What should in-person instruction look like at a high school or college?

July 10, 2020 1:58 PM

Pedagogy for many decades has emphasized active learning, using lots of teaching aids, hands-on tools, and art materials to undertake projects and complete labs in a highly social environment that often involves small groups of students close together. It seems difficult to accomplish anything comparable with everyone 6-feet apart and wearing masks. What kind of active learning can reasonably happen in the era of COVID-19? Have any good guidelines been published yet? I am very unclear about what the in-person classroom experience will and should be like this year.
posted by mortaddams to Education (8 answers total)

This is such a small detail, but something I have thought about as a speech therapist in the schools and the partner of a university professor. One thing that can be helpful with group work or collaborative work with students, even 6 feet apart, is using Google Docs, which shows updates and comments in live time. This is something that I imagine a lot of professors are planning to use for group work and discussions.
posted by shortyJBot at 3:13 PM on July 10, 2020

This fall? It shouldn't look like anything because face-to-face classes shouldn't be happening.

Signed,
someone who is swapping her planned online course section for a f2f one
because asking an adjunct to take that risk is just unconscionable
posted by humbug at 3:39 PM on July 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

Probably not the answer you are looking for but the reality is no one in education has a clue about how this will work. Based on what my husband and friends that teach K-12 say, pedagogy is purely theoretical anyway; you learn how to teach by doing, actually being in a classroom. I expect that is what we will see this coming school year, figuring it out as we go. And expect to see the emergence of the new essential worker...the substitute teacher.
posted by socrateaser at 4:34 PM on July 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I'm not an educator, but if your students will have their own devices, consider using interactivity via their devices. There are lots of options but I've used Kahoot with success, and admired PearDeck (a Google docs add-in) and the options therein.
posted by Cheese Monster at 8:13 PM on July 10, 2020

Best answer: I've used Google Docs as a collaborative work environment in and out of the classroom with some success (middle schoolers and college students). Whether you're teaching online or face to face, the key is for teacher (a) to be clear about (and explicitly teach) the rules and social norms you expect for the group work and (b) to monitor the group work. With middle schoolers working on Google Docs, I found that I didn't have to physically circulate, it worked REALLY well if I was sitting at my desk with my computer open periodically either messaging my students & groups or, if people were generally having the same problem with something, pausing, asking them all to close their laptop lids so I could be sure they were listening, and making a general announcement.

If you're doing hands-on non-digital collaborative work, every student has to have their own materials, of course, and projects would be constructed in a "jigsaw" method. That takes a lot of planning and cooperation. Again, teach the norms and expectations explicitly before you start, and reinforce and re-teach the norms and expectations. You can't really have meaningful project work unless the "how" is ingrained, and you have to model and monitor like crazy.

Although people are gloomy about getting students to follow social distancing rules in general, it's possible if you make the social distancing the main curriculum in the beginning and gradually release responsibility, just as we teach all classroom expectations.
posted by Peach at 4:28 AM on July 11, 2020

Online group work can be done asynchronously. I'm in the midst of a low-res MFA where we've done a lot of that. My university uses Blackboard - which is a mixed bag but it's what I'm most familiar with. Threaded discussion boards and blog posts that everyone responds to as well as zoom calls allow us to discuss and collaborate. We also use Google docs a lot and have used Teachable a bit. There are lots of tools to discuss, connect collaborate. I think for younger kids this is going to be a lot less workable and for people with less access to tech - both computers and good net access so it's very uneven.
posted by leslies at 6:28 AM on July 11, 2020

You can somewhat replicate posters with google slides — limit them to 1 blank slide and give them some kind of restrictions (no words, must use at least X number of shapes, no copy/pasted images are ones I use at different times). You can even change the size of a slide to make it bigger. Group sizes have to be smaller, but if you explain the constraints right you get a bonus where every group makes their poster within 1 whole-class slide deck. Great for presenting or looking at later.

But the real answer is that you will accomplish less, sometimes much less, than a traditional in-person year. I think best practice is to acknowledge that up front and plan for what can get cut from the curriculum. A slimmed-down course that is intentional about its learning goals will be much more comfortable and reassuring for students than a hectic, rushed course where the teacher constantly changed curriculum and says “well normally... but now we can’t...” More than ever, young adults need to see the road ahead of them: present an overview of your course at the beginning, leave plenty of empty space for things to take longer, and remind them frequently about where they are in the framework. How far they’ve come, how on track they are to finish. Make your course predictable and conquerable; it might be the only thing students can feel safe with this upcoming school year.
posted by lilac girl at 8:14 AM on July 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for your thoughts thus far. I am marking as best answers the responses that are starting to directly address the "in-person" part of the question with practical advice, as that is really what I am trying to ask about. If you have more ideas, please do share.

I would be especially interested in thoughtful published guidelines that directly address how it can work well for the students and teachers when everyone is back in the same physical room. By now I was expecting to see some clear and practical guidance for teachers, but I have not seen much. What would be especially useful is granular advice about common things that happen with in-person teaching. If you normally do X, then keep doing it or change it to Y.

We do also have Google Docs, so practical advice about how to use that in this environment would be helpful. My students will probably all have a phone or computer of some sort, so Kahoot would work because it works on every device. Solutions that assume everyone has the same type of device will not work for me. That said, questions here are for the community. So, feel free to share solutions that assume uniform access to technology, as others may find it helpful.

On the topic of Kahoot, do students enjoy making the quizzes for each other, or does it really work best for the teacher to make them?
posted by mortaddams at 11:19 AM on July 11, 2020