How we Built an Online School — Our Playbook for Building Digital Classrooms
Note from Joey: I started writing this as a quick guide for teachers who aren’t used to teaching online, and it turned into an epic. This is an information-dense piece, so please share it with any fellow educators that you think might benefit.
It was 5 minutes before class started, and I was still in my PJs. I had my web browser open and logged in to my class’s private Facebook Group, and the butter was just starting to melt in my mug of coffee (I was also on Keto, but that’s another Medium article). I was prepared…and I had never felt less so.
It was day 1 of the first online class I’d ever taught, and I wasn’t sure it would work.
If you’re reading this in 2020, it’s likely you find yourself in a similar situation. You’re asked to present material you’ve taught for years in an entirely new way: Online. I’m sure the concept of an online class isn’t strange to you, but the practical reality of making and administering such a thing might be brand new… and frankly, a little terrifying.
As someone who has taught the old-school way — in a classroom with other humans — and the virtual way — with those same humans over the internet — I thought I might be able to help newly conscripted online instructors get their footing.
I’m going to lay out the online teaching philosophy that we use at School of Motion, and I’ll share the software and tools (mostly free) you can use to build your own online school or classroom.
Fellow teacher, I feel you. I Got U.
Like most teachers, I realized at some point that I have been teaching people my whole life. I was always interested in learning new things and then sharing my knowledge with others. That passion took me from a career in commercial design and animation (AKA Motion Design) to a classroom in Sarasota, FL.
I taught traditionally (in person) at the Ringling College of Art & Design for one year. I truly loved my time there. The faculty and students are some of the best in the world. However, I also got to do all of the other things teachers do, such as:
- Give the exact same lecture 3 times a week
- Struggle to engage the class in conversation
- Answer the same question 10 times with different students.
I saw all of the advantages of the in-person classroom, but also all of the disadvantages. After a year, I left to build the online version of my classes.
I point out the challenges of in-person teaching because going online can, to some extent, solve them. You shouldn’t fear this transition; you should be thrilled because you’re able to teach differently through the magic of modern technology. I know it’s scary to have to learn an entirely new way of operating, but I’ll ask that you be open to two ideas: You can do this, and you’ll be amazed at how effective teaching can be online.
I’m going to share our playbook from my company, School of Motion. We are an online school for Motion Designers, and currently teach thousands of students each year the skills and principals they need to be successful in our industry. Every single student has a 100% online experience, and our alumni can be found in nearly 100 countries all over the world. Our students work at tech giants, broadcast networks, studios, and more. We’ve pioneered a new way of teaching online that has proven to be very effective, scalable, and repeatable.
I really believe it’s possible to build a better learning experience online than you can achieve in a physical classroom, and here is how.
Don’t Try to Recreate your Old Classroom
The biggest mistake I see new online teachers make is that they try to recreate the in-classroom experience, but on the internet. This tendency isn’t surprising because most educators have been convinced that online teaching is less effective than in-person. This just isn’t true.
Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, gave one of my favorite TED talks ever. In it, he tells a story about tutoring his cousins many years ago. He made some videos for them, put them on YouTube, and shared them. He was shocked to hear they preferred watching his lessons pre-recorded on YouTube as opposed to hearing them in person. He asked them why.
The answer was that video lessons allowed them to learn at a more comfortable pace. They could watch the videos faster than realtime if they liked, or they could watch the same section 4–5 times to really grasp a concept. Even better, there was no social anxiety from having to raise their hands to say, “can you please explain that again?”
This isn’t possible with traditional classrooms, and it is just one of the bigger advantages of teaching virtually. I’m not going to tell you that there are no trade-offs when you move online — of course, there are…but I think that those tradeoffs are dwarfed by the advantages of a well-crafted online learning experience.
Think Differently About Teaching
It’s really important as an online educator that you adopt a new mindset about how you teach. It’s different from in-person, and it takes some time to adjust. Our online teaching philosophy rests on 3 pillars:
- Content: The actual material you’re using to deliver that sweet, sweet knowledge. Set the quality bar as high as you can.
- Community: Learning alongside other people, even virtually, is far more rewarding (and effective) than learning in a vacuum. Make sure forums exist for your students to share their knowledge, and their questions, with you and other Teaching Assistants.
- Critique: If you don’t offer feedback, students might learn bad habits when interpreting the curriculum on their own. They need practice and constructive criticism, which most online classes don’t provide.
The key to building a really effective online learning experience is to balance those three areas. Here are some ways we think about the 3 C’s at School of Motion.
Choose the best medium for the material
If you’re teaching in person, you can give a lecture, you can show a keynote or powerpoint, you can draw on a blackboard… you have options. And you probably move between those various mediums depending on the topic. Online, you have an incredibly diverse range of options to choose from, and you can (and should) use any / all of them.
Video: Obviously most online lessons are based in video, and for good reason. Video is a rich medium that can deliver the most polished version of a lecture you can possibly give. Most of the “hard teaching” we do at School of Motion is done through video lessons that are edited and honed to a fine point. The videos are primarily recordings of instructors’ computer screens (done via Screenflow) but we also take pains to get footage of the instructors speaking to camera occasionally. It helps connect our students to their teachers.
Audio: Our classes also contain audio-only content, essentially podcasts. This format lends itself to content that can be “absorbed” over time vs. requiring lots of focus. For example, in our Design Bootcamp class, students can listen to interviews with top designers on days when there are no video lessons. This helps augment technical training by adding real-world context to the material, and is a boon for auditory learners. Frankly, this is one area where I think most traditional classrooms fall short.
Text / PDF: For highly detailed topics, sometimes an essay or downloadable PDF is the way to go. We create PDFs for our students that contain keyboard shortcuts for the application they’re learning, or commonly used code snippets, or a list of inspiring artists they should be following on Instagram. You may want to include a PDF of the periodic table or a map of France.
Live-streams: I consider live-streams a separate medium from video. They’re a different technical beast, and also have their own strengths and weaknesses, which I’ll discuss later in this article. For now, just realize that “live” is its own medium.
Students Learning at Different Speeds is a Feature, Not a Bug
At School of Motion, we run our online classes in a semi-synchronized way, unlocking daily content for all students at the same time. However, every student actually consumes that content on their own schedule. They may watch the video lessons the second they come out, or wait until the weekend and binge-watch all of the week’s content. They may fall a week or two behind (we build in catch-up weeks to counter this), or they may work best at night, staying up late to plow through everything.
In a physical classroom, teaching often happens at the speed of the slowest learner in the room. If it doesn’t, that learner gets left behind, and not because they aren’t smart enough to grasp the material, but simply because every brain is different. Visual learners may pick up art concepts far faster than an auditory learner, but they’ll likely learn history far slower.
Ask yourself this: Does it really matter how long it takes someone to learn something? If you have to watch the same lesson 3 times that another student can grasp in 1 viewing, but you both successfully grasp the concept in the end, what difference does it make?
Let’s move past the idea that there’s one speed for learning (and for teaching).
You should never have to teach the same lesson twice
If you’re a 3rd-grade math teacher, how many times have you explained the concept of multiplication to a classroom of students? Have you ever had a bad day and given a subpar lecture? Have you ever killed it and given the best lesson of your life? In-person teaching, for all of its wonderful qualities, is inconsistent by nature.
Why not record the best version of a lesson you possibly can, then show that lesson forever? For that matter, why not find the best person for teaching a certain concept, have them record the lesson, and then help your students apply what they’ve been taught?
For our curriculum, we try to find the best person in our industry to teach any particular subject we’re covering, and then we capture the best version of each lesson they can produce. We run those classes over and over again with our staff and teaching assistants filling in knowledge gaps and helping students who need a bit more.
There’s an element of ego that makes this hard for some teachers. “If it’s not me teaching them, then what am I even doing!?”
The goal, in my opinion, should be to create the best possible outcomes for your students, regardless of how that happens. If the best intro to astronomy lecture ever gets recorded by Neil deGrasse Tyson one time, the students who watch it will be more likely to learn than if it’s a mediocre lecture given by a mediocre lecturer who has already given that presentation 4 times this week!
Invert the classroom, and let the video do the lecturing. You, the teacher, can then interact with the students and test / augment their knowledge, a far better use of your time and expertise.
Automate Everything you Can
Here’s the metaphor: You’re building a Disney World ride for your students. They show up and there’s an entire experience cultivated just for them. From the moment they step into the line to the second they hop off the ride, you’ve planned out every moment to deliver a singular vision.
It’s the Pirates of the Caribbean, minus all of the problematic stuff that didn’t age so well. When you build your classes, consider every moment your students will experience and plan it out.
An email arrives, welcome to the first day of class! They log into the learning platform and find some content to go through… a video and a PDF. There’s also a quiz to take at the end of the video, and depending on how they do on that quiz, they may get a custom message with some extra resources to check out. They head to a private Slack channel for the class and find other students discussing the lesson.
Meanwhile you, the teacher, have done nothing. Once you’ve set up and choreographed your online class, theoretically you can run that same class over and over again with minimal work. In some cases, you can completely automate the process. The beauty of this is that you can now focus on constantly iterating and improving the class over time.
Is lesson 1 working well, but lesson 2 not landing? Just fix lesson 2, and then never touch it again. It’s now automated and built into your class forever.
Automation isn’t required to teach online, but it’s so helpful. We built a custom platform for our school, but if you’re relatively tech-savvy you can roll your own using tools like ConvertKit and Zapier.
Avoid unproductive interactions by empowering your students
This is where you’ll need to fight your instincts a bit. As odd as it may feel, you don’t actually need to interact with students in real-time to teach them. Interaction is “expensive” in terms of time and effort, and is often used in service of things that are better left to automation and pre-produced content.
When you teach something long enough, you know exactly what questions will come your way after a lecture. Instead of answering those questions one at a time forever, why not create a “Frequently Asked Questions” Google Doc that students can use to answer the question themselves?
Better yet, why not incentivize the students to ask and answer their own questions via a Facebook group or Slack channel? Creating this environment also teaches your students how to learn, giving them the confidence that they can teach themselves skills given the right resources.
Let the students teach each other
You do a great service to your students when you help them help themselves. If you’re teaching very young students this might not work as well (though I bet you’d be surprised), however for adolescents and teenagers, having a moderated online group available for support and discussion is a must for online classes. We have dedicated staff for this because it’s so important.
Our Student Experience team will also run contests, and reward the most engaged, active students. This increases engagement tremendously.
Having discussions online in a Facebook Group or Slack channel has many advantages over the traditional in-classroom discussion. Namely:
- The discussion can happen asynchronously, with the student asking a question in the morning and getting a response an hour later. This requires the curriculum to be structured to allow for this, but this is how the real world works. Questions will be answered, but students are also now incentivized to find the answer themselves.
- The discussion becomes evergreen. Every other student can see the conversation and learn from it without having had to pay attention right then when the interaction took place.
- Students feel far less anxious about speaking up on the internet. This is, of course, also a downside… but with someone moderating the conversation you can avoid negative talk and off-topic discussion. Enabling a shy student to ask a question without feeling terrified is one of the biggest advantages of teaching this way.
- You will be shocked at how often students answer each others’ questions if you encourage and incentivize it. It’s far easier for them to interact online than in a typically structured classroom setting, and you’ll find that engagement is an order of magnitude beyond what you’re used to.
So, counterintuitively, try to interact in real-time as little as possible and only when it makes sense. We’ll talk more about this in a bit.
Do not Underestimate your Students
You may hear common wisdom about online classes and think that you need to cater to a 5-minute attention span. I think common wisdom here is wrong.
We have video lessons that are 1–2 hours long because some topics require that much time. With experience, you’ll learn to structure your lessons like an episode of a TV show, with hooks and an arc and a payoff at the end. But even before then, a good teacher can make any topic interesting.
You need to push your students and expect things from them. We tell our students (and anyone thinking of taking a class) that our courses are very hard and will require personal sacrifice. We don’t sugar coat it, and the results speak for themselves.
The students that work hard get amazing results, the ones that slack off don’t, just like in a traditional classroom. If we made the classes easier because “attention spans are shrinking,” it would only hurt the students who are hustling to learn.
How to Build your Digital Classroom
Once you’ve adopted the right mentality to teach online, it’s time to put together your digital classroom. There’s a concept in software development called a “Tech Stack,” a collection of technologies that are used together to build an application. I’m going to help you build an “Education Stack” in this section. You’re going to need tools to address the 3 C’s: Content, Community, and Critique.
Before I do, I’d like to talk a bit about why an Ed-Stack (I hope this term sticks) is so important.
You may only have to teach a few classes with 20–30 students in each one. If that’s the case, I think you should stick with the KISS principle when building your digital classroom. However, if you’re teaching hundreds (or thousands) of students while managing payments, refunds, transfers, and support then you will need something robust. Trust me, we learned the hard way. Here is what online teaching looks like at scale.
School of Motion v1.0
We initially built our platform with a combination of Wordpress, AccessAlly, Infusionsoft (now Keap), Frame.io, Clickfunnels, Samcart, Soundcloud, Webmerge, and half a dozen other tools all duct-taped together through Zapier. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked until we hit about 400 students in a session.
After that, we hired developers and built our own platform that handles everything, and since then we’ve had 1500+ students enrolled in a single session (12 weeks) go through classes without a hitch. We’ll have 11 classes going simultaneously with all the automation I mentioned earlier, 35 Teaching Assistants critiquing homework assignments and answering questions, thousands of homework submissions a month being funneled to the right place and the right person notified, and private student groups buzzing with activity 24/7.
Why am I telling you this?
Not Just a Classroom, a True Online School
I tell you all of this because I want to impress upon you just how far online teaching has come. We are proof that you can build an entirely online ecosystem, a school, that can teach and inspire students as effectively as a brick-and-mortar institution. I urge you not to look at teaching online as a temporary inconvenience, something to suffer through and then never speak of again. Regardless of what happens when this crisis ends, I hope you stay excited about the possibilities that online education offers.
But in order to take advantage of those possibilities, you need to create a great learning experience. Enter, the Ed-Stack.
A Powerful, Yet free Ed-Stack for 2020
There are a thousand different online tools one can use to build exactly the digital classroom that they’re envisioning. In fact, I’ll give you a list of some super useful ones at the end of this article. To keep it simple, I’ve chosen tools that are free, easy to use, and industry-standard — which means they’ll have plenty of how-to guides you can find.
Our teaching model is Content-Community-Critique. Let’s start with Content.
How can you make teaching materials?
You’re not going to achieve Masterclass-level production value without some serious gear and know-how. The good news is: It doesn’t matter. Presentation is important, but your enthusiasm and expertise are far more critical. You’ll get better at this as you do it, so don’t sweat the details at first.
Content Production Tools
Here are some suggested tools of the trade. There are many more, but these are meant to get you started and to introduce you to the world of digital course production.
Loom: Loom is amazing. It’s a dead-simple screen recording tool that can also record your webcam simultaneously so you can look your students in the eye. With Loom, you can easily record videos that combine your screen, voice, and (if you want) face as you go through a lecture that uses a PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides presentation as a visual aid. There are some rudimentary editing tools built right into the software and it’s very easy to embed the video into your lesson once you’re done.
Best of all, Loom is free for educators. Fist bump, Loom!
Your Smart Phone: I know this isn’t technically free, but you already own one, right? It’s free-ish. Every modern phone has a video camera and microphone, making it insanely easy to shoot HD videos for a class. Imagine narrating a short walk-through of a museum or historic area? You can then use that as part of a lesson, adding some production value and that all important context.
ZenCastr: I think more teachers should be utilizing the podcast medium in their classes. Podcasts are an incredible tool for adding context to material, and for creating deep-dive lessons that can be absorbed passively while students are driving, working out, or doing other things. Zencastr is a cloud-based recording tool that is free for up to 8 hours of recording a month! You can easily conduct interviews, record solo podcasts, and have decent audio quality with little hassle.
Google Docs: If you need to make PDFs, cheat sheets, forms, or anything else for your class, use Google Docs. It’s free, and very easy to use.
Google Slides: This is Google’s version of Powerpoint, and it’s also really simple to learn. You can embed many different kinds of media in your presentations.
Where can you store and organize your teaching materials?
You’re going to end up creating some combination of videos, audio files, PDFs, essays and written articles, link compilations, and potentially project files. Where can you store and organize them?
Google Drive: You get 15GB of storage for free with Google Drive. The largest files you have to deal with are typically video files, but you’ll be using Loom’s storage for those. On your Google Drive, you’ll store podcasts, PDFs, project files, images, and other non-video media. With 15GB of free space, you can store an enormous amount of material for your online classes. Google Drive has a drag and drop interface that almost anyone can figure out how to use, and it’s cloud-based so it works on Macs and PCs.
I recommend organizing your files by class and by lesson, making it easier to find things when you build out the curriculum.
Google Docs: Maybe you’ve heard the term LMS before. If not, it stands for Learning Management System, and there are many fancy, expensive ones out there. For most purposes, a plain old Google Doc will do the trick just fine. There are better options in terms of features and presentation, but for gettin’ it done fast and easy, you can’t beat Docs. In a moment I’ll explain exactly how you should use Google Docs to create your curriculum.
Google Sites: In this article, I’ll be showing you how to use Google Docs for your Learning Management System, but if you’re more tech-savvy you may want to use Google Sites instead. You’ll be able to create a more “website-like” experience for your digital classroom, but the learning curve is a bit steeper than Docs.
Google Classroom: This is one of Google’s newer tools, and it looks incredibly promising. Many teachers are already using it, and it’s pretty easy to use. However, the current iteration of Classroom has some tricky issues with permissions and makes it difficult for the non-tech-savvy to control exactly who can and cannot take the class. I do highly recommend giving this tool a look, however,
You and Your Students Need a Communications Channel
It’s time for that 2nd C, Community. You’ll need both a way to post news and announcements related to your class and a way for students to engage with each other and with you (or your teaching assistants).
Gmail: I feel silly even typing this, but you should use Gmail. It’s free, and basically bulletproof. Just collect the email addresses of all of your students and you now have an easy, asynchronous communications channel in place. Use email for “official” announcements and private communication with individual students.
Facebook Groups: I know that in 2020 Facebook has a less-than-sterling reputation, however Facebook Groups are still the undisputed champion of online group apps. It’s easy to set up a private group, to add moderators (if you want) and to engage with your students in a fun, frictionless way. Younger students may not have Facebook accounts (I’m told it’s not cool anymore) so this may not be the best fit for you. Check it out, and decide for yourself.
Slack: Slack has really revolutionized the way remote teams communicate and it can work very well for class groups, too. It works more like a chat application, but you can have threaded conversations, you can embed videos and images easily, and there is a free tier that you can use. The only downside of Slack is that it tends to become unwieldy with groups above a certain size. If you have over 100 students in a class (a college seminar, for example) Slack may get overwhelming with all of the conversations going on.
Set up a Way for Students to Submit Work and to Receive Feedback
Every teacher knows that you need to get the students to use their newly acquired knowledge or else it won’t stick. However, if you don’t provide feedback, your students might not learn the right habits. There are many online tools to enable your class to submit work for critique.
Google Docs: If your students are writing essays or answering questions with short write-ups, just have them send you a Google Doc with Edit access turned on. You can then open the doc, switch to Editing or Suggesting mode (depending on the situations) and mark up their work with a virtual red pen. You can highlight passages and comment on them, the student can respond to you, and the whole experience is seamless.
Google Forms: Forms allow you to set up very simple quizzes or tests. There is actually a “quizzes” feature that gives you the ability to set point values for certain questions, add multiple choices, and other cool options. The best part? It grades the tests for you.
Frame.io: This is one of my favorite pieces of software ever. Frame.io is, on the surface, a video review and collaboration tool. However, it also works well for reviewing PDFs, images, and audio. If you’re teaching any sort of creative skill or artistic technique, it’s likely that you could use Frame.io to critique your students’ work. Before building our own custom tools, we used Frame.io for our students’ work, and we still use it for internal projects.
Loom: The same way that you can use Loom to record classes, your students can use Loom to easily record video of themselves demonstrating any skill that you’re teaching them. Teaching a sign-language class? Have the students use Loom to record themselves signing, and then send you the link to their video. A smart phone with a camera is also useful here.
Putting It All Together
Now that you’ve got your tools and materials assembled, it’s time to build your curriculum — your Pirates of the Carribean (remember we had that Disney metaphor? Was that a few dozen pages ago already?) At School of Motion we have special tools that help us sequence various topics, lessons, and modules to create a customized learning experience for our students. You don’t need to do anything that elaborate, but putting some thought into the format and structure of your class will help your students to navigate and to be successful.
If you have access to Google Classrooms and are somewhat technically-minded, you can do most of what I’m about to show you using that tool as well. It’s an amazing app with tons of potential, but for this example we’re keeping things basic.
We’ll go step-by-step through this process together, but if you want to see what we’re about to build, check out the demo class here: MTL201 — Heavy Metal in the Early 2000's.
Note: This next part is very detailed, but if you follow step-by-step you’ll be able to create an online class for free with very few headaches.
Get Your Google Drive Set Up
In Google Drive, you can start out by creating a folder structure for your class that will make it easy to stay organized. I’ve created folders for each day of my class, plus a Google Doc that will serve at the Home Page.
Inside of each folder is another Google Doc which will contain the course material for that day, plus any additional downloadable resources I’d like to include.
You can check out the folder set up I created here: MTL201 Google Drive
Get Your Permissions Right
It’s very important that you control access to this class in a responsible way. You don’t want students to be able to go in and edit your lessons, and you also may not want the general public snooping around. Fortunately, this is easy to set.
Click on the name of your course’s folder, and then click Share on the pop-up menu that appears.
By default, Google locks down your content for you, but you do want certain folks to be able to access it. Click the advanced button in the bottom left corner.
Next, click the Change button to open up additional access options.
I’ve set the permissions for this class to be View-Only for anyone who has the link to it. That means that it won’t show up in Google search for “Heavy Metal Classes” but anyone I send a link to can open it and view it (try it yourself!)
If your class material is more sensitive and you don’t want to risk the link being shared around for some reason, you can select “Off — Specific People” and manually add students to the class via their email addresses. In most cases, this is overkill.
Create a Home Page for the Course
Start simple by opening up the Google Doc we created to act as our home page. FYI: I’m building a very important class that teaches the youth of today about the golden era of Nu-Metal, the early 2000’s. As you can see, I’ve added some basic info to the top of the Doc to give everyone some context, and then I’ve asked them to fill out a Student Information Form.
That form is simply a link to a Google Form that I set up to collect every student’s name, email address, and Toto “Africa” preference. This form took about 30 seconds to set up, and will now collect everyone’s contact info for me so that I can easily email my entire class at once! You can, of course, customize the form to collect any information that you think would be helpful.
The rest of the page is structured to be as easy to follow as possible. I’ve got a short paragraph explaining that content will arrive each morning along with an email from me notifying everyone, and I included my contact info so I’m easy to reach.
I’ve included links to Loom for students to grab a free account so that they can send me videos and audio, a Frame.io project for uploading any artwork they create, and a Slack Channel signup link so that they can join our class’s Slack. If you’ve never used Slack, btw, here’s an excellent video explaining how to set up a channel.
I have an Announcements section that I can update whenever I need the class to know something important, and after that I have the content for the class itself.
Each day I open up this doc, change anything I need to change, and add the new content. Each day has its own Google Doc, and I’m simply linking to them as I go. Linking pages together in Google Docs is very easy. It works like this:
First, click the “Share” Button on the Google Doc for an individual day’s lesson.
Make sure the permissions are set to “Anyone with the link can view.” This should be the case if you followed my instructions and set your class folder’s permissions correctly at the beginning of this process. Then click the “copy link” button.
Back in your main class Doc, type in the name of the lesson for that day (I’ve also added the date of the lesson) and then highlight it. Press CMD + K on a Mac or CTRL + K on a PC, and in the pop-up select the Link box and hit CMD +V or CTRL + V to paste the link to that lesson’s Doc. In this way, you can build an easy-to-navigate main menu for your class with new content unlocking each day!
Remember how we talked about Automation? Include an FAQ section at the bottom of your Doc so you can update it every time you answer the same question more than once. Over time, this section will grow in size and will save you a ton of energy because students can answer their own questions.
Build out Each Day’s Lessons
Again, we’re keeping it super simple. Each day has a short description, a link to the Loom video lesson you’ve recorded, and some additional resources to check out or download. The Resources section is pretty self-explanatory: It’s just a collection of links to other things… a YouTube video of Rap-Metal group Reveille’s hit “What You Got”, a link to their Wikipedia page, and a downloadable PDF with useful information about chord shapes in Drop-D tuning on a guitar.
In case you’re wondering how I added those cute emojis to my Doc, it’s really easy. On a mac press Ctrl + Cmd + Spacebar to bring up an emoji browser. On a PC, it’s Windows + ;
The Drop-D Tuning PDF is stored in Google Drive in this lesson’s folder, and I grabbed the link to it by right-clicking the file and choosing Share.
Now let’s talk about Loom. Once you sign up for a free account and install the app, the rest is extremely straightforward. You launch Loom, tell it what you’d like to record, and then start teaching.
You won’t be able to do much in the way of editing, but that’s fine… first just get the hang of talking to a computer and using your screen as the blackboard. Build a presentation in Google Slides and talk through it. Use a digital whiteboard app like Ziteboard to draw your way through concepts. Get creative! Anything you can make appear on your screen is now a teaching tool.
As soon as you stop recording, Loom uploads your video and makes it comically easy to share it. I seriously LOVE this tool. You can change the settings on your videos to allow for things like comments and allowing people to download your video, but the interface is deliberately simple.
Click the arrow-shaped Share button below your lesson, then select the Linked GIF option. This will pop up a menu where you can grab a link and a thumbnail to your lesson.
Click the “Copy Thumbnail” button and you’re almost done. Just open your lesson’s Google Doc and paste the video link where you’d like it to go… and voilà!
When your student clicks that link or the image preview of the lesson, they’ll be taken right to that video’s Loom page where they can watch it as many times as they want. They can even watch it at 2X speed to get through the content faster, one of my favorite learning tricks.
What about Homework?
I bet you’re already starting to connect the dots in your head to see how you can string a class together using these simple, free tools. Adding in a homework component is just as easy. Let’s say that on Day 2 of our class we’d like students to submit a video and an image for critique or grading.
Notice the homework section at the bottom that contains step-by-step instructions on how to create and submit their work. I’ve conveniently linked to any sites or resources they may need, and the homework should come in via e-mail and Frame.io, which has built in notifications for me.
You can set this part up however you’d like. You could use a Google Form to ask questions and allow the students to type out short or long answers. You can create multiple-choice tests. You can ask students to create a new Google Doc to write out an essay that can then be shared with you via email. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
What about Live Classes?
You may be wondering why we haven’t talked about how to actually run live classes over the internet. It’s definitely possible to do so, and it can be an effective teaching tool, but I think you should evaluate very carefully whether or not you really need to be teaching anything in real-time.
Here’s the thing: We are all creatures of habit. For thousands of years, teachers have stood in front of groups of students and taught them things by speaking and demonstrating in real-time. When you hear the word “teacher,” the image that pops up is most likely someone in a room with (captive) students waiting for the teacher to speak.
Try to imagine that schools didn’t exist, and we needed to invent a way to teach every child math. It’s 2020, and we have iPads, the internet, YouTube, Loom, and also an army of experts who know math really well.
Would we: A) Build thousands of really expensive buildings, send the kids to those buildings, then have every teacher present an almost identical math lesson in those schools multiple times per day?
B) Figure out the teacher(s) that are the most talented at teaching math, produce an amazing math lesson starring them, deliver that lesson asynchronously to every student who can then watch that lesson ad nauseum until they understand, and then have our teachers offer guidance, extra help, encouragement, and feedback?
It’s easy to just keep doing things the way they’ve always been done, but it keeps us from moving forward. If there is a silver lining to the educational system shock we’re experiencing right now, it’s that we have an opportunity to question some old assumptions and to, just maybe, slay a sacred cow or two.
Look at “Live” as a Medium
When should a class be taught “live,” or in real-time via webinar or live-stream? While it’s wonderful to be in the room with your peers while you learn, it’s not necessary. Yes, I concede that you lose something by learning through a pre-recorded video lesson. We are, after all, social animals. But I can assure you that the effectiveness of the lesson is not diminished at all if presented well, and in fact is often improved by the replayable nature of video.
My opinion is: Live should be used for Community and Critique. Not for Content.
One of the struggles I witnessed at Ringling was the attempt to get the faculty to record their lectures ahead of time so that students could watch them before class and then use class time to discuss their work and to get feedback. The initiative failed because the teachers didn’t have the time (or incentive) to do all of the extra work necessary to create compelling pre-recorded lessons. It’s a shame because the one competitive advantage brick-and-mortar schools still have over online schools is the fact that the faculty and students get together in the same room for a few hours a week. If those hours are spent repeating the same lessons over and over to different groups of students, not only is it inefficient, it’s a waste of valuable time that could be spent on Community and Critique.
I recommend using Live for things like group critique sessions, or group discussions that take place after everyone has already absorbed the lesson material. An occasional live “check-in” with your class can help everyone feel a bit more connected (remote companies do this too), but the lecturing can be done almost exclusively through other channels.
I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, but I urge you to really do the math in your head to figure out if you really need to be saying the words to the students in real-time, or if you’re just used to doing it that way. If you’re teaching an instrument or physical skill, then real-time feedback might be necessary — but even then, you can have the student go through lessons prior to doing anything live so you’re really spending the time in Critique mode, not Content mode.
How do you do Live?
Doing live classes can be very simple, or very complex. If you’re just talking with small groups, then I say keep it nice and simple. With larger groups, you may want more features so you can do things like create polls and split students into breakout groups.
Skype: This ancient (in internet-years) tool is still a solid option for easy video chats. It’s free for most use-cases and can support group video chats of up to 50 people. For simple stuff, this is a great option.
Zoom: Zoom is the tool of choice for most remote companies, and for good reason. It’s got a TON of features and is rock-solid. The free plan lets you have group chats for up to 100 people, but you’re limited to 40 minutes in call length (you can always just start another call). If you do upgrade to a paid plan, you gain access to features like the ability to record your group calls so everyone can refer back to them. them later. Zoom has more bells and whistles, like a whiteboard feature that lets you draw on a virtual whiteboard for everyone on the call.
Both tools let you mute people who aren’t speaking, share your screen, and chat while the call is going on. You can’t go wrong with either app.
It’s not what you lose teaching online, it’s what you gain.
You know that feeling you get when you finally get through to a student, the spark ignites in their eyes, and you see them get it right in front of you? It’s intoxicating, isn’t it? You don’t get that experience when you teach online. You do get a version of it, but the in-person-razzle-dazzle moment is a casualty of online teaching.
But if you take a step back, it may become clear that chasing those moments is often more about our ego as teachers than it is about the student’s best interests. If scaling our teaching ability by using online tools and techniques allows us to create “aha” moments in twice the number of students, but we don’t get to be there in person to witness them, shouldn’t we still aim to help the most people?
Another tradeoff is the added difficulty of creating spontaneous connections with their peers who, in traditional settings, often become lifelong friends. Relationships are forged online as well, but not the same way it happens in real life… and there is a generational divide here. Young people today are extremely comfortable living life online and can feel a very strong social connection even when that connection is 100% digital. Basically, as long as teachers and students cultivate their social lives outside of the digital classroom, the social-connection tradeoff is mitigated.
So, yes. You lose something by teaching online… but you gain so much more. Learning outcomes are evened out because the students that need to hear something 4 times can just play the video (at 2X speed perhaps) as many times as they like without feeling the social anxiety of lagging behind. Fast-learners can take advantage of additional resources and access to support through the Community and Critique channels if they want to accelerate even more.
And for you, fellow teacher, once you’ve constructed the perfect class… it’s DONE. You can focus your time on the important stuff, like critiquing student work and using your communication channels to help encourage students through tough concepts. Teaching becomes a lot more like coaching.
The Future of Learning
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future of learning and teaching. I’m (obviously) very bullish on the prospects for online schools like School of Motion, and I think that we are going to see a huge change in the status quo in terms of education. However, I don’t think traditional in-the-room teaching is going anywhere, and I’d be sad if it did.
I think that we’ll start to see a hybrid approach that combines the best of both worlds: The scalability, quality, and repeatability of the online model with the spontaneous, communal nature of in-person teaching.
In any case, COVID-19 has forced all of us to give online teaching a second look, and I really hope you’re less intimidated by it, and maybe even a little bit excited to give it a shot. As awful as this crisis has been (and will be for a while), it may help clear up the misconception that teaching online is somehow less effective than doing it in person.
I urge you to keep an open mind and to really give online teaching a fair chance. Done well, it breaks down the barriers to learning in ways that traditional teaching can’t, and that’s why my colleagues and I at SOM are proud to be on the front lines.
I hope this helps someone, and please reach out if I can be helpful during or after this crisis. I’m very passionate about online teaching (and teaching in general) and welcome any opportunity to help my fellow educators or to wave the flag for online education. As one of my heroes, Seth Godin, likes to say, let’s make a ruckus!
Stay safe.
Joey
Additional Resources
Soup-to-Nuts Teaching Platforms
Video Production Resources
OBS
Screenflow
Adobe Premiere
Rev.com (transcripts / captioning)
Video Hosting
Vimeo
YouTube
Brightcove (our current provider)
Audio Production Tools
AT2020 USB Microphone (our preferred microphone)
Boom arm for desk
ZenCastr
Image Resources
Adobe Stock
Unsplash (free)
Automation / CRM Tools
Zapier
PlusThis
IFTTT
Mailchimp
ConvertKit
Infusionsoft
Site Building Tools
Wordpress
Squarespace
Wix
Webflow
