Online learning: A new reality for schools during Covid-19

Educational institutions in most countries are now closed to contain the spread of coronavirus, resulting in the home-schooling of millions of students globally.

Schools in India have been working hard in partnership with the parents and educational boards in creating a comprehensive online infrastructure for the effective remote learning of their students. One such school is HVB Global Academy, a Cambridge International School in Mumbai which is working with its teachers to interact better with students.

Here are some excerpts from Dr Ms Chandrakanta R Pathak, Principal & CEO of HVB Global Academy, where she is talking about the use of digital tools such as 'Resource Plus' which is a range of materials for teachers of Cambridge International schools, designed to provide detailed support to them on some key skills and topics.

She also speaks about the other digital tools and teaching measures the school has undertaken to adapt to the new reality and support its teachers and students with learning in these difficult times.

Online/web-based learning programme

In light of Covid-19 pandemic, a wide array of public and private services has been suspended countrywide. These services include schools, colleges, and universities. Among these entire how are you continuing teaching your students remotely?

We understand the importance of education in the cognitive and affective development of young learners and the ill effects of prolonged lack of quality instruction on the overall development of learners. Therefore, we have been hard at work in creating a comprehensive digital infrastructure for effective remote teaching.

We are happy to report that our rigorous experimentation, which began in the third week of March, with various remote teaching tools and platforms have been able to dust deliver effective online lessons based on active learning approaches and to provide our learners with differentiated support and guidance.

We are now able to remotely provide our learners with all core classes that are mandatory in Cambridge International's curriculum and a number of co-curricular and extra-curricular classes which include dance, music, art, and robotics.

Keeping in mind the toll the home confinement exacts on young learners, we are providing learners with online counselling sessions with our in-house counsellors. To provide our learners with quality instruction, we are employing a variety of digital tools in a coherent fashion. Following is an account of the tools and methods in current use.

Online tools used for teaching: Hangouts Meet, Zoom, Google Classroom etc

To teach remotely, a teacher requires a way to:

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• communicate with learners in real-time,
• share with learners a variety of resources in different file formats,
• assign them individual or collaborative work,
• assess learners' understanding as it evolves during the lesson and make changes in the teaching strategy to improve overall learning outcome-formative assessment and evaluate their learning at the end of chapters/unit for grading purposes-summative assessment,
• provide individual learners with feedback on their work for further improvement.

We use Hangouts Meet and Zoom to connect with learners in real-time. Whereas the latter requires a classwork management platform, and Classroom application by Google to organize and manage all teaching-learning activities which include sharing resources with learners, designing worksheets and tests, assigning individual and collaborative work, providing feedback to individual learners, and grading.

We also use Jamboardapp (as a virtual whiteboard), ed puzzle, Hot Potato, Kahoot, and various other online apps to enable learners to actively engage with the content. In addition to these, we also upload resources such as notes, videos, and presentations on Edusprint, a native digital classwork management system, from where parents and students can access and download all of the resources.

1. Hangouts Meet

A video-conferencing application available exclusively to the users of G Suite. It allows a teacher with a G Suite account to schedule a meeting using Google Calendar and invite learners to connect online via their phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop.

The invitation can be sent to anyone with a regular gmail.com account; however, the meeting can be initiated only through a G Suite account. Aside from video conferencing, Meet allows the host to share their live screen with the participants. This feature comes in handy when the teacher wants to show learners a live presentation, a virtual whiteboard, a video, etc.

This is especially useful for math lessons. We use Jamboard from Google as a virtual whiteboard. The G Suite Basic and G Suite for Education allow the host to invite 100 participants to a live video conference. Those with G Suite Enterprise for Education can invite a greater number of participants and can also record the proceedings of the meeting.

2. Zoom

For those who do not have a G Suite account, Zoom is a good alternative of Meet. Zoom is another online video-conferencing application similar to Hangouts Meet but not affiliated with Google.

Like Meet, Zoom also features a screen sharing option along with in-built whiteboard that the teachers can share with learners which is great for teaching remotely. The free version of the application allows continuous streaming of only 40 min after which the host needs to restart the meeting.

We have put in place a set of strict policies and guidelines to regulate the use of Hangouts Meet and Zoom so as to protect learners' online privacy and to address the recently reported security issues associated with Zoom.

Our online teaching policy is attached to this document. One important advantage Zoom has over Meet is that it allows the host to record the meeting even with the free version. This facility is available in Meet only for the G Suite Enterprise plan.

3. Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a classroom management app that relieves the teacher from much of the administrative tasks and can be accessed through most G Suite and gmail.com accounts. This app features a host of useful applications that can help teachers streamline online classroom work, track learners' progress, and better engage them in online learning activities.

Following are some of the features of the Classroom that teachers may find useful:

A. Online assignment and assessment:

The only way to measure the effectiveness of a lesson is to measure students' learning outcome at the end of the class. For this reason, provision for online assignment and assessment in Classroom is perhaps the most useful feature of the Classroom app as it allows the teacher to measure and track learners' progress and modify their teaching strategy as need be.

This feature enables the teacher to design worksheets and assessments specific to learners' needs. The platform also differentiated assessment and support as it allows the teacher to design learner-specific worksheets.

The type of questions the teacher can create include short answer, paragraph, multiple choice, checkboxes, dropdown, multiple choice grid, etc. The app also comes with a built-in auto-grader. Moreover, it allows the teacher to provide learners with feedback on a learner's response to individual questions.

B. Sharing and managing resources

The platform allows the teacher to share resources in a variety of file formats with learners. A most useful feature is perhaps the ability to schedule the release of materials and assessment at specific times in the future.

C. Incorporating YouTube videos

Classroom allows the teacher to incorporate YouTube video into assignment and quiz and design questions around it. The video can be played as the learner is working on the assignment or the quiz.

D. Managing grades

Much of the grade management is automatic but the teacher has full control over changing grades as need be.

E. Managing people in class

The app gives the teacher complete authority to remove anyone from the class. This is an important provision as it allows the teacher to remove suspicious accounts that may compromise the online safety and privacy of learners.

F. Online collaborative learning

The classroom is compatible with other Google products including Google Docs, Google Sheet, Google Slides, etc. that can be used to design a number of assignments that require learners to work collaboratively.

In our experience, the Classroom is one of the best free online classwork management system that enables teachers to streamline classroom activities and implement a variety of teaching strategies consistent with modern pedagogic methods. Snapshots of exemplar worksheets and quiz are attached with the document.

Schedule for current academic classes

Since the inception of online classes about three weeks ago in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have experimented with various online platforms and have used our learning to incorporate into our online curriculum as many co-curricular activities as the current technology and circumstances allow.

Aside from regular academic learning, we now also offer learners classes in music, dance, art, and robotics. We place a significant premium on our learners' Happiness Quotient (HQ). We believe that happy learners are better learners. To this end, we have availed our learners' online counselling to help them through these trying times.

We have also introduced online yoga and meditation sessions for students, and parents are welcome to join. In addition, to alleviate stress and anxiety, we also play flash mob music after every class where teachers and students partake in singing and dancing activities remotely.

Another exemplar schedule for current academic and some of our co-curricular and extra-curricular classes are included along with this document.

Students understanding and progress

Formative assessments are essential to assess the effectiveness of our teaching strategies, plan for future teaching-learning activities, to keep track of individual learner's progress, and to provide them with useful feedback for improvement. Not being able to interact with learners face-to-face has rendered many conventional means of formative assessment useless.

However, tools such as Kahoot, Hot Potato, edpuzzle, in-class and post-class questions and worksheets on Google Classroom have been of significance in assessing our learners' progress and understanding of their learning needs.

Tools such as Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms are naturally compatible with the Classroom app with enable teachers to 'flip the classroom' and help learners develop presentation, language, communication, and technical skills. Flipped classrooms provide teachers yet another opportunity to assess learners' understanding and progress.

For the summative assessment, we mostly use Google Forms as they give teachers a variety of question formats to choose from and design concept-appropriate questions. Forms allow teachers to include images, graphs, audios, and videos from YouTube, and design questions around these media.

This has expanded teachers' ability to assess and evaluate learners' understanding in ways that were not possible with conventional testing. In addition, Forms also enable teachers to automate, to a certain degree, grading and generic feedback which, in turn, afford teachers time to give more detailed and helpful feedback to individual learners.

In fact, online tools along with Google's Classroom app has helped streamline and automate much of teachers' administrative work so that they are now better able to assess learners, provide them with better-differentiated support and guidance. Following are snippets from an online quiz on IGCSE Chemistry (0620) designed in Forms.

Challenges in executing study plans

The primary challenges we faced at the start of our remote teaching programme included:

• finding an appropriate class duration
• training teachers, students, and parents in the use of digital tools
• incorporating formative assessments in virtual classroom practice
• implementing active learning strategies
• ensuring students' online safety and privacy

With over three weeks of rigorous experimentation and experience with digital tools, we have been able to address these issues to the satisfaction of our teachers, students, and parents.

An important tool that has helped us tailor our use of online tools and platforms is constant feedback between teachers and learners or parents.

For students' online safety and privacy, we have drafted a set of policies and guidelines to exposing students to inappropriate online content and to thwart any attempts made by third-party agents to elicit students' information.

Another challenge we initially faced was student discipline. We were able to successfully address the issue by collaborating with parents, by using techniques such as 'no hands show' during the class and by using tools that allow teachers to have better oversight on learners' activities.

We are particular about timely attendance and mark students absent if they fail to join the class within the first ten minutes. We have also found that along with age-and content-appropriate formative assessment and feedback, grading learners' work at key times also helps significantly in engaging their attention.

Change in teaching and learning process

These are trying times for the entire school community. However, with a good support system and mutual co-operation, it is possible to transform the difficult and inopportune challenges into opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Transition to remote teaching and learning has been challenging but also refreshing; faculty and administrative staff are an opportunity to collaborate and employ their collective creativity, skills, and knowledge to address novel challenges.

To help the teaching faculty adapt to remote teaching and learning, we have provided them with 24 x 7 technical assistance so that they can better focus on teaching activities. We have provided them with an array of online teaching tools that they use to make their lessons effective. We have a common platform where teachers can discuss and address the challenges they are facing.

Given the current constraints, we do not require teachers to complete the syllabus that had been planned at the beginning of the academic year. However, we are happy to report that after the initial difficulties with the new mode of teaching, teachers are now comfortable with tools and methods used for remote teaching and are able to cover the syllabus according to the original planned.

In addition, we also, organize online activities (such as Bingo) for teachers that allow these to meet and greet and have a hearty laugh. These measures have helped alleviate emotional and mental stress, maintain a positive outlook and give a sense of community to teachers.

Two stars and wishes about this drastic change on the education fraternity

Two stars: Sudden change in our modus operandi posed many difficult challenges on technical and psychological fronts; however, new learning we gained from our experiences has fundamentally changed our views on pedagogic methods.

We have discovered a host of digital tools that can be integrated with regular classroom practice to make the teaching-learning process more differentiated and effective. Over the past three weeks, we have been able to incorporate these tools into our online practice and deliver engaging lessons.

On a typical school day, we conduct more than a hundred online classes to meet the learning needs of over a thousand students. We have been able to do accomplish this feat in less than three weeks' time thanks to the persistent and concerted effort of the team at HVB Global Academy committed to further the development of our learners.

Two Wishes: Crises have a way of bringing to light flaws in system design that otherwise go unnoticed. Covid-19 pandemic has been one such crisis for us. It has helped us understand the limitations of our current digital infrastructure. Therefore, we are now restructuring the digital infrastructure in our school and working on creating a framework that would better streamline teachers' work and provide them a great deal of flexibility in how they deliver a lesson.

We are also offering our teaching faculty a training programme aimed at helping them incorporate modern technology in their everyday classroom practice. The programme sessions will beheldonthe4th Saturday of every month.

On these days, facilitators will also get opportunities to develop their digital skills by engaging learners and delivering lessons remotely. All instructors and facilitators at HVB Global Academy is required to attend these training sessions.

We sincerely hope that these measures will us help improve the teaching-learning experience for both learners and teachers, and to be better prepared to weather challenging times in the future.

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