Scaffolding Online Courses for the K-12 Student

Nearly everyone is online today, maybe it’s your sweet grandma posting irreverent pictures to what she calls, “The” Facebook, cousin Frank and his Twitter rants or even the Tumblr scrolls that can get full on addictive, we are all “webbed” up to be sure. But what about the students that were born with the internet? (between 1996 and 2001) Guess what? They are in High School. If that does not make you feel old, Dr. Dre is 50. . .
Anyway, enough of the human condition. This posting aims to help with engaging our K-12 students in high level thinking, learning and engagement in online courses, through scaffolding. That’s a mouthful, it’s also a necessary component of any online course.  In a world of constant social media distraction, limitless information and the potential to learn anything online, even students born post .com bubble require careful guidance to reach their full learning potential in an online course. 

Old school meets new

Every educator worth their monthly pension contribution knows that they need to scaffold learning for their students, but what exactly does that look like? The core of scaffolding relies on the idea of “fadeable support,” engaging the learner in understandings around a topic before removing some of those supports to allow for deeper inquiry and learning. As the interconnectedness, availability and general expectation that classes are taught and live at least partially online, teachers can bring many of the tried and true scaffolding techniques into the digital realm.

• Beginning a lesson in any classroom, online or otherwise from the prior knowledge of your students, then using it as a launching point for future lessons is not only a scaffolding technique, it is just good teaching. How to do it online? Why not a class blog post created from smaller groups or even individual posts from students? This could also be facilitated well on a discussion board using a Learning Management System (LMS)

• Another crucial learning scaffold is the structured time to talk. In a traditional classroom this might include specific structured talk activities like, “Think, Pair, Share”, “Turn and Talks”, or “Triad Teams”. How to do this online? One idea would be to record a Podcast or Google Hangout around a particular learning topic. Another strategy for the online class could be to record oneself about a topic and then facilitate a “mashup” of audio or video files.

• The use of visual aids/ graphic organizers is one of the most beneficial scaffolds a teacher can provide. For online instruction, graphic organizers can get lost in the information deluge. As a support for secondary learners especially, the usefulness can’t be understated. How to do this online? Try the site “Read Write Think” for a plethora of web-based Graphic organizers that easily become PDF files.

Take It Slow at First

There have been numerous stories of the questions around the quality of “online” K-12 schools. One of the clear questions is around student engagement. “Self-Paced” or non-teacher led online courses are the norm, and without scaffolding the actual “how-to” of this type of course, many students will continue to fail. It is important for online or blended educators to model, assess, and remediate the actual structure and expectations of the “online” aspects of the course.

• To start a course, in addition to a clear and concise syllabus, online educators should model and assess the use of the LMS. The assessment should be a required first step towards entering the online course. By taking the time to guide, model and generally help students feel comfortable with their LMS, online educators will help in combating apathy and isolation in their courses.

• Progress monitoring for the online educator is a necessary scaffold. To accomplish this online, educators should consider game elements and/ or badges as part of their class. This can help build the best progress monitor of them all, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

• When considering the viability of online education for specific learners, it is important to be reminded of a fundamental principal of educational scaffolding. Is the learner ready? For the K-12 learner, there is a level of academic maturity that should be reached before embarking full steam into an online course. The K-12 online educator should be prepared to help foster and build the learner up in preparation for “meat and potatoes” of their online offerings.

Blended is better or don’t forget to talk to people

One of the distinct advantages that K-12 educators can harness is the power of and fact that, most often students are attending the class on a regular basis, in person. There is still much to be said, and supported about educators working with students in the same space and time. When considering online courses for K-12 students, this can be the most powerful scaffold of them all.

• The flipped classroom has been with us for a while now, promising and delivering a paradigm shift in the way education is delivered to students. Within the flipped model is a very important aspect that many educators miss, the power of their own voice (and teaching). The Flipped classrooms that work, are the ones that use the teacher themselves. Meaning, it is fundamentally crucial that educators create their own flipped videos. It is all well and good to post a video and assign it as homework and call that flipped learning, but within the blended K-12 classroom, that is not the best practice. The relational part of the teacher, classroom and student can’t be undersold as a scaffold to higher learning. 

• Weekly “Check-ins” and discussions with all interested parties are a useful strategy to bridge learning gaps in any classroom. Perhaps the majority of learning and activity occurs online? But a weekly conference, in “the flesh” if possible, is a perfect strategy that K-12 educators especially should be able to take full advantage of.

• Being anonymous should not be an option within any classroom. Students should be able to defend, support and generally discuss what they are learning at any time within a course. For K-12 students this is even more important as they form identity and self within their learning environment. To support student learning online, educators should create a display event or product reveal within the “real” world. Discussion panels, Product “fairs” and general presentations for audiences can all provide a necessary and welcome scaffold for the K-12 online student and educator. This would fall under the “authentic assessment” category while serving as a unique and powerful scaffold for student engagement.

Bring on the "Revolution"

Much has been written (and threatened) about the coming online learning revolution, and while it is certainly here, scaffolds are still a constant necessity in any classroom. The joy and satisfaction of being an educator is mostly won through scaffolding. With proper planning and implementation, educators are poised to bring those scaffolds to where much of the learning is trying to take place, online.