Building Communities Online

I recently presented at Canopy Live on building communities online. This is a session I trimmed down from a full day's training that Dr Lou Mycroft and myself offer colleges and schools ( happily discuss more about this with anyone interested, anytime).

“Students said they were more likely to engage when they felt that staff valued them, were reliable and consistent in their engagement with online work, and had set up effective support measures.” 

(Palmer et al., 2017)

I purposefully include this from 2017 as I think anything pre pandemic is interesting. Not that what we learnt in the pandemic isn't interesting, but I like to highlight that online teaching happened pre pandemic and we learnt a LOT from that time too.

I don't think this quote is telling us anything unusual. Students want to feel valued. We all do. That is the practice of care (if you ever spend time with Dr Mycroft you will hear her speak to this often) that is education. How do we show students we care? What conditions for them to excel do we create? When teaching online how do we check in?

Also at Canopy Live was the wonderful Cat Lamin. She shared about how important it is to check in on others and your own mental health. She used this duck scale to ask us how we were.

What I like about the duck scale is that it is open to all, everyone can relate to the stages. This is one type of check in, there are others. What is important though is that we check in. I tweet regularly that the algorithms on social media show you what it thinks you want to see. To build community you have to go beyond the algorithm. Seek out people to connect with, topics that interest you. Scrolling isn't the way to build community on social media. Active dialogue is. Engaging with others, seeking voices different to yours to learn from. We rely a lot on platforms to deliver what we need. Think about a VLE. It shows you what you want to see, who has done the work and when. What it doesn't show you (instantly, agree that this is possible with back channels and extra interventions) is how the work went for students? How did they feel? Was it appropriately challenging? That's the human conversational part that we need to add in as an extra to our work. Likewise on Twitter, it delivers the information it is required to deliver. Scrolling until your hearts content, but the human interaction and connection is the work that you have to do.

If you are serious about building communities online, you might want to consider checking in, with a duck or without. The feeling of value you will show another in doing so cannot be underestimated.

Once you have checked in, how do you let students know that you value them throughout the lesson? I am reminded of a colleague who was once upset that a student failed to acknowledge her lovingly crafted feedback on each page of a students work. The student wanted to know the grade and what to do to improve in summary and disregarded hours of teacher feedback. Had the teacher asked what feedback the student had wanted there would have been a different outcome. Think yellow box marking where one section of yellow boxed work is marked intently. I have seen this include students self selecting the section to be marked also. The student has owned their work and indicated that they only require this section to be marked. The teacher marks that section with the level of feedback the student has asked for. Recognising whole college and school policies often dictate how we mark, but I think there are elements in this that can work and I have seen work well.

Teaching online, we can replicate this by indicating the yellow box. But that verbal feedback as we would traditionally circulate the room are slightly trickier. Sure we can verbally offer feedback, perhaps not whole class and maybe in breakout rooms? My go to technique is to use comments in student work live. I take a helicopter view of one slide deck. Each slide has the task, space for student work and each student's name on top. I then share one doc with the class with edit rights. Version history helps reinforce my expectations of etiquette and respect for others work in the doc. Each student navigates to their slide in the deck and works. I can see the colour code for each student as they work. I can then add comments live.

I can toggle my view to grid view (slide sorter view in PowerPoint) and see everyone working at once. I can see work appear live and dive in to slides where I think students might need help. Students feel safe to contribute, we have established expectations and I have reminded them of version history. Students feel valued that I can give them feedback quietly and as I would if I were circulating the room. Students could see each others work in the room normally, online they can too. If this were an issue for my students I would maybe move this quick, instant verbal feedback I am replicating online to Google Chat or private comments to students. I am showing students that I value their work and I am supporting them in their learning. We are all connected and building a learning community online.

Referring back to the initial quote, the value students perceive is also in expectations and support. Backchannel chats are a supportive measure my students enjoy. Our backchannel is via Google Chat. Students can privately message me live with how they are feeling, issues, ideas and I can support. Something like Backchannel Chat is also appropriate. That immediate support of knowing that your teacher is there and will be able to help is an effective support in itself, just the knowing. My students mainly share emojis at the level of challenge they are experiencing and my job is to support them to overcome that fear or work through it to achieve their potential in that class. This is time consuming and mentally taxing for me as a teacher, but since when was teaching not either of those things? We do what we need to do to help our students. I find setting a self marking activity for the class useful whilst I manage the back channel at key points in the lesson invaluable. Otherwise students would be left looking at my thinking face whilst I manage all the communication modes.

using Flipgrid to reflect

I'm a huge fan of reflective practise. We learn so much from observing and reflecting on what we taught. I've recently subjected myself to videos of me teaching online. Let's not pretend it's an enjoyable experience but it is one that creates an environment to help us learn and grow. Hattie says that the most effective teachers are the most reflective. I think we all know the importance of reflecting. 

Recently I was asked, how do I reflect? I was in a group of FE practioners and I was curious to others responses. One said she calls someone at the end of her day and debriefs. One said she answers the OTLA sheet of questions she has to complete and then it came to me. How do I reflect? Face to face teacher version 

1.0 of me reflected by talking in the office after a lesson, maybe sharing what didn't land right and a colleague passing a resource they were using that was more successful. Teaching online version of me 2.0? I watch the video and cringe, but then how can I take action?

We are missing that collaboration, that informal connection that supports our practise. I wonder what value we have missed by not having those opportunities? Just like we are working hard to create online supportive environments for our students, we should be placing the same amount of emphasis for staff. How can we create spaces for staff to thrive rather than survive when teaching online?

One large factor is time. Time to reflect, time to think. In FE we are often so very short of time already it is hard to picture opportunities to carve out more time. I heard from a college this week that due to under recruiting (genuinely no one's fault!) all staff had to increase teaching hours or provide cover in traditional PPA time. The value on staff developing their practise has been valued at a low level in this example. If a colleague reached out and said they wanted to talk about their practise, would you have the time to listen? Would they have the time to speak?

Time is precious. We can't make more of it. We need to maximise the value of the important stuff and minimise the noise. In a radical thought this week I wrote down all the things that I do that someone who was less qualified and paid less than me could do vs all the tasks it needed to be actually me there to do them. There was so much I think I could make a case for a PA! But how true is this across all our roles? How often do we undertake roles because it is easier for us to do them?

So when do we have time to reflect? When we became teachers, however our route into teaching looked, we were encouraged to reflect. Write down our evaluations. Compare those with our mentors or our observers. Develop action plans to improve our practise. A sort of Gibbs model for reflection. Now we are learning how to adapt our craft in new ways. We could probably do with another view on how it's going? But we may not have time!

If you, like me, have videoed yourself teaching, perhaps consider uploading them to a Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a wonderful tool that if it is unfamiliar I do encourage you to check it out. I'm a huge fan of right tool, right job, and although I am proud to be the first female goodle coach in EMEA and one of 78 globally for Google Innovator in 2020 this Microsoft tool is the right tool for many jobs. Flipgrid is a space for you to create a noticeboard of videos posted by others that you inspire with your topic creation. In teaching I use it to get students to talk through their working out on paper. The bit that I greatly miss in teaching online! We use it for staff birthday cards and there is some competition now as to who makes the best video for Flipgrid!

For teaching reflections though it is a great tool. I upload a video of my lesson. Generally the recording from Google Meet but this could be from Zoom or Teams or whatever you use. I can then insert timestamps of key parts where I want to make notes or ask for others opinions. Perhaps I want some new ideas for how to do starter activities as mine felt a little flat? Maybe I'm happy with my questioning and want someone to check they agree? Or I might be amazing at differentiation and have been asked by a peer to share my good practise. Observers can join the Flipgrid via a link, a code, restricted to domain or public. You are in control. I get that fear that your ventures into online teaching may not be ready to be viewed by the world. Mine aren't either! Mine are locked down to only those that I share the flipgrid with can view! 

I choose to share with different people depending on what I am looking for. I might share with peers if it is subject specific content I want help with. I might share with the TLA team if it is more broad areas I want help with. Sometimes though I like to share just to check I'm on the right track and I share with that trusted colleague who will be kind, specific and helpful in their feedback. It can be a lonely place teaching online and I'm finding lots of ways to oversome that by using Flipgrid. Observers can record video feedback for me. Their freshest thinking. They can skip to my timestamped section. I can hear their initial thoughts. Text comments are also a feature. I can read a summary evaluation. I quite like seeing a written summary, perhaps with reference to a resource that might help me next time round or some extra reading. 

This tool has wider reach and power though as a TLA tool. Perhaps we could form peer TLA groups where we all share via a Flipgrid and comment on each others teaching? The time it takes to upload a video is seconds. The video is created via the online meeting software I have taught my learners via so that takes little effort too. To watch another's video will take time, 10 minutes. To comment and leave a reply, probably 2-5 minutes. With time being so tight I'm hopeful we could find 15 minutes to reflect on our practise. But I'm more inclined to suggest that we should make time to reflect on our own practise. 

If you want to know more about how we, at Driving Digital, can help you with supporting reflective practise culture at your institution please get in touch. 

The Uphill Struggle

 The marking stacks up, the need to make sure your tracking and data input is up to date, internal verification sampling, chasing non attenders, pastoral admin, this is just a snippet of the roles teachers play before they even get to think about planning and delivery of learning to students. Teacher workload is spoken about all the time but little seems to be done about this challenge. There have been initiatives and reports but has the finding of these made their way to the frontline? The huge increase in 2020 for digital online teaching has left teachers on their knees in many cases. But, could this move be the answer to reducing teacher workload and making the profession more sustainable?  

I would describe teaching in the further education sector as constantly being in the path of a tornado. Tornadoes generally have wind speeds up to 110 mph. You can see them due to the condensation funnel they travel for a few miles and then disappear. This metaphor I believe is a good way to describe the ever changing landscape of FE, the new initiatives with some sticking and some disappearing after a few miles. This constant change, pressure and lack of time to adapt causes many teachers to take a long hard look at their jobs and go “is this really for me?”

Tornado alley is a term penned to parts of North America such as Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana where tornadoes occur most frequent. Teaching in FE is somewhat like living in one of these states, you know the weather can be unpredictable and at certain times of the year your home could incur damage or be destroyed thanks to mother nature. Although an extreme example, the pressure that FE teachers face at different times of the year is quite immense. This year the use of technology and blended learning has provided the latest tornado, but this one isn't going away and actually we need to learn to live with it.

 

Perhaps the biggest challenge we all face, not just teachers is a lack of perceived time. This has been dramatically increased this year due to the requirement to plan, teach and deliver online learning. But as a result how much innovation do you think has occurred? Teachers trying things they might never have tried before and potentially failing and trying something new again. Amazing. Technology really can be our extra pair of hands if we know what's out there and how we can leverage it to our advantage. Moving away from the fear and resistance to make it work properly and developing our knowledge working with it in partnership. The road isn't smooth and there will be lots of challenges. 

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Henry Ford

The celebration of the volume of innovation in my own opinion has been overlooked throughout 2020. There has been so much great adaptation and practice to the way we deliver learning it's like ten years rolled into one. So could this new found innovation and practices support teachers on managing their workload in the long term? I believe the answer has to be yes….. And I will tell you why.

When you learn to drive, let's be honest it's tough. Most of us would have been passengers in a car but there is nothing quite like getting behind the wheel for the first time. 10mph feels like you are driving a racing car; it's such a weird feeling. After years of driving it becomes second nature you don't have to think about what you are doing, your subconscious basically does the job. Have you had one of those journeys where you arrive at your destination and you remember nothing of the journey? At present many teachers find themselves at the learning to drive stage. We have gone through various amounts of lessons, we might have also completed our hazard perception and now we are looking forward to the test. Everything is a process, getting our heads around new ways of working, learning and living will of course take time, provide us many barriers and challenges but as a result help us grow. As with every new skill the key to mastery is consistent practice and self discipline. It is key we maintain the progress made as I believe the use of technology will have the greatest impact on making teacher workload sustainable.

If you have read any of John Maxwell's books on leadership you may have come across his uphill and downhill metaphor. Uphill is very hard, it's challenging and everyday we have to take a few steps in that direction, tackling head on the challenges before us. Downhill is easy, we can slide away with very little effort required. But if we slide down hill we lose all of our uphill progress. Now, for many, times are hard, it's a challenge we may even hate it, but it is forcing us to grow and develop. We must continue the uphill struggle, because when we get to the top the view is magnificent.  

The next 12-18 months will be key to our uphill struggle. Teachers who are confident with digital tools are going to need to work with colleagues to support them and their upskill up the hill. The driving instructors to the learners. Together is better, learning is messy but many hands will make light work on the clear up. If the digital capabilities of teachers improves, it is my belief so will the ability to develop working practices and save time in administration and workload that occurs outside of the classroom. There is so much information and resources out there that there is almost too much. My advice to teachers would be to look at what you know and what you think would benefit you in your journey up the hill. Talk it over with a colleague, ask for help, open the door on your practice and reap the rewards. 

The tornados will keep appearing in FE, who knows what the next ones might be, but over time we can predict, monitor and overcome these challenges. Working together is key and making sure we do not start sliding down the hill. Let's keep talking, working with one another, sharing our uphill struggles and keep moving towards the summit.

Thanks for reading.  

Planning for next year... this is it!

This is it, it's finally happened! We have been asked to start thinking about next year! We are out of our reactive COVID-19 mode and into proactive COVID-19 mode, we have moved on. I cannot tell you how excited I am. I am obviously sad that this year's learners courses ended the way that they did and I wish things could have been different. This is now the new normal though. 

I love a list. I love a plan. I always see, if it's not written down it won't happen in your lesson. I have made a list, a list of all the bits that are good about being in a physical classroom and the less good bits. 

Less good bits:

Struggling to walk round tables when you have 30 in a class and only 15 are meant to fit in the room. 

Waiting for the projector to warm up/changing/cleaning the fliter

Losing the projector remote and having to climb on the desk

Grey muck on the whiteboard from not being cleaned properly

Negotiating towers of paperwork or work in progress

Waiting for the class before to finish and only having 5 minutes to get set up for your class

Good bits:

Seeing students

Seeing student reactions

Responding to students

Going outside for a private 1 to 1 with students

Live feedback/marking 

Display boards

Singing and dancing together

I want to plan a way to build in as many good bits of physically being in the classroom as possible. Seeing students and responding to them, sure I can see them on a Google Meet but I need to make sure I take time to see them. How do they look? Are they happy? Are they engaged? I love a progress check. You can't go more than a few minutes in my lesson without falling over one. I want to capture this and give myself time to respond. Tools like Slido or Pear Deck are going to be more valuable to me now. I will treasure that feedback even more. I need to consciously build in time for me to react to that in my lessons. 

Private 1 to 1s. My 19+ learners and my 16-19 learners come to class with all sorts of baggage. My job is to help them unpick it or pack it up. If we can fix it we can, we will stop, go outside and fix it. If we can't we will box it up and move on so we can focus on the lesson. I need a way for students to open up to me or a place I can take them if I spot something is troubling them. I'm going to make a pastoral Google Meet and a lesson Google Meet. If I see the need for a private chat I will ask the student to pop out and join the pastoral Meet. I will offer the pastoral Meet as a drop in too for learners. I can't wait for Google to introduce breakout rooms in Google Meet but my plan is worth a try for now. 

I think Pear Deck and Slido can help me with live marking and feedback but I want to do more. I want to recreate that connection between me and my learners. I will try to record them a little voice note or video after the lesson as an overall feedback. I will use my reports from Pear Deck and Slido as well as student work to help. I will need to make notes during the lesson on everyone to help too. 

I think I will make a virtual noticeboard in Google Slides using the template from Slides mania. I will pin my famous female mathematicians, my examples of student work and my other bits and bobs. I will post it to Google Classroom and set myself a reminder to refresh it every term.

I will still sing and dance, if I'm honest the learners don't normally join in with me anyway so I will continue to do this on my own! 

I cannot recreate my physical classroom nor the experiences we share in it but I can create opportunities for us to create new experiences. I have discovered before how much effort goes into planning online lessons and going through these lists I am reminded as to why. We need to plan opportunities, then we need to plan where those opportunities will lead us to. We need to plan how we will converge onto the same end point from these discussions and we need to plan in time to check in on our learners. 

It may seem early to start planning for next year as we still have half a term to go. But looking at the list of extra things we need to plan for I think we need to start now. SJ