Emergency Remote Learning

• Due to recent COVID-19 school closings, most teachers are engaged in a massive natural experiment involving online education. It seems that it’s time to put together a survey aimed to find out what teachers are experiencing as they try to carry on instruction online, perhaps for the first time. It would be a real waste if we didn’t try to gather some data from what is going on. We need to find out what works and what doesn’t, what we should continue doing as part of a blended learning effort, and what we need to do so that future remote learning efforts are successful whenever schools are closed for any reason. There is no reason why the next “snow day” should be wasted.

Each District is Different

• There are thousands of school districts in the US and each district is on their own when it comes to finding out what their teachers, students, and parents are experiencing. The purpose of this effort is to suggest some questions that superintendents might ask in order to see what they can learn from what is going on. If you can think of any other questions that could yield valuable feedback please let me know at dgreen@stny.rr.com. Also, feel free to modify, add, or delete any questions. If you do send out a survey of some kind be sure to commit resources to analyze the information you harvest and use your data to make a plan to improve. Good luck. I want to thank the people at The Educause Review for their help with this effort.

My Questions

• 1. Which of the sites recommended by the district did you use and how successful were they?
• 2. Which sites have you used that were not suggested by the district?
• 3. We need feedback from learners. What have your students told you?
• 4. What did you struggle with most? Do you have any suggestions for how to prevent such struggles?
• 5. Did you have sufficient support? If not, what was missing?
• 6. Were there technology resources that you needed that weren’t available? If so, what were they?
• 7. Are there non-technology resources that you could use that you don’t have?
• 8. Please summarize any interactions that you may have had with parents since you started teaching remotely.
• 9. Are there any other comments that you would like to offer.
• Hodges, Charles; Moore, Stephanie; Lockee, Barb; Trust, Torrey; and Bond, Aaron. The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning, Educause Review, March 27, 2020, available online.

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