We’re going through a period that none of us have ever experienced. With respect to teaching and learning, as pupils can’t attend school, we must help them learn at home. Fortunately, online education offers a solution, but the instructional techniques involved are not (completely) the same as what we do in the classroom. In this video Paul Kirschner presents his top ten tips for effective e-teaching. The video is based on the book Lessons for Learning, a collaboration between Tim Surma, Kristel Vanhoyweghen, Dominique Sluijsmans, Gino Camp, Daniel Muijs and Paul Kirschner and also draws on the recent publication How Learning Happens by Paul Kirschner and Carl Hendrick.

This video discusses the spacing effect. The spacing effect is the phenomenon where practice is more effective if it is delayed rather than immediate. This means that practice of any new concept or skill is likely to have more impact if it is widely distributed over time rather than being intensive. I discuss how this fact is counter-intuitive; students will tend to study via intensive sessions unless given guidance to do otherwise. However, the spacing effect is easily applied in the classroom, and can be implemented to make independent learning more effective too.

In a virtual learning environment how can you, as a teacher, maintain expectations without your physical presence? What strategies can you utilize for classroom management? And how can you be a source of comfort to your students?

Most governments are following the science in coping with the covid-19 pandemic. Educators need to do the same, to follow the science in developing their teaching online.

What does the science of learning have to say about how best to teach, learn and assess online?

The good news is that online learning can be effective, but only if it’s well designed. What doesn’t work well online are instructional videos alone. A video can be useful to introduce a topic, but keep it under six minutes, or students will just switch off. What does work is to support the three C’s of active learning: Construct, Collaborate and Control. Construct means supporting students to build their understanding of a topic through mastery learning. Students learn at their own pace. They’re tested and get feedback, and when they’ve mastered the topic they move on to the next one. Collaborate is setting up discussions and group projects. The students learn from each other and learn how to cooperate. It works best when students have shared goals, when they know when and how to contribute, they share the rewards of their collaboration, and they can reflect on their progress. Control is assisting students to manage their learning by setting personal goals, planning their study, and seeing how they are progressing. This has deep implications for how we teach online. For example, it means working with students to set personal goals, giving regular short assignments and rapid feedback, and setting small-group projects that students can work on using their own tools and social media. Where I want to end is that following the science of learning and adopting good pedagogy doesn’t need the latest technology. For more than 50 years at the Open University we’ve taught over 2 million students at a distance using these methods. To find out more about ways to teach online, take a look at my book “Practical Pedagogy: 40 New Ways to Teach and Learn”, published by Routledge.