The 1st Day of School...AGAIN: Fostering Self-Determined Learners in an Age of Certain Uncertainty

Remember the first day of school? You plan witty getting-to-know-you exercises, talk through behavioral expectations, and discuss procedural expectations with parents and students. Sometimes this takes one day. Sometimes it takes an entire week. Sometimes it takes longer. No matter the length of time, the class is encouraged to connect with you and each other. Everyone explores their relatedness and becomes a unit. When this happens, it helps behavioral and procedural expectations to often easily be put in place, and the content learning commences. This foundation is crucial to successful learning and programs.

As the term continues, educators have a tendency to adjust these items, and the whole process is often repeated after the winter break. Even those who have brand new students will have refined their connection activity, refined their management, and refined their procedural expectations. For classes that continue from the previous term, the new aim is not connection, but RE-connection.

The online learning environment and experience will be no different. In this time of certain uncertainty, I want to encourage you to plan and produce the highest quality lessons and delivery you can. I know, I'm preaching to the choir, because many of you have been secretly planning for this moment since the first time you used Google Classroom ;) . One word of caution:

No matter your efforts, if there is not a focus on competence and relatedness, the inherent autonomy of online learning will render it ineffective. I hate to burst your bubble, but it's true. It's time to have the first day of school...AGAIN.

Below, I've provided some practical and researched-based suggestions to how to make the impromptu online learning environment effective.

AUTONOMY

As I just mentioned, online learning is often an autonomous act. Many of our students--especially the elementary-aged kiddos--will struggle after a few days of having to do their lessons and classwork with little-to-no physical guidance. Even if a teacher implemented a flipped classroom approach, the teacher is there as a safety net during the class times. If students are not adept at the online format, they will have to learn to plan when and how to accomplish tasks. This is where the instructor comes in:

1. Extend grace to the students, their parents, and yourself. Understand that things will simply take longer, kids will not "get" a project or a concept, and you may have to do a lot of reteaching. The more grace you extend to all involved, the easier this process will be. By all means, hold them to standards, but do extend grace.

2. Students will need support understanding concepts, how to accomplish tasks, access the technology, etc. You will need support yourself by not overworking. We all want to work from home...until we don't. To help all involved, set up boundaries. This protects you and the student, and gives clear expectations of when and how you will be able to help.

With the guidance of your district or college, offer regular office hours. Also, establish times when you will read and respond to questions and email. With both of these, make these times clear to the students and parents and stick to them. By offering times when students can reach out to you live (office hours), it will help give them some normalcy. By offering times when you will respond to emails, it prevents students from constantly checking, therefore, effectively reducing the anxiety of "why hasn't he/she gotten back to me yet?" It also prevents you from being reactive all day. We all want to help, but we need to also be 100% mentally healthy for ourselves, our families, and our students.

RELATEDNESS

Introvert or extrovert, we crave feeling like we are actually a part of whatever it is we're doing. The online experience can be LONELY! Take it from someone who has gotten all of his graduate degrees online--Lonely. By creating ways for the students to interact with one another, you are creating an environment that they WANT to be a part of. You are creating a community. Consider leaving a cliff-hanger question that will be answered by you the next day, rather than bribing the students with something. It's fun, it's enticing, and it will help them connect.

1. Getting to know you

No matter the platform for instruction, there are ways to either chat live (synchronous) or passively (asynchronous). In my experience, the synchronous chats are the best. The students need to feel like they belong, so a 30 minute chat through video, or typing would do the students some good and allow them to connect with you and each other.

2. Seeing others' work and/or progress

One of the most isolating things about working online is that the student can't see how they measure-up to others. This is not to imply that students think they need to be "better" than others. It implies that students need to see that others are accomplishing tasks to motivate them to do the same. This may also prompt students to keep up with the rigor of the class. The ability to work online is awesome...until you're playing catch-up. Fight the potential procrastination early by showing student work and/or progress. A simple way to do this is just to post first names of those who have completed tasks, or even reach out to ask questions. Posting this publicly may help motivate those students who feel isolated.

3. Encourage them to talk to one another

Don't put answering questions all on yourself. If you are confident that a student has the answer to a question or is simply willing to help, refer others in the class to them. Again, this allows the relatedness needed to maintain positive motivation.

COMPETENCE

Let's face it...we're not ALL good at technology. We don't ALL have access to the technology that we may want, either. There are also so many other issues involved with this that it would take me weeks--or even years--to write about it: WiFi issues, persnickety operating systems, broken screens...you name it! If there is ever a time to be a realist, it is now. If that's too extreme for you, you may want to at least consider being more understanding than you ever have (see grace under the autonomy section)

1. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Think about the average technology skills of your class and do your best not to assign projects that go beyond those skills. Making a video is one thing. Editing the video requires a whole set of skills and software that the students may not have. This situation already presents a certain amount of stress. Don't add to it.

Students will be more apt to continue learning with you online when they can DO and COMPLETE the tasks assigned.

2. Consider offering two or three ways to complete an assignment. You would do this for your class if it were in session, so if there is a way for a student to complete an assignment in an analog fashion and take a picture of it...do it! Time to get creative and be flexible.

3. Ask others for help. Bounce ideas off of others. The PLC and PLN exist for many reasons, and its times like this where they are most useful.

Remember:

Students will be more apt to continue learning with you online when they can DO and COMPLETE the tasks assigned.

Final Thoughts

By supporting autonomy, fostering relatedness and instilling competence, you are promoting the students' basic human needs.They will be the self-determined learners you left before we were all practicing "social distancing." They will just be these learners...online.

Above all, extend grace and keep loving your students. There are powerful life lessons they will learn from this experience.

We've got this!

Dr. Tom