What matters in online learning?
We seem to be running more and more online learning programs about online learning, which is kinda weird and recursive. But fun!
During this past year, we have seen an explosion of online learning happening. We’ve done a bunch of our own, and supported many to do theirs. Every time we teach, we change our opinions about what matters.
A lot of this comes down to the fact that we change what we think to suit the people we are working with, every time. In order to try and make some sense of this, I thought it might be fun to try and write down some our thoughts, as of September, 2021.
Basic principles:
Regardless of content or context, these things matter.
- Your second course will be so much better than your first. This is true for your personal teaching experience, your students, their outcomes, etc. Treat every class as the opportunity to make the next one the best experience you’ve ever made.
- Learning is a team sport, there are no spectators. When in doubt, do all or part of this process with other people. Make things with past students. Current students. Small groups. Partners in crime.
- Learning is about teachers and students communicating. Remove anything that gets in the way of that connection. We only use videos in place of lectures so that the lecture time can be spent communicating as team! Eat together, take time to enjoy one another’s company. Remember that students are teachers too, so student to student fun counts!
P.S. When in doubt, go and do a Kaospilot course.
Teaching skills, knowledge, attitudes & values:
Any great teaching is clear with its goals, the deep heart of the learning.
To explain how we structure this, I’m using the SKAVs framework, shamelessly stolen from Simon at Kaospilot, who is probably the single biggest influence on how we think about learning. It’s a nice way to describe the fundamentals of what a course is all about:
- Skills (the physical things we do):
Online facilitation, making videos and templates, managing cohorts, listening, giving feedback, and holding space for learning. - Knowledge (stuff that happens in our heads):
Structures for learning design, evidence-based education, story structures, cinematography, learning arches and basic technology. - Attitudes (reactions to what the world throws at us):
Praxis-first, imperfectionism, designing with students always, making things fun, teacher as coach, learning as shared storytelling. - Values (what we hold in our hearts):
“Your second ___ will be so much better than your first”, because learning is a process best understood through interaction and love. 🥰
Topics and problem areas:
Here’s a laundry list of things are worth knowing about when creating online learning. This is broad, so a useful way of reading this list is to ask “Are we doing this dot point when we teach online? If not, how might we?”
Think of it like a check-list:
- Learn online, not alone: Why learning is all about people interacting.
- Facilitation: Holding space where learning can happen.
- Self-direction: Allowing students to redefine their learning.
- Structure: Building clear boundaries for an online session, a video, or a series of tasks that a student will complete on their own.
- LX (Learning Experience) Design: Designing ‘launch and land’ style learning, and why it’s similar to UX and other journey-focussed design.
- Tech: Why it’s mostly unimportant, how to make it easy to use.
- Templates: Creating self-explanatory tools that people can fill out in small groups to make learning practical, even when we’re physically apart.
- Science: What makes learning happen from an evidence point of view?
- Blended learning praxis: Small group work, bouncing between ‘together and apart’ modes of learning and interaction.
- Cohorts: Magic numbers of people, structuring check-ins and check-outs, group feedback, chat-groups, office hours, shared docs, etc.
- Online engagement: What ‘engagement’ is and why students are often so unengaged online. Making the implicit classroom explicit online.
- Concentrating on the right stuff: Making videos that address problems, instead of animations. Facilitate people together vs lectures on Zoom. Finding out what matters and avoiding time wasted on boring stuff.
- Cameras: Looking and feeling good on video, why it matters.
- Art: Why teaching is like being an artist (not a technician).
The above is a grab-bag of ideas. What I personally find fascinating is that the above list is fourteen items, but only two are about tech and cameras. If this was a fourteen-week course, only two of those weeks would be spent fiddling with gear. The rest would be the important stuff. This is a dramatically different mix to what many folks expect when they first talk to us. Most people’s first question is “what camera do I buy?”
Okay fine, let’s actually answer that…
What camera should I buy?
A few levels of camera gear:
- Newbie: Don’t. You already have a camera on your phone.
- Intermediate: Don’t! Get a nice lav mic and structure your lessons better.
- Pro: Leo’s article on tech we use to film natural interviews.
What really matters: Online learning is about creating and holding the space where learning can happen. Tech often gets in the way of this, so the minimal tech to create space is all you need. Simple video chat often works best.
If you really want to go and buy some gear, Leo has made this shopping list of items at various price points to suit your video production capacity.
BONUS: WILL’S MAGICAL GOLDEN #1 TRICKS!
Bonus round: Another bag o’ gold that we’ve collected over the years. It’s about online, but many are true for facilitation more broadly:
- Every teacher teaches one course their whole life: Like Guillermo says that every director makes the same movie over and over, every educator teaches the same course. Figure out what yours is about. E.g. Will is always teaching: “Gathering people to try things” while Leo’s all about “Expressing identity by helping other people to express theirs.”
- Meet the student where they’re at: This is teaching 101. Yeah!
- Learning is fractal: Lessons are ‘shaped’ like courses, multiple courses are shaped like a full curriculum. A 30 minute class can be shaped like a full course, and works better when it is. Be clear on the premise of the program, and call out the promise of the premise when it happens!
- Start fast: Start on time, get straight to the stuff that matters, no fluff. First time, every time, set the standard. End bang on time, too! Keep it snappy to encourage snappiness.
- Collective feedback: Ask for thumbs up for general understanding. Ask everyone to type in the chat. Post-it note broad feedback. Gauge “level of interest” with hands up. Do anything and everything to ensure that everyone is engaged. Get the feel of the room often.
- Give everyone something to do: Even if it’s listening in a particular way while someone else is speaking, e.g. “When people are introducing themselves, think about what you could do to help that person, an intro or a skill or a gift you could give. Send them a message if you can!”
- We are the right people: Whoever shows up is exactly perfect, because they are here. If it’s one person, or twice as many as you expected, that’s exactly the gift we needed. Work with it.
- 3–4 people is the magic number for breakouts + small groups, while 12 people is the magic number for a video-chat based cohort.
- Start over-structured: Then loosen towards the group’s needs. This might mean pausing half-way through and throwing out your whole plan!
- Facilitation is about momentum: Keep the energy where you want it. Don’t be afraid to be frantic, relaxed, whatever, as long as you’re conscious of it and holding momentum.
- Share your small screen: I.e. a laptop screen, not your massive desktop screen. It’ll be the same size as most and thus easier to see.
- Surface the room’s wisdom: A class of 12 people knows 12 times more than you do. Use it! Do everything you can do bring it into the space.
- Class > individual: The collective experience is more important than any individual’s experience. If only one person is having a great time in a class of 12, 11 people are having a bad time.
- Use the chat: It should be full and active, to keep people engaged. If there’s so much going on in the chat you can’t keep up, you’re winning.
- Give breaks: Breaks help us consolidate. Our favourite is a 5 min bio break every 25 minutes, so you can have nice half hour chunks.
- Check in with a co-facilitator: When people are in breakout rooms, check in on the feel of the room with other facilitators, what to do next, what to scrap / spend longer on, etc. Same deal after each class. Same deal again at the end of each program. If you don’t have a co-facilitator, get one.
- Be clearly intimate and open: Intimate = no recording = clear safety. Open = clearly inviting people in, sharing pains and breakthroughs, etc. Feelings matter! Scrap the formality, it sucks the life out of the room.
- Do a check in: 5 mins, 1:1, start + end of each session. Clearly guided, e.g. “Talk about what you want to get from today” or less guided like “talk about whatever you want.” This time is not ‘lost’, it is gained.
- Gallery view: On video chat, encourage people to see each other. Invite people to change their name to their first name + how they’re feeling at the start of sessions. Change it again halfway through the class and take a moment to notice how we’re feeling. Help people turn off ‘self view’ if they want, so they’re not watching themselves all the time.
- Let people hide: Not everyone wants to perform, so make room for introverts. Instead of “everyone will X”, invite half the people to X, and ask everyone else to contribute something of value, e.g. feedback, ideas, etc. Everyone can work to their strengths, not everyone’s a talker.
- Model behaviours: Clear instruction is the curriculum, but how we do things is the hidden curriculum. This is how to teach attitudes.
- Eat together: Great conversation happens over food (sobremesa!) so find a way to do this in your class. Maybe people could bring a snack, talk over lunch, and then have some time after lunch to be alone and reflect / relax. Isn’t it weird that we eat alone and work together? What’s wrong with eating together and then doing the deep work alone?
- Watch yourself watching yourself: Notice how you notice, and when you intervene. Even better, have a co-facilitator check in to help you adjust through a session. Have them take down notes and ideas, and debrief afterwards. (Second order cybernetics is fascinating!)
- Videos are content, in person work is coaching: Use video / alone work to get someone started, use coaching to support and fix problems, not teach. If you’re saying it every time you teach the class, consider making a video instead. (And then figure it out together in class!)
- Build shared artefacts: Create ways for everyone to share and easily see things as a cohort. Actively use these resources in the class to model the behaviour of sharing. Make simple shared docs / spreadsheets / whiteboards that everyone can edit together. Make it feel like a shared studio space with stuff all over the walls. Make it fun, messy, and a bit stupid so everyone feels like they can contribute.
- Facilitation is an environment, not a behaviour: It’s not instruction nor performance. You don’t have to be a brilliant speaker. If you’re speaking, then they’re not. (I think this may also be true for leadership.)
And last of all, remember:
Your next course will be so much better than your first! 🥰
Psst: Every single course is your first course. Make it again and again! And again! Then invite your students to help you rebuild it from scratch, again!
