How to easily combine lesson in class with distance learning!!

More and more schools are waking from lockdown and will again start to organize lessons for their pupils. The pre-teaching era is now partly over, but a new challenge is now emerging! What do you do with the students who will stay at home and how do you engage with those students who are not yet allowed to come to school? There is a solution for every problem, the hybrid classroom is a good option to tackle this difficult situation! In this blog post you can find out how you combine your lesson in class with distance learning in a really natural & intuitive way!

Teachers around the world have been extremely challenged in recent times so they can continue to fully utilize their creativity. This has required a huge effort! It was great to hear how so many have managed to teach from a distance and not to waste precious time. In the meantime, a lot of funny and perhaps some comforting videos are circulating on YouTube about how challenging distance learning can be. 😊

Now that the world is slowly coming out of lockdown and each country is rolling out its own particular exit strategy, it's great to hear that some students are being allowed to go to school again. Although, that is not necessarily the case for all students. How do you deal with that as a teacher? A new and very difficult challenge has risen, as a teacher you naturally want ALL students to be able to follow your lessons and to have the same  learning opportunities regardless of whether they are physically in the room or not. By utilizing a hybrid way of teaching you can solve many of these problems.

1) The hybrid classroom? What is that exactly?

It's is actually very simple. The hybrid classroom combines live classroom teaching with distance learning. In this setup, some of the students follow the lesson in the classroom, the other students follow the lesson from home. Basically, you only need this setup for the instructional phase of a lesson or for a lesson that requires a live conversation.

It's not always necessary to involve all students at the same time during all learning scenarios. The instructional moments can be alternated perfectly with individual tasks.

2) How do you get started?

Setting up a hybrid class is not that difficult, and you do not need that much to get started.

Preferably you have an Interactive Solution (board with projector or touchscreen) in the classroom. Install a webcam close to the board as you will need make sure you remain visible to ALL students, both in your class as well as the students at home. Also, your webcam needs to be connected to the computer that is linked to the front of classroom set up.

Make sure you use a conferencing software that allows you to share your screen. That being said combining different applications during a lesson can be challenging. To help you out, we've built a conferencing tool into i3LEARNHUB that allows you to communicate with your students, share your board & any other application with the entire class and that gives you the opportunity to teach and manage your class!

3) An overview of the posibilities...

You can combine numerous tasks using i3LEARNHUB in a hybrid classroom setup:

• Make notes on the IWB while the students follow everything step by step.

• Students can participate in the instruction segment on the board, including the students at home as they can all have access to the whiteboard tools.

• Share documents, work sheets, websites, ... directly with the students in the classroom and at home.

• Record the lesson and then share it with your class.

• Manage your class: lock students, let them speak, put the whole class on "mute". In short, it's as if all children are live in the classroom again.

4) How does a hybrid classroom look like?

The actual classroom setup depends on the number of students that you have in your class. With fewer students present in the classroom, it is more than possible to work from 1 room to respect the social distancing between students. If you have a lot of students present in your class, it may be best to split them into 2 smaller groups. In both cases, you have a connection with both students at home & in-room using the conferencing software or i3LEARNHUB .

A) The hybrid classroom with 1 group

This is the easiest way of working. The students who are present at school follow the lesson in your class in one group. The students at home follow the instruction moments virtually :

B) The hybrid classroom with 2 or more groups

If the group of students at school becomes too big, it may be best to split them up in smaller groups and have them use separate classrooms. In this setup, the teacher will host the lesson live in 1 group, while the second group of students follows the lesson virtually under the guidance of another teacher. In this situation, students can also follow the lesson virtually at home. It goes without saying that it may be good as a teacher to alternate the instruction moments in both physical class groups.

So, in the end, you don't need that much to get started with your very own hybrid classroom. You can find some very useful tutorials on our i3ALLSTARS YouTube channel that will help you to get started with the i3LEARNHUB OnAir feature. 

The main advantage of using i3LEARNHUB in the hybrid class is the combination of all applications in 1 place, making it easy for the teacher and having less risk of students dropping out at home. After all, you can engage students actively during the lesson. 

If you still have questions or if you want some more information on using i3LEARNHUB or about setting up a hybrid classroom? Please reach out to us and book a session with our Education Consultant Team as we're happy to help you out! 

Don't have an i3LEARNHUB account yet? Then go to www.i3learnhub.com and create a (free) account NOW!!