How can online lessons be designed specifically for digital learning? In the 2020s, many students have had some experience with online learning, but often with lessons not designed to take advantage of the format.
I’m Andrew Escobar, a teacher at Ontario Virtual School, a leading provider of online high school courses in Ontario. In addition to teaching Ontario Virtual School courses like Grade 9 English (ENL1W), Grade 10 English (ENG2D), and Grade 12 English (ENG4U), I also designed our Grade 7 Language course (LAN7G). Here are the things we at OVS keep in mind when designing and delivering digital lessons.
Multimedia Lessons
Digital lessons allow for easy and natural incorporation of multimedia elements. At Ontario Virtual School, we design all of our lessons to use not just text and lectures, but audiovisual elements within the lessons themselves. To support different learning styles, images, video, and sound are used to illustrate all of the teacher’s points, and make ideas clearer and more engaging for all students.
Discussion Forums
Some students might think that online learning is a solitary pursuit, but it doesn’t need to be. All courses at Ontario Virtual School make robust use of Discussion Forums. Teachers intersperse open ended questions throughout their lessons, and encourage students to go to the forums to discuss them, seeing and interacting with points of view from all over the world.
Students are also encouraged to share certain assignments on the Discussion Forums, and thus receive peer feedback, while also learning as they think about the work other students have produced.
Interactivity (and games!)
Interactivity is built into Ontario Virtual School’s Learning Management System (LMS). Each lesson includes brief interactive interludes to ensure students remain engaged, and more importantly, to help them ensure that they’re understanding the information. Short games like matching terms to images or definitions, or end-of-lesson Exit Quizzes, with immediate feedback, let students know if they’re ready to move on, while also helping them retain what they have learned.
Design for Replayability
If students complete an Exit Quiz but don’t do as well as they hoped, they always have the option to re-watch the lesson, to skip to specific portions of a lesson, and to rewind and fast forward lessons as much as they like. This can even be done once a student has moved on to later parts of the course, and perhaps wants to review before a later test or assignment. Individual lessons can be designed with this in mind, to allow for clear segmentation, so students can easily find the specific information they need at any time.
Conclusion
Of course, just as Digital Learning technology is always evolving, so is the way we design our lessons. If you have a question, idea, or suggestion, contact us! We’re always improving, and always love to hear from you!
