Online learning post-pandemic

There seems to be much discussion about ‘adaptive teaching’ in education as we look towards 2024.  Av Srivastava in ‘Learning Light,’ explains the meaning as ‘...to use technology to improve education and training by providing individualised programmes to students based on data that is gathered both before and throughout the learning process.’

Online learning has been a hot topic for the last few years.  Many employees are being encouraged back into the office after the sudden need for remote/home working during the COVID pandemic era.  Some companies are suggesting a 2 day at home/3 day in the office working routine.  Like anything, remote work has had its advantages and disadvantages in most cases and there has been much discussion in the media about increased or decreased work productivity.  In education, remote or distance learning was a huge change in 2020, especially to primary and secondary school settings.  University courses were mainly taught online and schools and colleges were closed to most learners during the lockdowns, so virtual learning was vital.  Now that the world is largely back to ‘normal’, is there still a place for online learning in education and training?

ChatGPT has featured heavily in the media, both in terms of educational literature and social media.  It is an artificial (AI) chatbot, developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022.  Amongst its skills are: writing texts of varying length, explaining topics or translating text.  You can ‘train it’ to improve its effectiveness, based on your own preferences and likes/dislikes.

You may have read this title and thought, what does this mean? Is it literally about games? You would be right! The idea behind ‘gamifying’ a classroom is to reflect the best aspects of gaming and bring them in to education. We all know that many young people (and adults!) love to game. Online/digital gaming is an enormous industry, with approximately 3 billion active gamers in the world. That figure has increased by 1 billion in 7 years, due to massive advances in technology and social media.

Behaviour management is one of the hardest challenges for any teacher or trainer to master and unfortunately many practitioners decide to leave the teaching profession early. The difficult reality is behaviour management has no quick-fix, your classroom experiences will shape your confidence as a teacher and improve your decision making when behaviour issues occur. My advice for any new teacher or trainer is to read up on articles surrounding maintaining classroom discipline, this will give you a solid grounding before you enter the classroom environment.

The roles of a teacher/trainer extend much wider than presenting in front of a classroom of learners. Behind every lesson there is a considerable amount of planning and preparation in order to cater for every learner’s individual need and inspire them to achieve their goals. There are a number of roles of a teacher/trainer which they will demonstrate on a daily basis.  Below are the most prominent roles within the education/training sector: 

Teaching is not a career that people choose for an easy life – the workload seems never ending at times. Alas, we can’t turn up at 9.00 and finish at 3.00 – no matter what some people may think! Itis most definitely a job in which you can never ‘be finished’, tidy your desk and smile smugly to yourself at a job well done. So how can we realistically improve our workloads when we are trying to: plan, mark, assess, present data, prepare presentations/resources, sort displays, call parents/carers, design seating plans, write reports, set targets.....oh...and teach?

15% of people in the UK are neurodivergent; they have brains that differ significantly from society’s expected norms…fascinating brains!  This implies that you are very likely to encounter one or more neurodivergent learners during your teaching career.  You may have already done so and would like to learn more and develop or refine your strategies; every single one of those 15% of people is, of course, an individual and will respond to different things.

We recently met with Paul Roy, a barber from Glasgow, to discuss his experience of training with us and how further qualifications have taken his career to the next level. 

We caught up with learner Hodan Abdulqadir who has recently completed her qualification to ask her about her experiences on the level 5 Diploma in Education & Training course. 

Learning to do anything in our lives requires us to get active.  When we’re putting together some flat-pack furniture, we tend to read the first instruction, have a go, make some mistakes and learn from them….or not!  It’s very unlikely that we will sit and read the entire instruction booklet from cover to cover and then begin to work practically.

The success of TikTok in particular is obviously down to several things, including: love of music, dance, lip synching and sea shanties….but also the ability to convey a message in an incredibly short space of time – something that advertising agencies have been trying to get right for years.  I have been told several amazing facts/great recipes/philosophical ideas by my children and the answer when I ask them what the source is, it will always be, “YouTube/TikTok”!  They have remembered learning presented in a quick sound bite, with visuals and music.

We have all been in a training room or classroom and heard the immortal words, “Now, I know you can all read so I won’t read through the whole presentation!” What happens next?  You can almost certainly guess.

In every classroom, training room and other learning space around the world, there will be at least one ‘challenging learner’.  Perhaps they appear to be confrontational – or entirely withdrawn.  Often they are not engaging with the learning that we need to be taking place and it can be utterly frustrating and demoralising.  Interestingly, it probably is for them as well!  So how can we deal with this?  As the famous saying goes, all behaviour is communication – and that is exactly what we need to do.