With online learning becoming popular in today’s society, both elementary and high school teachers are working effectively to engage students in creative strategies to foster success. R.I.F.S. is a term I use often when talking to teachers about eLearning. RIFS – Relevant, Interesting, Fun, and Social – is important for online learning success just as engaging students in the traditional classroom is integral to fostering learning. With the spread of the COVID-19 global pandemic, students must take classes online. Within three days’ notice, we have asked teachers to study what makes online learning successful and implement; which has been an ongoing challenge for most. Teachers are resilient yet, have to find creative ways to implement a new curriculum with the tools they already have. Here are some ideas that will get them started to plan for the fall.

Online Reading Material Now May Work Later Too!

Finding material online has helped teachers tremendously! Rather than simply giving students a reading task such as a section of a textbook and some associated homework, educators have been going online for ebooks, since COVID-19 many resources have become free for parents, teachers, students. There are Facebook groups that have popped up linking teachers with resources, Companies such as Comcast and Spectrum connecting with school districts with free WiFi access, and major companies such as iReady and Education.com providing a ton of handout packets for individual grade levels. Many professors are also sharing their intellectual knowledge on topics for free on platforms such as Learning Revolution. Teachers are using reading resources like loom and zoom to provide synchronous learning and interaction while connecting with their students. Some teachers have also connected with companies like Epic and Read Theory to talk about what eLearning may look like in a face-to-face environment, hopefully in the near future.

Videos Do The Trick; Fake It Til You Make it

When teachers add videos, captions, visuals, and their Learning Management System it helps! This engages students in an audio-visual manner with such stimuli being generally highly-effective for learning. Make sure your frustration for technology doesn’t ruin your classes’ online experience. Before I go online, I have my coffee because I know how tough it can be managing a classroom full of excited online students while trouble-shooting with students. Also, I take control of the mute buttons, engage students for 5-10 minutes max, and develop a collaborative project or we discuss pre-given questions that relate to a text or visual I’ve posted. I also share their work with the greater community (others in the school) to celebrate their success. Once, with permission, I posted students’ work on our school Facebook page. We have to still find creative ways to highlight students’ wins. Socially students need time to talk although it can be risky, I open up zoom chats for students to have discussions with each other, luckily I get a copy of the text but on March 13 we created norms… Luckily, I get the downloaded script so I can later troubleshoot problems, dispel myths, and validate concerns. Tally-marks have also helped; making sure students have a voice and are able to use it. Everyone wants to talk but students can still feel isolated if they are constantly present online but never get called on to speak this is why the social aspect is crucial to connection.

Learning Styles

How do you engage students who have diverse learning styles in online learning? VARK or Visual, Aural, Reading, Kinesthetic learning styles or preferences are exhibited by students, by everyone in fact, and teachers should support diverse learning styles. Some students will better engage with audio or aural stimuli while others prefer actually doing something (Kinesthetic). Audio-visual material, as mentioned, is a fine way to engage students but not the only way. If teachers assign projects that mean actively doing something such as creating a landscape via paint or molds, engaging in role-play via video conferencing, or creating a model of something connected to the theme, students can be truly engaged in a RIFS sort of manner. These are great ways to engage students particularly those who prefer reading a style of learning.

Using Thought-provoking Stimuli (Blooms)

Engaging students in thought-provoking stimuli such as Bloom’s open-ended-questions to be researched and answered or hypotheses that need testing and checking is a wonderful way, aligned with RIFS, to engage students. This stimulates students’ brains with curiosity and inquisitiveness particularly for those who are looking to learn new things. Online learning doesn’t have to be simply about taking the resources that we used in the classroom to an online learning environment, it’s about transforming assignments to meet the needs of the learner and using RIFS in a manner that supports multiple types of stimuli that fosters conducive learning.

References

Allain, R. (2020). Moving Your Classes Online? Here’s How To Make It Work. https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-make-online-learning-work/. Accessed 23/04/2020

Coolman, A. (2016). How to Create Engaging Online Learning Experiences. https://www.smartsparrow.com/2016/11/23/how-to-create-engaging-online-learning-experiences/. Accessed 23/04/2020

Cordiner, S. (2020). 8 Ways to Engage the Right Brain Learner in Your Online Courses. Sarah Cordiner. https://sarahcordiner.com/8-ways-engage-right-brain-learner-online-courses/. Accessed 23/04/2020

Pappas, C. (2014). 11 Tips to Engage and Inspire Adult Learners. https://elearningindustry.com/11-tips-engage-inspire-adult-learners. Accessed 23/04/2020