Remote teaching has become common today at many educational levels due to the Covid-19 pandemic. How to cope with this and what kinds of knowledge are required?

In face-to-face and remote teaching, the teacher’s role is the same: facilitate student’s learning, support student’s overallwellbeing and development, and take care of the learning environment. Nevertheless, remote teaching requires different pedagogical knowledge in these three aspects. Let’s use learning environment as an example. We can categorise three different learning environments: physical, social, and emotional learning environments.

‍

What to consider about the 3 learning environments in remote teaching

1) Physical learning environment

The physical environment differs a lot between face-to-face and remote learning. In face-to-face learning the students are in the classroom, but in remote learning the students are normally learning from home. The younger the students are, the more guidance they need in building a good physical learning environment. This includes the understanding the platform, devises, and applications used in teaching.

Question for the teacher: How to support students when they are using remote learning tools?

2) Social learning environment

Considering the social learning environment, it is important for the students to feel that they are part of the group.

Question for the teacher: How to facilitate a sense of belonging in remote teaching and learning?

3) Emotional learning environment

Psychological wellbeing and emotional learning environment are extremely important when learning remotely.

Questions for the teacher: How can students be seen and heard as they would be in the classroom? How do I differentiate remote teaching? How can I support and guide my students remotely?

Remote teaching offers great opportunities for learning

Remote teaching requires that the teachers have sufficient content, pedagogical, and technological knowledge. By combining these three knowledge areas, remote teaching can be successful and motivating for the students. At its best, remote learning can support the learning of broad competences and 21st century skills, such as ‘learning to learn’ skills, cooperation and communication online, and ICT skills. Even though remote teaching can be a bit challenging at first, it can also offer great opportunities for learning.

Our new professional development training module for teachers, which will be about succesfully teaching remotely, is now available for groups. For more information,

‍

March 18, 2021