In the current norm, blended learning is often being used to mean teaching students face to face as well as online. For me the true meaning of blended learning is teaching using a combination of online tools and traditional teaching methods when I have my students in front of me. Nonetheless, times have changed and during lockdown I have used blended learning approaches to teach my students who I have been lucky enough to teach online. You can read more about that process here
Back at school and I now have the situation where I have some students in front of me and some online. It is thus a hybrid of in class and online but I am teaching all of my students at the same time. I know that I have been very good at engaging my online learners before and after the lesson when I have a little time, but what I am really conscious of is that I must include my online learners during the lesson itself. They are, after all, there, learning with the rest of the class who are sitting in front of me.
Here then are a few ideas on how you can engage your online learners in a hybrid lesson. The focus is on questioning, quizzing and collaborating.
Questions
Sometimes students are reticent to speak so I might start by asking them in Teams (works equally well in Zoom) to
raise their virtual hand to let me know they can hear, that they are well, and to let them know that I care
about them being in my lesson and being part of my lesson.
The hands up symbol is also really useful when asking
questions. I might ask the online learners to raise their hand in Teams to respond to a question and
that can work. However,
the reality is that it can be hard to see who has their hand up in the Team if
you have your focus on the students in front of you.
Thus, I have really been favouring cold calling. I communicate with those online that shortly I am going to be asking one of them a question and they should thus be ready to unmute their microphones. This works well and enables me to keep those students online as part of my lesson. Their responses can be considered in the same way as I consider the responses I get from my students in the classroom.
Quizzing
Another way of engaging with your online
learners is to set a really short quiz reflecting on a previous lesson or doing some retrieval of prior learning. I do this in Microsoft Forms but equally Quizizz or the new, but fabulous Carousel Learning would do just as well. I favour setting two or three
questions that can be quickly completed and then you can actually then make a bee
line for the online learner’s work and ask them about their answers or use
their answers as a starting point for further conversation in class.
Collaboration
Finally, a great way to include everyone is to
use the infinite space in Microsoft's Class Notebook or using an online whiteboard such as this one or Padlet. Allot each pupil in your class a space of their own which they can zoom
in on and where they can do their own work. You can do collaborative work in this space
which is then immediately accessed by the whole class.
This means that your online learner is part of
what the class is producing in real time and the benefit is that you can hone
in on work completed by all the pupils, both those in front of you and those
online.
Bonus
tool as this a great way to see what your students are doing at a click of a button. No matter how distant the student is from your classroom, you can still see their work in real time and converse with them about their progress, their thinking and their ideas.
So that’s it.
If you have other thoughts on how we can ensure our online learners are
playing a full part in our lessons, please let me know in the comments box below.
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