As Hybrid Classrooms Take Flight, Librarians Are Ground Control

The one mantra coming from teachers that I keep hearing is “we are building the plane as we fly it” in reference to the challenges of hybrid classrooms. This is new for K-12 perhaps, but old hat in higher education (though we certainly have more of it happening right now as well).

Teachers think they are going it alone. They’re not! In fact, the greatest asset for the hybrid classroom is right in front of them…LIBRARIANS. As information sleuths and masters at troubleshooting, librarians have the kind of training that can serve as the ground control to this remote learning experiment. Here’s how.

Managing Technology. In the hybrid classroom, proper AV setup is crucial to success. Teachers who complain about the burden of teaching two groups of students separately have poor setups. Librarians are media specialists. They can fix this problem by setting up the classroom up front or providing a diagram guide and making sure teachers have the right gear (like a mic). Granted, this advice is best suited for the secondary classroom. Hybrid elementary classrooms are a different beast (IMO, they are developmentally inappropriate).

Providing Pedagogical Support. Hybrid teaching calls for less time spent on direct instruction and more discussion and/or hands-on activities during synchronous sessions. For example, flipped approaches fit this model of learning. There are a plethora of resources available on hyflex teaching, which is the higher ed terminology for the K-12 hybrid classroom. This advice is applicable to the secondary classroom and librarians can curate and organize these sources into a handy guide for teachers.

Connecting Teachers to E-Learning Experts. Now, more than ever, we need expert guidance on moving forward successfully with the remote learning experience. Librarians are not experts in everything, but they are experts in finding expert advice, even if the resources are human. Higher education houses e-learning expertise from which K-12 can draw upon. Librarians can help make those connections between educators and administrators and the e-learning experts (instructional designers, academic librarians, distance education departments, professors). Don’t forget, higher education has been doing this distance learning thing for decades.

Motivating Students. We are finally able to see that there are a whole lot of students out there who are simply not intrinsically motivated to learn. While they might appear more motivated in the in-person classroom, it is more likely that that structure provides extrinsic motivation. This might explain the high dropout rate in college, which relies on self-motivated learners. There are so many things about the library that foster intrinsic motivation in students (recreational reading, genius hour, maker activities, video games). For remote learning, this is more important than ever, which makes librarians absolutely vital to remote learning success.

Advocating for Innovation. The pandemic has created an opportunity to innovate in education. The educational innovations that emerge from this pandemic will have long lasting effects on K-12 education (higher education too). Librarians can be the drivers of some that innovation by advocating for new tools, new pedagogies, new ways of thinking.

The Parallels Between Distance Education and Driver Education

My daughter is 16 and in the midst of learning how to drive (fun times). Of course, this pandemic has disrupted her instructor-led training, but it has gotten me thinking about the parallels between driver education and distance education. In fact, there is a lot we can learn about “doing right” in distance education when we think about what it takes to teach a teen to drive, especially now that remote learning has become our “temporary normal.”  Distance education is not the same as face-to-face education. They are two different beasts, and the lack of online pedagogical training for K-12 educators is becoming painfully apparent from where I sit as a parent of an 11th grader and as a professionally trained instructional designer. So, here are some key takeaways from driver education that can help inform all distance educators.

The student is in the driver’s seat.

In driver education–at least the driving part–the student takes control. Learning by doing is essential. That’s probably the toughest thing for any parent to adapt to. Same goes for distance education. Teachers are no longer in control of the classroom. This means greater responsibility for learning is placed on the shoulders of the student. Instead of passive learning, there should be plenty of opportunities for active learning. It also means that teachers need to stop trying to fit their teacher-centered classroom habits, like lecturing, into an online format. There is nothing  more deadly boring than an hour-long Zoom lecture! Bottom line, distance education should be student-centered and student-led. This requires self-regulation and individual responsibility on the student’s part, which is why distance education is really not appropriate for everyone.

The expert blind spot becomes glaringly obvious.

The expert blind spot happens when a teacher’s content expertise becomes so automated that he or she forgets how much is not known by the novice student. Any parent who has taken his or her teen for a driving session learns this very quickly. We have to think carefully about ALL the skills needed to achieve the learning outcome and ALL the knowledge and skills gaps that the student might be missing. Instructional design thinking is essential to this task. For distance education, that means that designing and  developing good learning experiences takes time. Obviously, with this pandemic, there wasn’t much time for rolling out well-designed distance learning. Going forward though, I hope that all school districts take away the wisdom that they need to have a well-designed and well-developed e-learning plan in place for future use, just in case.

Communication is key…and different.

As the parent of a new driver, another lesson that you learn very quickly is the importance of explicit communication. There should be no room for interpretation in directions because it breeds uncertainty, which can become anxiety-inducing and lead to incorrect (and possibly unsafe) actions. This lesson is equally important for distance education because the student cannot immediately clarify the meaning of instructions. So, everything from learning objectives to assignment directions to test-taking rules to navigational instructions for the learning platform should be clear and precise. In fact, because of the limitations of asynchronous communication (lack of body language, lack of tone of voice), it is always good to err on the side of over-communication. And always check for understanding.

Feedback must be immediate and continuous.

When teaching a teen to drive, the feedback must always occur alongside or immediately after a task, as well as continuously during a driving session. In addition to safety, not much can be learned otherwise because driving requires multiple simultaneous skills (cognitive, behavioral, motor). This applies to distance education as well. For example, waiting a week for feedback on a math assignment is not a particularly effective way to learn. Rather, frequent opportunities for immediate feedback improve learning. With technology, this can be achieved via well-designed tutorials, games, quizzes, etc. Absent effective feedback strategies, it is much more difficult to gauge learning, both for student and teacher. In fact, this is where the digital divides the haves from have nots and once again, illustrates that distance education is neither effective nor even possible for all.