Facilitating Individual Learning Synchronously

This semester has been a very busy one. As all teachers know, each group of students and each student we teach is different from the last. Last semester I had a very independent class as a whole who did not generally find synchronous sessions to be necessary to attend. This semester, I have a group that finds my synchronous sessions to be the ideal place for them to complete work and I have many students who attend once or twice every single week.
In general, I would say that online education encourages students to be more independent than they would be asked to be in a brick and mortar setting. Students need to be able to find and access lesson material independently and need to take steps to ask for help when they don't understand something. This can be particularly difficult for students who special needs or who just learn better with structure facilitated by a teacher and direct instruction. I have students on both ends of the independence structure this semester and I have been able to create a synchronous environment that students who need more structure seem to enjoy and depend on each week.

I have written about my Open Art Room before, but this semester is has been used more than any other! I now have step-by-step powerpoint presentations of every single art project in my Art 1 class and students are eating it up. I put my slides on "roam" so many students can access different pieces of the content at the same time as needed. I have also been able to employ students' webcams for them to show me their work in progress and once it is complete. Open Art Room provides students a space where they can get the lesson content in a different way than reading the classroom pages and get individual help along the way.

Whatever it Takes

I have hit a little bit of a static time within my classroom these past few months. I haven't had many new teaching strategies I've been trying as I have been focusing much of my time leading my colleagues in completing the Ohio 5-Step Process as Teacher Based Teams. Leadership is also the focus of the 4th year of the Ohio Resident Educator Program which I have been working on as well. It feels refreshing that this week I have finally been able to focus more on helping individual students.
As I have said before, one of the strengths of an online environment is being about to work with students on an individual basis, in fact it is much more rare for me to work with students as a group. This week I have been focusing on engaging students who have not been successful on their own as of yet. Previous to this week I sent out letters, made calls to parents and students, and sent countless emails to attempt to engage these reluctant learners.

This week, I tried putting my money where my mouth is so to speak and invited these struggling students to one-on-one synchronous sessions. For these sessions I prepared slides that walk students through each step of every project in my course. I invited students to attend via phone calls and individual emails (with their names in the subject line!). Once a student entered the classroom I would direct the students through each project step-by-step using the slides on the board and demonstrating each step over the my document camera. These sessions did get pretty lengthy but students were willing to stay, with the goal of passing the course at the end of our time working together. I'll be honest, until this week I have had lackluster attendance in my synchronous sessions, but these catch up interventions are working their magic on some of my most difficult to reach students.

Shifting the Focus of Live Instruction

At the beginning of every new school year, we return to the classroom with new focuses, technology, and challenges. Attendance has always been a struggle with live instruction in teaching online for me. In the past it has been offered as a structured lesson once or twice a week which for many classes focused on direct instruction. These sessions have always been optional for high school students as the online environment attracts students who prefer or need flexibility in their education. Because the lessons were optional, it was common that we would only get 5-10% of our students attending them. I have always enjoyed teaching these lessons and I believe my students have gotten a lot out of them in the past.

This year however, my school is trying something new and emphasizing more activity-based instruction in the live sessions and more hours of availability for one-on-one help. I am available for students 3 hours a day, 3 days a week to help students one-on-one in an open live lesson. So far, I have discovered the following pros and cons about the new arrangement:

Pros:

• Students no longer need to make an appointment or call to get one-on-one help which should increase the number of students getting assistance they need.
• Because I have so much live instruction time, I find myself inviting individual students to work with me on assignments they struggled with (previous to this year, I invited students as an entire class to come work with me if they needed help rather than personal invitations).
• Helping students in a live session environment (instead of on the phone) is much more effective in the art classroom because I can employ visuals like my document camera or slides when working with them.
• The switch has encouraged me to make intervention lessons and target the students whose quiz and project scores are low.

Cons:

• Attendance for traditional live lessons is down quite a bit even though the lessons are still offered to students. I'm not sure if students feel like they need a structured lesson but I miss the community I feel it created.
• The switch to live sessions as a main form of help doesn't seem to have caught on completely with students yet so I suspect not all students are attending when they need help

As the year goes on I'm sure I will learn the most effective ways to use this new arrangement to help students and hope to increase achievement and engagement.

The Open Art Room - Creating Structure as a Team

During my first semester this year, I had a student ask to meet with me one-on-one in our synchronous classroom software, WebEx. Often when I am trying to help students get caught up with their work, we meet and discuss which assignments to focus on and I can show them examples of the projects and answer any questions. I also showed this student demonstrations using my document camera. He really found our meeting helpful and we continued to meet like this once a week until the semester ended. He told me that working with a teacher like this made him feel more like he was in a classroom, like he was not working alone.

This got me thinking, how can I regularly create this environment for students? After speaking with some of my colleagues, "Open Art" was born. Open Art is offered to students once a week. The session is run by myself and 3 other teachers and it is open to students in any of our sections. During the session, we walk students through each step of the weekly project, demonstrate over the webcam, and answer questions as students work individually. We allow students to work at their own pace by letting them roam freely through the slides after we have reviewed them. At the end of the session students will have their project done or developed enough to finish on their own.

Here is a sample presentation from one of our sessions:

We have seen consistent attendance at these sessions and find that students appreciate the extra structure that Open Art offers them. Students know that they can plan to do their art homework during the session and can have someone there to guide them through it. Also during these sessions, our special education teacher is able to open breakout rooms to work with students one-on-one. It has been wonderful to collaborate with other teachers on my team to make sure these sessions run smoothly. I will definitely be implementing Open Art again next year!