Post Two: Implications of microlearning, online classrooms and video conferencing

MARCH 15, 2020: It’s one thing to be interested in new trends in education — it’s quite another thing to implement them. But what’s the point of finding them, learning about them and recognizing the good they might do if you don’t try them out yourself?

Online learning and video conferencing, I suspect, is a trend that will be forced upon instructors rather than one they can choose to adopt (or not). Increasingly, adults will elect to learn this way rather than in a traditional classroom. Educational institutions will need to respond to these demands.

As an instructor, I must be prepared for this to happen and that will require some adjustments. I learned in a traditional classroom and I enjoyed doing so. I’m an extrovert and I like the energy I get from being around other people. Taking online courses myself right now is good preparation for the change. I am realizing this type of education can work — and that I can actually enjoy it.

I feel it’s my responsibility as an educator to read up on this trend and to think about different ways I could deliver my lessons were they conducted virtually rather than in person. How would I break these lessons down? How would I share them? How would I connect with students? Video conferencing, of course, forms part of that answer. It offers an easy way to benefit from small and large group discussions without meeting at the same place.

Microlearning — the other trend I’ve been studying — offers another excellent option for online learning.

I can’t imagine students would care to sit in front of a computer and watch a three-hour lecture, which is essentially what we ask them to do in class. Sure, lectures are broken up by questions and discussions, videos and activities, but it’s a three-hour class.

Instead, perhaps all the topics covered in a class could be broken into mini-lessons, applying what I’ve discovered through my research into microlearning. I could provide readings, as I do now, but I also could create multiple videos of five minutes or less, knowing that’s about the maximum time students will want to spend on a topic. They could choose which, and how many, videos they watch at a certain time, progressing topic by topic. They could learn something, apply the knowledge and then demonstrate to me that they understand it. As I’m going through my classes each week, I’m already thinking about ways they could be reformatted for online use.

Microlearning, however, is a trend I could and should implement as soon as possible in my classrooms. I already do some of this. For example, I have a very short lesson for my Introduction to Journalism class on the “Inverted Pyramid” style of journalistic writing. But I think I could take this even further. It would require reworking some of my existing lesson plans — and reconfiguring my brain to think about teaching in a different way — but it could be effective.

In my Introduction to Storytelling class, which is essentially the first reporting course students take, I had multiple students struggle with ledes throughout the semester. My hope was that with weekly instruction, and feedback on each assignment, they’d get better as the semester progressed. Yet, I saw the same mistakes made throughout the semester. One common mistake was writing in a passive rather than an active voice. Another was putting the attribution at the beginning of the lede rather than the end. Perhaps rather than a long lesson on ledes, this could be broken into more digestible chunks. What is an active voice? How do we attribute in a lede? What are the 5 W’s and why do we care? It’s the same material, presented in a different way. Perhaps if I tackle one element at a time, rather than going through a long list of dos and donts for ledes, the information will be more likely to stick. If I make a Ted-Ed style video on each of them, they can consult the video when they need to and apply the information.

Ultimately, my main takeaway from my research is the need to keep learning and keep adjusting. I shouldn’t try to teach like my teachers did, I should try to teach in a way that works for today’s students. That may require some trial and error, but given I ask that of my students and I shouldn’t hesitate to do it myself.