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Research School Network: Best Bets for Remote Explanations Reflections on our webinar


Best Bets for Remote Explanations

Reflections on our webinar

by Sandringham Research School
on the

Karen Roskilly, Research School Lead

This term the Sandringham Research School team have developed a series of webinars to explore our best bets during remote learning. Each webinar is designed to be a quick hit of information, providing a succinct overview of some key remote learning strategies in only 30 minutes of time.

It is also worth noting that these webinars are very much based on our experiences in our school context, which uses the Google Suite. As such, the majority of ideas and strategies are based around using Google technologies.

The first of these webinars focused on remote explanations and how to maximise these to best effect during remote learning. The webinar explored a number of possible ways to engage students in both synchronous and asynchronous lessons.

Much of the discussion in this webinar was underpinned by research into working memory, long term memory and cognitive load.

More information on this can be found in the work of Sweller and his cognitive load theory. This article from the Chartered College of Teaching provides a brief overview that is very readable. This blog from colleagues at Huntington Research School is also particularly useful.

We have also found the following books particularly useful:

First up in the webinar was how to go about explaining new ideas and concepts. Teacher explanations should be designed not to overload students’ working memory and should be linked to prior learning, which enables new information to be linked to existing schema.

Strategies including considering split attention, pace, chunking of information and how to most effectively display information on powerpoint slides were considered.

Next up was how to use modelling effectively when teaching remotely. A number of potential approaches were discussed, including using a visualiser, jamboard and an additional device like an ipad.

And finally we looked at using Loom to pre-record explanations.

The full webinar can be found below.


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