new ways to access professional development and quickly adjust their practices to meet the challenging and changing learning conditions associated with the pandemic.

Consistency

Meanwhile, students struggled with attention residue. A term coined by University of Washington business professor Sophie Leroy, attention residue is the negative effect on the mind of a learner when asked to switch a task or upon experiencing an interruption. At any one time, for example, a student might be juggling thoughts such as, “The teacher wants me to use Google Classroom, and the teacher just emailed me a video. The teacher also mailed me a hard-copy packet—do I need to look at that first?—and a different teacher asked me to use Google Forms for assessments.” The more things we ask students to open and the more times they must flip back and forth between tools (applications, platforms, and technologies), the more likely students will expend cognitive energy that’s already being competed for in trying to learn from home—not to mention the many distractions that come from learning at home. During the pandemic, consistency was more important than ever: choosing a single tool or a few tools and sticking with them across the entire school or district. Consistency offers familiarity and consistency for students. With so many available tools, it’s essential to find one that is easy, fun to use, and engages students.

Feedback

Feedback and assessment finally clicked with each other during the 2020–2021 school year. With the lack of in-person interactions, feedback became even more crucial than ever before. Many schools minimized the importance of letter grades (something education reformers have been pushing for years) and emphasized high-quality, actionable feedback for students. The challenge was how to give timely, specific, and measurable feedback in a consistent manner—a question we’ll tackle in Chapter 8, “Maximizing Academic Feedback.” Every student’s creation or response deserves feedback and warm affirmation. It lets students know that we care about them and their learning, especially during challenging times.

Everyone’s Well-Being

As teachers, we knew our students faced daily stress and trauma during the pandemic, so we did everything we could to ensure that they felt cared for and valued. We also learned that after eight hours of Zoom meetings, we needed to prioritize our own self-care. It’s important that you take care of yourself and teach others how to do this. What does that mean exactly? Consider the following:

• Check in with how you are feeling a few times per day.
• Be kind to yourself and flexible (as permitted) with your schedule.
• Find a “tech” routine that works for you and your family.
• Accept that time is limited, everything can’t be accomplished, and focus on the practices that have the greatest impact for students.
• Take meta-moments, giving yourself and everyone around you the permission to feel all emotions: happy, sad, angry, hopeful, calm, stressed, and more.

Challenges and Strategies for Teaching in a Concurrent Classroom

One of the biggest challenges resulting from the pandemic was the concurrent classroom, also called the HyFlex classroom. The name suggests a hybrid or high-flexibility approach, but ironically, it’s not anywhere near as easy to implement as the name connotes. In this environment, teachers are charged with simultaneously instructing and engaging students in two uniquely different learning environments: in person in a brick-and-mortar classroom and remotely on a computer at home. Concurrent classrooms present challenges for the students, as well. Online students often feel disadvantaged and that they don’t have equal access to the teacher. When teachers tailor and focus instruction for online learners, in-person students experience similar frustrations.

To ensure both in-person and online students receive equitable instruction, instructional videos are a viable solution. This enables all students to access and view instructional materials outside of the synchronous classroom setting. By creating instructional videos, teachers ensure equal opportunities for both in-person and online students to learn. This option offers equitable experiences for students, as all receive the same content in the same manner. By recording the direct asynchronous instruction portion for students to watch prior to the synchronous meeting (online or in person), teachers are also able to provide targeted, direct instruction to struggling learners. This, in turn, allows teachers to focus synchronous time (in person or online) on SEL connections, application of concepts, creativity opportunities, and small-group collaborations. (For tips on creating effective instructional videos, see Chapter 5, “Designing and Delivering Blended Instruction.”)

Collaboration

Collaboration can and should occur in online and in-person environments. During the pandemic, teachers quickly found ways to integrate collaborative opportunities for students as a means to engage learners. Students working in person could concurrently collaborate with students at home using cloud-based applications, for example. The key to success is ensuring that collaborative environments are thoughtfully designed and include clear expectations and guidance from teachers. Students crave autonomy and agency, but autonomy and agency work only if you’ve provided clear instructions on the task, an interesting and relevant problem to solve, or question prompts that allow for multiple ideas and solutions.

Student Products

Sharing and presenting their work is challenging for students in a concurrent classroom; students at home have difficulty hearing what students are saying in the classroom and vice versa. Additionally, students engage more when they’re able to see visual representations of their peers’ ideas and responses. Video creations, presentations, and other digital visual representations are equally effective in a traditional in-person classroom as well as an online classroom. For example, you can post videos in Google Drive or Google Classroom and give students a timeframe of when videos must be viewed. For optimal success, provide rubrics for students to review peer videos and provide a clear structure for providing feedback to one another.

Think-Alouds and Read-Alouds

Think-alouds and read-alouds can still occur even if students don’t show up for synchronous online instruction. Think-alouds and read-alouds can be quite engaging for asynchronous instruction, which provides more time for students to reflect on problems they’re solving or the text they’re reading. It also provides flexibility for students; they get to choose when they’re ready to interact, and they can go back and listen to parts of the video as many times as they want. This was extremely important during the pandemic as many students were learning independently.

When thinking aloud, it’s also helpful for students to see visual representations of what they are learning. To help facilitate this, create a screen recording. Model a math problem on a digital whiteboard, for example, or build a concept map around a new vocabulary word. When you’re finished, most recording tools will automatically insert the screen recording into your instructional video. With this quick activity, you’ve addressed the unique needs of visual learners that prefer visual representations as opposed to simply listening.

Additionally, think-alouds offer embedded research-based instructional strategies such as KWLs (Know, Want to Know, Learned), higher-order questioning, close reading, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About ISTE
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Learning Lessons from the Pandemic and Implications for the Future
• Chapter 2: Planning Essentials for Blended Learning and Beyond
• Chapter 3: Mapping the Course Scope and Sequence
• Chapter 4: Constructing a Pacing Guide and Establishing Learning Expectations
• Chapter 5: Designing and Delivering Blended Instruction
• Chapter 6: Designing and Delivering Virtual Instruction
• Chapter 7: Engaging Students with Authentic Assessments
• Chapter 8: Maximizing Academic Feedback
• Chapter 9: Integrating Digital Citizenship
• Epilogue
• References
• Index