The Virtual Classroom - What can make it an exciting experience?

This school academic year is not your typical "business as usual" experience for both students and teachers alike.

A usual back-to-school year means teachers are ready with their plans and routines, and students are prepared to follow through. Generally, teachers dwell on daily routines, instruction methods, student participation processes, assignments. They also spend time tweaking the evaluation process to monitor the progress of their students. The whole idea is to create an engaged instructional environment for better academic outcomes.  

However, this upcoming school year, many teachers will be operating in a fully online, non-physical environment. If you're one of them, it means you'll likely need to completely adapt to a new set of design for your curriculum. At the same time, you want to accomplish student participation and adequate learning outcomes. But what standards do you need to adapt, and how can you do so effectively? Here are some possible thoughts you may want to ponder:

Imagine, absorb, and accept the environment. Exploit the situation for becoming better.

While this online education infrastructure may be new, you may like to capitalize on this situation as an opportunity. Convert your classrooms into an episodic video series that is both interesting and meaningful. Here are a few examples of adapting to a remote learning environment: 

• Be Mobile-Ready: Not everyone has the same device or internet connection. Design your user experience of instruction videos that are adaptable to all types of devices, especially screen size (laptop, tablets, or mobile).

• Make it 'Idiot' Proof: Keep interaction with students easy, with a few clicks. Many of them may not be savvy enough with complicated computer instructions or handling.

• Get a UX expert: User Experience (UX) experts understand consumers' behavior across screen dimensions. Online academic content is not just about recording your classroom videos or doing a Zoom video call. It is all about replicating the learning environment of a physical classroom to a screen. Only an expert in the field can make this with precision and finesse.

• Keep it Bitesize: Don't just make a 45-minute video of your classroom lecture. Break it down into chunks of 10-15-minute video clips followed by interactions.

Think of yourself as a Movie Maker and not just a Teacher

This may be a very tall task, but it is not difficult to convert your teaching skills to fantastic learning content. Get a story partner, and you will be surprised to find out how you can transform yourself into a Teacher Actor Hero. Typically, great teachers are also great performing artists. They perform in the live theatre of classrooms. It is just a little tweak to convert this physical theatre of classes into a movie series. Here are some interesting points:

• Convert Lesson Goals as a Series: Convert your lesson goals as nuggets of narratives. Like a movie, you have to follow the cinematic grammar of creating curiosity, anticipation, fun, and engagement. Now your students are not in the classroom. They are in an unmonitored environment, either in their living rooms or their study rooms. You have to serve them with something interesting. Think cinema!

• Lesson Plan and Assignments: Do not replicate your classical homework or home assignment that you were used to. Create quizzes, comment boxes, etc. Ideally, make multiple-choice questions. Create a buzz on the screens when they cross lesson levels.

• Create multiple lesson progress paths: Unlike a physical classroom, things do not happen serially in an online environment. Allow them to hop, skip, and jump. However, maintain lesson prerequisites, which means you will not be allowed to go to lesson B if you have not completed lesson A.

Now more than ever, students are going to need a little extra push to stay engaged. You can create that push into a pull with your fantastic content and online strategy.

Be Social Media Savvy

This is a suitable time for schools to become social media savvy. Present pandemic times are quite vulnerable. It will be great for schools to provide their students with an online community where they can fall back on each other, share, participate, and engage. Parents can equally participate in such conversations too. In the social media world, there are no physical walls. There are just clusters of individuals who flock together in a free and open manner. Create that fascinating, likable community for your school. Here are some ideas we have learned based on our research across hundreds of schools globally:

• Your School should be on Facebook: You must create a Facebook group of your school. You may also establish separate ones based on your classes. Make this an invitation-only page and a closed group to join only students and parents who are bonafide. Designate a social media administrator. You may select a teacher who is savvy on the internet for this purpose.

• Create Discussion Threads in Chats using platforms like Messenger: Current generations love to talk with their fingers. Adapt to such times. You may dwell on various academic and extracurricular topics. Have some of your teachers as administrators to participate in such activities and discussion forums. You will be surprised how Social Media forums foster great learnings, too, in addition to entertainment.

• Be on Instagram: Use this platform to recognize talent, achievers, prize winners in your online school. This can serve as an engaging notice board for both students and parents. Make 10-30 seconds video clips, GIFs with messages, announcements. You may also try and post curated content available on social media platforms.

When virtualization happens by force, innovations happen. Most significant difficulties have been the crucible of the most exceptional discoveries. Sign up with a story partner. Convert your school to an engaging, inspiring, fun, and an ever available institution, anywhere and anytime.