Virtual Classroom Management

I was going to write this blog about traditional classroom management as that is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this year. Instead, I will shift the focus slightly to something more relevant given today’s teaching environment, digital classroom management. A report from the National Center for Education Statistics says that in 2017 “about 21 percent of public schools and 13 percent of private schools offered any courses entirely online.” This number has only increased since then and more so due to COVID complications. Being able to skillfully use what we know about classroom management in the online learning environment will be a significant tool for teaching this coming school year.

According to the team at Edutopia, the proven practices of in-person classroom management should not be discarded simply because of instruction transitioning online. In our physical classroom, we often design and us the space available to us intentionally to build an atmosphere of learning. The same can happen online by providing clear areas for your online students to find the resources they need. This may mean preparing a very thorough tutorial video showing students where all of their resources are since they might not be clearly visible like in a physical class.

Photo from Study.com

You still should encourage a community mentality within your students. Groups can still be assigned as we would in person and the same mentality of intentional grouping should be put into practice. Most online classroom software has options for setting up groups. It might be okay for randomly assigning groups for smaller short tasks but for more engaging purposing use the data you have about your students just like you would in person. 

    Just like you would do with a physical classroom, you need to have clearly defined online office hours and contact information so your students know how and when they can reach out to you. Be present when you are working with them virtually, minimizing as many distractions as possible in both your environment and theirs. Since you won’t be able to chat up your students in the halls, be sure to reach out to them regularly through a variety of means. 

The general rule of thumb, if it works in a physical classroom it works in an online one. As a teacher, you might have to learn some new ways of establishing your classroom management plan when doing distance learning and adjust your own habits accordingly but in the end, your students will adapt under your guidance and examples.

Course management for the Online Classroom

Extending Classroom Management Online

National Center for Education Statistics

Distance Learning - Does it have a place in k-12 Education?

Due to COVID-19, there is certainly more discussion on the use of distance learning in our k-12 education system than ever before. Generally speaking, I see two camps of thought here. The first is embracing this forced change as a way to embrace the future of grade school education. The other is that it can not replace in-person education and we should return to business as usual ASAP. In this blog post, I will discuss the pros and cons of each of these views as well as my own opinions on them.

First, let me address the real short-comings of distance learning in K-12. As everyone was quickly forced into distance learning this spring due to COVID and schools began looking for answers, there really was only one choice. Moving learning to online on short notice high lights many of its faults. If a district is not 1-to-1 (meaning every student is given a laptop or tablet for schooling) then that leaves out any student who does not have access to a computer at home. Even still, many students, especially high-risk ones, don't have the internet at home making them unable to attend to their school work. These issues are logistical in nature and could be dealt with by proper school founding but we all know that uphill battle. 

The real issue at hand with utilizing distance learning in K-12 is the lack of proper training. The typical teacher is trained in educational theory grounded in facility-based education, not in online teaching. While some principles absolutely transfer to any realm of teaching, research points to best practices for online teaching that you simply don't think about when doing in-person learning.

Now on to the bright side of things. There are many positives to our current situation which causes us to reimagine what education looks like during times were in-person. Distance learning has already been used in certain areas of K-12 for years such as homeschooling, really small populations where teachers are often shared between schools, youth who are unable to attend traditional school for whatever reason, and many more. Some schools have gone entirely online saving money on facility costs that they spend on resources and keeping teacher to student ratio low. There are even emerging studies showing that, if done right using research-based best practices, distance learning can be as effective if not more than traditional facility-based instruction.

In my opinion, there is a happy middle-ground of facility-based instruction and distance learning instruction. There are certain things you just can't do online such as working on group projects that require in-person collaboration. Having a dedicated physical location where students could work collaboratively during problem-based learning with the teacher facilitating just makes sense. But a large portion of learning and instruction could be carried out online thanks to all of the modern tools at our disposal, both paid and free. As classroom sizes continue to grow making the teacher to student ratio continue moving the wrong direction, moving some learning to online might help alleviate this modern teaching challenge. Only time will tell what our "new normal" in education maybe, but using this time to better learn and understand how to use modern teaching tools to solve modern teaching problems might be worth the struggle.

References:

A Teacher's Guide to Distance Learning

How Effective Is Online Learning? What the Research Does and Doesn't Tell Us

Exploring the Concerns of Online K-12 Teachers