Presentation Panel
Online Synchronous Delivery: How to Make it Work for Schools
Date Thursday, Nov 24 Time – RoomKoepenick III
As the pandemic forced schools to move learning online, many tried to replicate the face-to-face experience by delivering live online lessons. What have schools learned from this experience and what can we learn from the veterans: schools that already started with online education ages ago?
Frederick Dixon
Product Manager, BigBlueButton Inc., Canada
Frederick Dixon is the Project Manager for BigBlueButton, an open source virtual classroom built by teachers, for teachers. He also moonlights as the CEO of Blindside Networks.
Links
Torkil Valla
IT-Educator, Trøndelag nettskole, Norway
I work as a school administrator at Trøndelag nettskole, which is Trøndelag county's only online state school. I have tought English and history at Trøndelag nettskole since 2014, but I started working administratively from March 2019. I have a MA in historical reserach from University of Surry and I received my teacher training from The Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
From 2005-2014, I worked as a teacher at several upper secondary high schools in Trondheim, Norway.
Matt James
Head of Online Education, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, United Kingdom
Matt James has over 20 years' experience of working with schools and educational organisations around the world, developing strategy in complex environments, implementing change, developing and delivering products and balancing the needs of external stakeholders and customers. He has taught English, Media and Film Studies and held leadership roles at the International Baccalaureate, Fieldwork Education and Cambridge University Press & Assessment, where he has had a focus on professional development and support for teachers. In his current role as Head of Online Education, he leads Cambridge's work with online schools.
Moderator
Richard Powers
Online Operations & Learning Designer for Virtual Exchange, University of Stuttgart (Professional School of Education), Germany
A well-known and recognized e-Learning expert, Prof. Emer. Richard Powers is currently a Professor, Trainer and Learning Designer with the University of Stuttgart in Germany, where he teaches blended learning courses to develop competences in digitalization and diversity for pre-service teachers across five universities. He is an EU eTwinning Ambassador for Germany.
He teaches Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Project-Based Learning with eTwinning & Erasmus+ for Interculturality, and Digital Accessibility. Prof. Powers won the 2022 Teaching Award for Excellence at Stuttgart University, receiving Euro 10.000 for his research and future projects.
Remotely, Professor Powers develops, implements and evaluates UDL and synchronous "online-live" training programs for 4,000 faculty at City Colleges of Chicago.
He routinely teaches and trains faculty in Stuttgart and Chicago how to teach online with Moodle, ILIAS and Brightspace in webinars via Webex and Zoom. His DAAD and eTwinning/Erasmus+ virtual exchange & blended mobility classes involve student teachers from Germany, Turkey, the Ukraine, North Macedonia, France, Spain, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and Nepal.
Links
Who's Zoomin' Who? Learner Engagement in Synchronous Online Lessons, Matt James
In this presentation, Matt James will share recent research of K-12 teachers around the world about the challenges of live lesson delivery as well as perspectives from some Cambridge-registered online schools about what works and where the challenges still lie.
The pandemic forced many of us to move our learning online and deliver live lessons using tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Many tried to replicate the face-to-face experience and struggled not to let the technology impact the learning.
So what have we learned over the last couple of years and what can we all learn from the approach of online schools in this area? How did K-12 teachers fare in this experience and what are educators at online schools doing to ensure that synchronous learning is always effective and purposeful?
In this session we will share the perspectives from a number of Cambridge-approved schools around the following questions:
- How do you structure successful live lessons?
- Cameras on or off?
- How to prepare your teachers and trainers for effective live delivery?
- How can we best keep learners engaged in live online lessons?
- How to keep your learners on task?
At the end of the session, there will be an opportunity for you to share your experiences of live lesson delivery.
How Does Trøndelag Nettskole Provide Engaging Education to Pupils and Adult Learners?, Torkil Valla
In this presentation and based on their experience of 10 years of online education to secondary pupils and adults, the Norwegian online school Trøndelag Nettskole wil share some key elements that have to be in place to make online education work.
The scientific studies that were undertaken by several universities in the wake of the corona outbreak lend support to the factors that the school has identified about how to make online education work:
- Learning design is vital when the pupils/students don’t meet the teacher/instructor physically.
- Online education, mostly asynchronous or blended, requires meetings between teacher/instructor in small groups or one to one, where cameras are turned on.
- Flexibility and teacher-pupil meetings in small groups or one to one are vital if you are to succeed in giving education to adult learners. These are learners that are often prevented from furthering their skills because of work, family life, health issues or other constraints.
The insights from this session will benefit schools that want to take online education one step further or schools that provide online education to pupils/students in remote areas and are not able to provide study programmes due to small class sizes, shortage of qualified teachers, etc.
Building the Next Generation of Virtual Classrooms for Everyone, Frederick Dixon
This presentation will inspire you by what is possible by having a world-class virtual classroom that is freely available to anyone in the world. The BigBlueButton project is an open source project built by teachers, for teachers, focused on building the next generation of virtual classrooms.
Overview
- Difference between a video conferencing system and virtual classroom, and the gaps in the former that are provided by the latter.
- What the next generation of virtual classroom systems can become.
- BigBlueButton road map to help teachers in four areas.