I have had the honor to visit perhaps 1,000s of classrooms over the span of my career. A classroom is a “space” that has a particular feel, a particular set of conditions to help impart learning. You know a good one, the minute you walk in the door. Lighting, fresh air, layout, order, tools and materials in place.
But what about an online classroom? What are its online requirements? With the zoom to Zoom, I think a lot of essential “must-haves” of the online space where learning occurs have been missed. What’s missing? What’s essential? What does the online classroom need to succeed? Here are my thoughts and what I think is “required” for learning to flourish and the teach-learn dynamic to really be top-notch online and echo the success of a well-designed, smoothly functioning brick ‘n mortar classroom. See this discussion at ELT Professionals on LinkedIn related to this question. Download the infographic.
There are many considerations. One might also think of online classroom technology through the lens of my fellow Canadian, Marshall McLuhan’s “tetrads” and consider what it enhances, reverses, retrieves and obsolesces.
A story before I wrap things up. In 2008 – 2009 I started a company and with an eye to the future, I tried to build a great online classroom. There wasn’t much on offer back then. Skype – like Zoom today wasn’t an option, rather an add-on, lacking lots of functionality. AdobeConnect and a few other business-focused applications didn’t address “classroom”. Alas, I had bad timing. For a lot of reasons but mostly because there wasn’t a lot of people with good bandwidth at that time. Also, technical problems involving latency, transfer, VoIP that hadn’t yet been solved. But if you don’t try, you’ll never succeed or as one famous hockey player said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” But that process did give me some perspective on what is needed in an online teaching environment.
There is a lot to be considered when designing and choosing an online teaching platform. Review the questions I’ve posed above and your own requirements. In my own evaluation, there still isn’t a lot out there really doing justice to online teaching. One solution I do recommend is LearnCube checking off most of the boxes I’ve outlined above.
In ending, there is a lot to consider but I DO believe an online classroom can be designed that is as strong or stronger than that one we are all so familiar with. Teachers, schools don’t have to sacrifice and see online instruction as a compromise and imitation.
Also published on Medium.
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