First of all, teaching prior school closure of 2020 is not distance learning; instead, it is more like free-fall teaching. There is little accountability for both students and teachers. We have our chance to experiment with quasi-distance learning through teaching summer. Below are common misconceptions about distance learning that school leaders and teachers need to address to provide a high-quality education for the coming year.
Distance learning is not a strategy; it’s a setting. According to John Hattie, distance learning is only 0.14, which is not a negative number. This number shows that distance learning is not the primary determining factor; instead, it is the teaching methods implemented by educators that have the highest impact on student learning. In the previous article, we discuss teachers’ common mistakes who have adverse effects on student learning. Some of the mistakes are:
Mistake #1: Not protect your original files
Mistake # 2: Not checking what you upload or assign.
Mistake # 3: Explaining the task but not teaching
Mistake # 4: Sending boring PowerPoint/Google Presentations or Worksheets.
Mistake # 5: Lack of meaningful and timely feedback.
According to Hattie, mobile phones’ distraction has a -0.34 effect, and boredom has an -0.47 effect.
Therefore, we should shift our focus to innovate high-impact strategies using today’s available technologies to maximize the impacts of those strategies and make learning fun. For example, John Hattie asserts that digital technology’s highest effect is interactive videos (0.54) and intelligent tutoring systems (0.51). There is a saying that teachers often said: “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” However, redefining the wheels is not reinventing it. The pandemic reminds us that we need to redefine how we teach our students.