Abstract
Research in teaching and learning suggests the quality and coherency of learning environments are essential for the growth and development of all learners. During the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic, almost all face-to-face instructional environments were suddenly and unexpectedly asked to move their classes into virtual spaces that demand that instructional dynamics and factors take on new yet familiar variables. Every classroom environment is a complex system of dynamic, interacting variables that ebb and flow based upon how instructors and students engage with each other as they learn to construct knowledge. This manuscript introduces a model for the Dynamics and Interactions of Classroom Environments (DICE), which identifies a number of variables that will allow instructors to compare, contrast, and adapt their instruction to in-person, correspondence, and virtual classrooms in a way that is consistent with teaching and learning in the 21st century.
Keywords: classroom environment, distance learning, in-person education, correspondence
while Big Idea: Refining student ENGAGEMENT around LEARNING and INSTRUCTING of meteorological concepts is critical – INTERACTIONS must go beyond numbers, equations, and computations.
Be Nimble - Adapt - Recast
Dynamic, interactive, and smart use of media files/information
“Gentech” awareness
Engage learners virtually in ways they already engage socially
Enrich the virtual experience
Introduction
In early 2020, the US faced a nation-wide shutdown of learning institutions due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. As a result, many colleges, universities, elementary schools, and secondary schools (K-18 schools) quickly and gracelessly shifted to finishing courses online, utilizing tools that gave both synchronous and asynchronous opportunities. While most instructors and researchers are likely to agree that the elements that make up quality instruction will be true regardless of the environment, the strategies that are required to fulfill these requirements will not be the same in a virtual environment as it would be in an in-person environment. In other words, while principles of best practice exist in all learning environments, pedagogical approaches must be adjusted in ensure to make it work because pedagogical approaches that work well in one learning environment very rarely transitions well into another learning environments.
- Action-Reaction: Unrest in the student population (and faculty) to "radical" / new changes to teaching formats - e.g. like Newton's action-reaction law
- Nimble: Educations need to become more "nimble" (e.g.: forecasters / comedians / artists having to broadcast from home; the same applies to educators as well)
- Space: education space is the responsibility of the teacher. Regardless of where the student comes from.
- Social injustice: this affects students differently. All students are in a different space that may or may not conduce to productive learning. It is unequal now among all students. What can instructions do? E.g. NY Times article about students seeing their reality, one living in a camper and the other in a mansion. Also, internet speed and quality of tool(tablets, computer) is another issue. Will privileged kids have more advantage? What about students who are parents? Can they focus the same way? When teaching is not flexible, this would affect students who are parents.
- Learning community: COVID-19 stripped the students of the social interactions with peers. Creativity and learning also happens in corridors, gyms, etc. How to translate that interaction to the online sphere?
- Community building: avatar or real people? How attached are we to the community? There's an opportunity in the virtual space that does not always happen in the face to face teaching (e.g. a child appears on the webcam indicates the professor/teacher has kids, etc.). Students are going to see a different side of us. We can decide what we want to show or not. Reinventing ourselves (or our teaching identity) for different learning space. And that's the new reality educators are and will face. Social media allows oneself to curate one's identity. In the online teaching environment, that curation may be on the fly sometimes. But educators will need to take a position/stand on the version of themselves they want to broadcast.
- Is "identity" building so important that it should be part of the framework? Or is it already in "nurturing interactions" from our framework? Or is it an underlying part of community building? Identity building is not often presented explicitly, but it has become and important aspect/variable. The importance is due to radical changes in society (COVID-19 for instance) and new generation of students (Generation Z).
- Overall, COVID-19 has challenged traditional teaching radically: institutional, infrastructure, community, identity, etc... so, there is a need for a new framework.
- What are the key opportunities / domains we want to tackle? It is important for people to see these challenges we described here as opportunities and not problems. How to transform challenges into opportunities? We need a new and nimble / flexible framework that allows for that.
This paper will introduce a framework that builds upon the work of Graham et al. (2000). This framework is a more complete guide to course development and delivery that works regardless of the teaching mode.
- Discuss Matt’s sentence: “a more complete framework to guide course development no matter which mode of teaching”
- Research question(s)
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Should we add the discussion related to the Google word frequency here?
Literature Review
Most instructors have good intentions when creating online courses, however the strategies that should be utilized to make them effective are not easy to identify \cite{duffy2000}. One such concern is that utilizing some strategies that work during in-person synchronous instruction don’t translate well to the online environment (such as peer-to-peer interaction) and can cause both the instructor and students to spend too much time managing it, thus adding additional stressors to the course \cite{duffy2000}. Before introducing our framework, it is important to highlight prior work in the field of pedagogy in varying classroom environments. In this section, we will define what we mean by classroom environments, review the role of pedagogy in existing frameworks, describe how this pedagogy plays out between in-person and distance education classroom environments, and explain why a new framework is needed.
2.1 Sense-making of Keywords Across Learning Platforms
change over time, colloquial usage, dictionary usage, framing a picture of the present.
are aware that these terms are used loosely.
And we are going to stick to those definitions. We are not being arbitrary, but we are helping you, the reader, to make sense of these terms.
Classroom Environments
For our paper, we will refer to teaching mode as the scope that spans in-person, correspondence, and distance education environments as well as the hybrids that include various elements of each. As has already been shown in \citet{chickering1987seven} as well as \citet{duffy2000}, the principles that make up good education practices are the same, regardless of the classroom environment. Rather it is the instructor’s approach to pedagogy that makes each of these principles effective in each classroom environment \cite{Bernard_2004}. Therefore, we assert that the fundamental principles of good instruction do not change when modes change; however, they do require a different pedagogical approach to in order to achieve them in each environment.