Virtual teaching: Be improvisational, engage students, experts say

As teachers get ready to return to a school format in which many will have to do virtual instruction, area experts in online teaching offer some advice.

Connect with students, offer rigorous instruction, be a bit improvisational and refrain from simply providing students at home with the same lesson as students in the class.

“You just don’t lift the classroom material and put in online instruction. You have to provide an engaging, rigorous instruction that meets the needs of the students,” said David Carbonara, a clinical assistant professor of instructional technology at Duquesne University’s School of Education.

When Gov. Tom Wolf ordered schools closed in mid-March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, teachers were thrown into online instruction in about two weeks, with little guidance from the state, Norwin Superintendent Jeff Taylor said at a recent school board meeting.

Parents involved in a recent protest against Norwin’s three days-a-week virtual instruction say the quality of teaching online during the final weeks of last school year was not high.

“They failed on the remote learning” in the spring, said Leslie Savage of Irwin, one of the leaders of a protest held in front of the Norwin School District administration building. The parents group, which leaders say gathered about 600 online signatures on a petition, wants students fully in school, Savage said.

Deer Lakes School District, which is instituting a hybrid model of virtual learning for three days a week, has contracted with two digital learning specialists from Robert Morris University in Moon to work the teaching staff during in-service days, said James Cromie, a spokesman for the district that serves East Deer, West Deer and Frazer.

Teachers have been learning to use Google Classroom, which will give them an advantage this fall in virtual teaching.

“We looked at this a good part of the summer to make sure we would not make the same mistakes,” that were made in the spring, when schools that were forced to create an online learning atmosphere.

Creating an effective online instruction model when schools were forced to close in mid-March was “like building a sandcastle in a windstorm,” Cromie said.

To ensure teachers don’t fail in remote learning, “effective online instruction requires designing and building online educational content, learning activities, and assessments in advance,” said Tinukwa Boulder, associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s education school and director of innovative technologies and online learning.

Before school reopens, Taylor said extra in-service days are planned for Norwin to give teachers more training in virtual instruction.

“They need a year of training” to do it right, Savage said.

Ideally, distance education and instructional design experts will work with teachers or subject matter experts to select appropriate instructional strategies, technologies and resources to develop online classes and lessons, Boulder said.

Districts that want teachers to instruct students in the classroom and remotely at the same time are making a mistake, said Fritz Fetke, Southwestern Pennsylvania advocacy coordinator for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, whose office is near Hunker. Teachers trying to engage the students in front of them may walk around the room as they make a point or go to the white board. With the computer’s camera focused on the front of the room, teachers can’t give the online students the same attention.

“I would urge people to consider the actual logistics of the classroom. It’s not a good education for either group,” said Fetke, whose region encompasses 65 school districts.

Penn-Trafford on Monday changed how it will educate the high school students at the beginning of the school year, going from five days a week in class to two days, with the other days offering virtual instruction, said Penn-Trafford Superintendent Matt Harris. Students in kindergarten to eighth grade still will go to school five days a week, Harris said.

The district took into effect the enrollment of the high school and the class sizes, Harris said.

“We based changes on the most recent updates from the Department of Health,” Harris noted. The county still is in the moderate phase of community spread of covid-19.

The teachers will receive instruction during in-service days and will get virtual learning preparation time every Friday in September and three in October, said Shaun Rinier, president of the 250-member Penn-Trafford Education Association..

The district provided teachers with 13 hours of self-taught Google training lessons.

“We don’t have any (personal) training,” Rinier said.

The teachers union presented the administration with an option for a “cleaning day” to sanitize the school building, which will allow teachers to prepare online lessons, or designate one teacher to teach a subject or grade level. The suggestions were rejected, Rinier said.

“We have not slammed the door on any suggestion,” said Scott Inglese, assistsant superintendent. The teachers will have the option of teaching a remote lesson the same time as the classroom instruction, or online. A camera will be placed in the front of the room for the teachers when they instruct the class, so they could do both remote and in-person instruction, Inglese said.

To do virtual learning well takes a lot of planning because the distance between the instructor and the student can be a real barrier to learning, said J. Camille Dempsey, an educational technology and STEM education professor at Edinboro University.

“Improvisation and vocal inflection are good strategies to be used in virtual instruction,” Dempsey said.

There are a lot of tools and online resources available to teach remotely, Dempsey said. One such method is to “poll” the students in the virtual classroom, to get them involved in the lesson. “You have to work hard at making those connections.”

Pitt’s Boulder believes teachers will need to know how to make more of those connections because online learning in kindergarten through 12th grade will become more prevalent. It will mean that school districts and intermediate units will have to prepare experienced teachers in online and hybrid learning environments.

“I believe traditional brick-and-mortar schools will increasingly offer online or cyber learning options to students and families,” Boulder said. “The community will increasingly realize the benefits of quality online instruction: greater flexibility, convenience and the opportunity to work at your own pace.”