This week we discussed distributed and online learning. Most of us in the Secondary PDP program at UVic experienced an entire year of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. I enjoyed many aspects of online learning, like the money I saved without having to travel to and from campus most days. For most of my English literature courses, we could complete similar assignments compared to being in person. However, synchronous, class-time discussions seemed less authentic when we were placed in breakout rooms and the majority of students would leave their cameras off and remain silent. For my theatre courses, it was difficult to replicate performing on-stage with peers via Zoom.
“Online Learning, hosted by Dan Malleck” by giulia.forsythe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
As educators, we should be prepared to transition our classes to distributed and online learning. One of the ways to do that is to think about how our lessons and units can be delivered online. An important question to ask ourselves is: which components of the lesson can be delivered synchronously or asynchronously? And if we decide to deliver instruction or a task asynchronously, am I making myself available to students for external support? Teachers need to be adaptable; transitioning classes from in-person to online is an important skill to have, even if it is as simple as recording a lecture for students who are unable to attend class that day.