Goal 3: Streamline the process
Similar to the recommendation to simplify your content to focus on the most important concepts, it's imperative for you and your colleagues to simplify the process for yourselves and your students. You and your students will be overwhelmed with the myriad of changes that come with transitioning from face-to-face to remote learning. Tensions will be high, everyone will be stressed, and students' cognitive loads will be at capacity. Your focus needs to be on the most effective way to teach your content and connect to your students. You may have no idea where to start, feel overwhelmed by all of the options, or find yourself unsure of how to even choose. You may think you need to hack together different tools to develop a system that offers everything you need to meet your Remote Learning plans. Lots of different tools, however, will overwhelm in many ways—learning all of the new tools, remembering multiple logins, going to multiple places, questioning privacy policies, and so on. It can all be too much. Instead, find one new tool that can provide you and your students a flexible and dynamic learning environment and incorporate additional tools slowly over time as needed.
Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams are the perfect tools for providing continuity and flexibility. Microsoft Teams can be the digital hub for your remote learning environment because it allows you to connect with your students in Teams calls, create and collect assignments, share resources, and facilitate collaboration. As you and your students become more comfortable with Teams, you can integrate supporting apps like Kahoot, Pear Deck, Polly, or Flip. Creating a remote learning environment that centers around a dynamic and flexible tool eases the tension and help lessen the cognitive load.
Once your team chooses the tools for your remote learning experience, faculty need to commit to using the tools in similar ways. Creating uniform procedures for communication, assignments, and workflow provides students a predictable structure that allows them to focus on their learning rather than the tools.
Download this parent letter to personalize it and share with your families to communicate key start-up information about using Microsoft Teams for your remote learning experience.