It seems we’re well on our way to new and uncharted territories in public education. In some ways, we’ve been preparing for this moment for a long time (think 1:1 technology and district-wide LMS adoption), but in other ways, we’ll be like fish out of water (think of broadcasting, art, and music classes; not to mention lack of connectivity some students may be faced with).

With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about what virtual learning might look like and what a handful of best practices could be. Much of my time spent studying instructional design at Baker University has assumed a level playing field for learners. That’s not going to be the case as schools around the country try to move their instruction online.

Here are five pieces of advice as you consider what it will look like to move your instruction into the virtual realm.

1: Take a look at the big picture

It’s a fact of life that we’re not going to be able to cover everything that’s on the curriculum if we move into a virtual learning environment. What are the essential things you want your students to learn? If you can make a bulleted list of what the key topics/skills are, then that’s your new curriculum.

Also, take a look at the big picture in terms of life itself. Generally speaking, every teacher thinks that everything they assign is the most important thing in the world. This may or may not be true, but we have to admit that students are going to be juggling more than just your assignments during this time.

I’m also not embarrassed to admit that for me, the general anxiety of the current situation does seem to make focusing and getting effective work done somewhat of a challenge. This isn’t an opportunity for excuses, but realizing this from the outset can help you set reasonable expectations for yourself and your students.

The final big picture thing to consider is why did students take your class in the first place? Or maybe, what’s the number one skill or trait you hope they take away from this class?

Perhaps they had to get your class as a credit to graduate, or perhaps they signed up for it because they’re passionate about the topic. Perhaps the number one trait you hope they take away is a love of reading, or an appreciation of history, or self-confidence on their musical instrument.

Whatever the case may be, use big ideas like this to guide you through this uncharted territory.

2: Set Daily Goals Culminating in Weekly Goals

Now that we’ve established our big ideas for this new uncharted territory, it’s time to break them into weekly work. We’re all going to be playing catch up coming out of the virtual learning gate. It might be tempting to push out your information one day at a time. I do this a lot when I’m seeing the students every day.

Considering all the students will be dealing with, it might serve them better to have their work set-up and accessible for, at a minimum, an entire week. If you put yourself in their shoes for a minute, I think you would appreciate being aware of the daily activities that you were working on and how they served a larger goal at the end of the week.

I’ve been doing this for a while with my students in a gamified platform using daily and weekly quests. In this environment, it would be even better if the daily activities could be done in any order. Also, some degree of autonomy will go a long way in getting students motivated to do their best (we’ll cover that in more detail below).

3: Put It All In The LMS

You may or may not be lucky enough to work in a district with a district-wide, fully adopted learning management system (LMS). I’ve worked with a lot of them (and in fact did a podcast about it) and there are pros and cons to each.

Pros and cons aside, the content needs to be easy to find and consistent for the students. Don’t expect that you’re going to be able to email an assignment to them and have them not lose the email among the many others they’ll be getting.

That said, I have to own up to hosting my class content outside of the district LMS. This is my first year doing that, and we’ve been doing it since day one. I will continue to do that because consistency is key too. Rules are made to be broken I guess.

4: Slow Your Roll

As near as I can tell, every single company that offers an online platform for learning and/or instruction is offering free subscriptions for the next few weeks or months. This is fine and dandy, but imagine if every teacher picks their favorite platform and tries to get students into these new spaces for learning.

Slow. Your. Roll.

As much as I love new resources and tools, I don’t think this is the time to roll them out. Do you and your class a favor and use tools that are for teachers and don’t require your students to do anything new or access something they’ve never accessed before.

They are probably familiar with some form of learning management systems as mentioned above, so do your part and keep the content front and center, not the new bells and whistles that will require them to zig-zag around the internet and set up 11 new accounts just to get to your content.

Finally, in the spirit of slowing your roll. Ease into your content and have some grace in your initial expectations. We’re all going to be figuring this out together, and it’s best to get things up to speed smoothly, rather than sprinting straight out of the gate. This might be a marathon and not a sprint.

5: Give Up Some Control

Teachers always know what’s best, right? Well, yes, and….maybe no. Students probably have some idea of how they might be able to connect your content to their lives in new and interesting ways.

Consider giving them an opportunity to have some autonomy when it comes to demonstrating their learning. Not only will this allow for various levels of internet connectivity, but it will also take some of the stress away from having to do things just exactly the right way.

Many of us already do this, but I would urge all of us to allow even more autonomy in this unusual situation.

Chapter #5 from the free TEC-VARIETY ebook is all about autonomy. There are 100 activities in this book and #46 (p. 147) is Open Exploration Weeks. You could give students a set of expectations and ask them to watch a certain number of content-related videos or read relevant articles.

This is just one example that will give students some control of their learning and remove some of the stress they’re probably experiencing.

Like all of these suggestions, it’s best to balance your approach, but keeping the big picture in mind and giving up some of your control will go a long way in creating a positive virtual learning environment.