Remote Learning vs In-Class Learning

The Covid crisis forced my teaching to change quickly. I was used to reading “data” in-class and adjusting to my students’ needs in real-time.

I miss using body language data to scaffold student learning to help facilitate their understanding. I enjoy reacting to this real -time data — giving wait time to their quizzical looks as they process a question, offering guiding questions in response to frustrated faces, and then celebrating their “aha” moments of understanding.

I cherish building a classroom community — talking about things other than mathematics and eventually looping this data back into creating a story or joke for our own unique classroom.

I appreciate being able to easily identify student disengagement — the ones who found an easier dopamine rush than a math problem in whipping out their phone to see if they got more likes on their last Instagram post.

I relish acting on this data — creating teachable moments — having students reflect on their behaviour and consider the opportunity cost of their actions. I miss it so much that I would recreate a lame version of it in the middle of my remote learning lesson.

I am used to reading such a rich set of analog data every day. Instead, I receive digital data through activities — inclusion activities, weekly reflections, and small surveys. I get to literally read how they feel, what they found effective, what they dislike, and how long they watched my videos.

Here is an example of a recent exit card survey where students were asked to ‘rank’ eight different aspects of the distance learning using 1 (least important) to 8 (most important).

Part 1 of the survey results asking students to rank the importance of aspects of distance learning.

Part 2 of the survey results asking students to rank the importance of aspects of distance learning.

This comes as no surprise — students find the video lessons to be the most important aspect, followed by their assignments, (AKA: summative google form assessments) and finally followed up by their homework.

This is the traditional way of teaching and learning mathematics — watch a lesson, practice the “home”work, and then get assessed on it. This is something I’ve been slowly getting away from the last few years — and resorted back to (for now) given the pandemic situation.

The students say the video is the most important aspect — but what do the numbers say?

Distance learning has produced 157 hours of watch time and 1400 views. In-class learning would produce 540 hours of watch time and 1624 views . (Calculations assumed the same 9 days, 30 minute lessons , and full attendance — 540 hours of watch time and 1624 views.)

It’s important to put some sort of context with these numbers so I decided to compare them with my ‘average’ in-class numbers:

• Watch time: Distance Learning (157 hrs) vs In-Class Learning (540 hrs)
• Views: Distance Learning (1400 views) vs In-Class Views (1624 views)

The disparity in watch time could be caused by the fact that students pick and choose what they want to watch in a video. The average view duration is shorter than the actual duration of the video lesson. (see below) You will see that students are watching as little as 30% up to 60% of a lesson. Students weren’t actually watching much of the videos even though they rank it as the most important aspect of the distance learning.

The average view duration of top viewed videos and the percentage of the video that’s been watched.

Another interesting tidbit in the above photo is the number of views. I only have 58 students, yet my views of these videos were well over 58. It supported multiple anecdotal statements about distance learning math:

This could explain why the average view time was shortened — were students going back to re-watch certain aspects of the video? Apparently — yes. This observation is confirmed on a larger sample size with Khan Academy.

To further probe how my students were faring with distance learning, I asked the students to rank how well they were learning math before the quarantine vs afterwards. Be aware that below is a sample size that only consists of the 38/58 engaged learners and is asked 6 weeks into distance learning.

Graphically, there is a lot more spread in terms of how students are faring with distance learning.

Taking a closer look — students on average rated in class learning one rating higher than distance learning. In other words, if a student rated a “6” for in-class learning of mathematics, they will on average reduce it to a “5” for distance learning.

One student went from a 10 rating (in class)down to a 3 (remote learning)

One student went from a 3 rating (in class) up to a 9 (remote learning)

Moving forward, there is much to learn for myself. In the short term, we may be continuing this distance learning for summer school, and I have to continue to find ways of helping students learn.

In the long term, there is talk of an increased use of a blended learning model as the advantages of technology are becoming increasingly apparent. The key is to find out what aspects of in-class learning are vital and identifying areas where technology can augment learning.