Remote Teaching - what should you consider?

5 May, 2020 —

Remote Teaching – what should you consider?

We summarise some key findings from the EEF’s rapid evidence review

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by Bradford Research School
on the 5th May 2020

The circumstances we find ourselves in are completely unprecedented. And because of that, schools are making decisions where there is no clear evidence base to follow, no proven models to replicate. Thankfully the EEF have undertaken a rapid evidence review to identify any evidence that can support remote learning. While they are very clear to point out the limitations – no studies looked at measured the impact of learning during a global pandemic – we can make some recommendations. In this post, we consider how to design lessons for remote teaching.

Live or recorded?

According to TeacherTapp, there were only 1% of state primary and 4% of state secondary teachers delivering live lessons in the week after lockdown. Slightly larger numbers were asking pupils to view recorded lessons. The percentage has grown further into lockdown, with nearly a quarter of primary and secondary teachers engaging in some kind of lesson delivery. See here for more.

Recorded lessons may be chosen because they are easier to edit for content, they can be recorded whenever suits the teacher, watched whenever it suits the pupil, and they are permanent, so can be watched again and again. We also have online platforms such as Oak National Academy or Hegarty Maths which have pre-recorded lessons and explanations. Live lessons can feel more personal. If managed well, there can be a closer degree of interaction, including questioning and formative assessment. There is some evidence that peer collaboration can be helpful – live lessons can make this easier, although certainly not easy.

While there may be much debate within schools of which works best, according to the EEF’s evidence review, there is “no clear difference between teaching in real time (“synchronous teaching”) and alternatives (“asynchronous teaching”).” Therefore, schools should work within the parameters of what they are comfortable with if delivering remote lessons – but there is little difference between live and recorded.

What makes a good remote lesson?

Paul Kirschner, in his ResearchED Home talk ‘Ten Tips for Emergency Remote Teaching’, made the point that we are not distance teaching, we are emergency remote teaching, and there is a difference. But there are principles that can guide us. Back to the evidence review, where the EEF state: “Ensuring the elements of effective teaching are present – for example clear explanations, scaffolding and feedback – is more important than how or when they are provided.”

For example, if we focus on explaining new concepts, much of the principles that would hold for effective face-to-face teaching still hold. Knowing your pupils’ prior knowledge is still important; planning for misconceptions is still important; elaboration on material is still important. Where things may be more difficult is assessing that prior knowledge, checking for those misconceptions and asking questions that elaborate on the learning.

Routines for learning are very important in these circumstances, and should be planned and shared just as in a ‘real’ classroom. This blog from Teach Like A Champion shares one approach. The use of consistent routines online will help to support pupils with some of the demands of online learning in a very difficult time.

The advice to teachers delivering online lessons is that the medium is less important than the quality of teaching. While adaptations must be made for the medium and the circumstances, good teaching is good teaching.

Access to technology

Despite the best of intentions, remote teaching will fail if the technology is not there. On one level this means that schools must consider the best platform for facilitating online learning and train teachers well to use it. However, the most pressing concern is pupils’ access to technology. Apologies to philosophers, but if a lesson is live streamed, and no one is there to watch it, does it really exist?

A constant theme of the evidence around this area is that access to technology is a barrier. In the report, the EEF state: “Many reviews identify lack of technology as a barrier to successful remote instruction.” One evaluation they refer to in the report is that of MathsFlip, a ‘flipped learning’ approach with a positive impact. They encountered problems with internet access which were mitigated by the approach:

At home, the main challenge was internet access. Despite the technical problems, alternatives were found to provide pupils with the materials and activities if they could not access them at home. One common example across the schools was the use of after-school or lunch clubs. Students who did not have home internet access, or who had not done the work at home, were invited to participate in the clubs in order to ensure that all the pupils had covered the content necessary to participate in the maths lesson. One teacher also mentioned that some activities could be downloaded at school to avoid problems with the internet at home.

The solutions offered here cannot easily be overcome in the post-lockdown world, so schools must think carefully about the approaches which require access if the approaches further entrench disadvantage. It is important that support is provided to ensure that disadvantaged pupils – who are more likely to face these technological barriers – have access to technology.

The rapid evidence review is one of a number of resources produced by the EEF to support home learning in the current climate. See them all here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources