Lessons from Lockdown

By Liam Isaac, Head of Digital Learning Technology, UWCSEA Dover
 

As a result of rising COVID-19 cases, Singapore went into lockdown in April 2020. The ‘circuit breaker’ conditions meant that all schools had to shut their physical doors and shift to a remote learning model. Whilst the SARS outbreak in 2003 meant that the notion of school closure was not completely unprecedented - at least in principle - the extent to which this pandemic has impacted, and continues to impact, our community is unparalleled.

During the circuit breaker, the entire UWCSEA community tirelessly worked to positively influence the learning and wellbeing of our students during what was a truly challenging time. Our students developed new levels of resilience as they somehow managed to motivate themselves each and every day to attend classes online and continue to engage with their teachers and peers. Parents and carers performed an all-too-often herculean balancing act; meeting the ever-shifting complex needs of their children whilst, often at the same time, having to continue meeting their demanding professional and domestic responsibilities. 

And then there were our teachers. Many years from now, with the luxury of hindsight, every teacher, not just here at UWCSEA, but around the world, will look back at this time and reflect on how it was undoubtedly one of the most challenging periods of their career. For many of our staff, the Circuit Breaker represented so much more than online teaching and learning. It marked an intense and often all-too reactive phase of significant professional learning. Like all professionals, they were required to juggle and compartmentalise their lives, with the line dividing their personal and professional selves often blurring and, in some cases, seemingly disappearing entirely. During this period, our teachers continued to fulfil their role in supporting student wellbeing and tirelessly working to ensure that the children within their care remained physically and psychologically happy and healthy.

It would be easy to reflect on what we as a community achieved during this period of uncertainty, consider it a job well done and, at least within our immediate Singaporean context, thank our lucky stars that (very) slowly but surely, things are beginning to return to some sense of normality.

However, this mindset would not take into account the collective institutional lessons that we have learnt from this seismic paradigm shift. In a world where the term ‘new normal’ is increasingly seen as having negative connotations, we at UWCSEA are looking to leverage on the lessons learnt during the lockdown in an effort to inform and improve our future provision and practice. Here we hope to share with you just some of the ways in which this pandemic will ultimately lead to our emergence as a better and more resilient institution.
 

The Future of Learning and Our Capacity to Cater to the Needs of All Students

Roll the clock back ten months. You only need to look at the ways we used our learning platforms then, compared to now, to appreciate the extent to which we have progressed as an organisation with respects to our approaches to Digital Learning.

Pre-pandemic days, teachers diligently uploaded learning resources used in class to these platforms, informing students that, should they wish to revisit the material, “they knew where to find it”. Whilst this was good practice - and still is - it was not necessarily making the most of the digital tools available to us. Today, our use of these digital tools has evolved to much better reflect their potential impact on student learning.
 

Blended Learning

Blended learning is the use of technology to bridge the divide between online learning and face-to-face instruction, leveraging on the advantages of both. The concept has long been an integral and explicitly recognised approach to learning within certain areas of the College, particularly within the Middle School on East Campus. Singapore’s circuit breaker simply served as a catalyst for an institutional shift towards an increasingly blended approach to teaching and learning at all levels at UWCSEA.

One of the great advantages of online learning is that resources, once shared online, are available for learners to access as and when the need arises. This ease of access, along with the ability to work through them at their own pace, makes the learning process increasingly flexible and equitable: in our context where all students have devices, no student is denied access to the learning in such a model.

Increasingly, our staff are tailoring the learning resources they share online to reflect the needs of students in line with this blended approach. In place of the slide decks used in class that were historically shared with classes, staff are now sharing screencasts of them presenting these slides in a short, sharp micro-lesson format. This asynchronous delivery of content has allowed students to engage with these dynamic materials outside of the classroom, freeing up more time in class for discussion, project-based work or increasingly personalised feedback and guidance.
 

Personalisation of Learning

Ready Learner One: New Student Orientation

Historically, the induction for new students here at UWCSEA has been conducted almost entirely face-to-face; with families coming onto campus to attend sessions, collect digital devices and meet staff. Safe distancing measures this year meant that this traditional approach was impossible. To meet these shifting demands, this year’s digital orientation for new families was adapted so that it could be completed independently online. Custom learning modules enabled students to set up their devices ready for the first day of school. Through these modules, families were introduced to our educational philosophy and were also given guidance on how to maintain a healthy and happy home life in the presence of potentially disruptive devices. These independent learning modules were followed up by a series of synchronous workshops that covered relevant topics such as ‘Managing Digital Distractions’ and ‘Social Media’.

The feedback for this adapted approach has been overwhelmingly positive. Significantly, we were also able to gather rich data from these sessions that allowed us to adapt and tailor our ongoing provision in a very intentional way to meet the needs of our new families. For example, we were able to streamline our communications with families so that they were only receiving information identified within the data as relevant and timely.

This adapted approach proved so successful that, regardless of what the world looks like at the start of the next academic year, we will continue to digitally orientate families this way. What’s more, we are currently exploring opportunities for how a similar approach might be effectively used in other contexts. In one such project, we are connecting with the school’s extensive alumni network to see where they might be able to share valuable learning opportunities with our students that perhaps - for reasons of time or expertise - do not presently exist within our established curriculum. The potential positive ramifications of this networked learning proposal are significant in terms of supporting student agency and autonomy with respects to their learning.

Gamification

Gamification is the use of gaming techniques to encourage engagement. Whilst the term itself is new, the concept is not. Students have long been creating custom top trump card decks to support their learning of everything from the key political figures from history through to materials and their working properties. However, with the increased integration of digital tools to enhance learning, gamification is increasingly accessible to staff as an effective strategy to motivate consistent participation and long term engagement.

As our circuit breaker dragged on, an increasing number of teachers turned to gamification as a means of motivating their students within their virtual classrooms. Whilst we have seen the use of established online apps such as Kahoot and Quizizz grow in popularity, teachers have also been exploring increasingly interactive and immersive gamification strategies to elicit engagement.

Digital escape rooms are an example of one such strategy. Here, students need to ‘escape’ from a carefully constructed Google Form by applying their subject-specific knowledge in tandem with their problem-solving skills. Gamification strategies such as this have the potential to challenge conventional ideas around assessment. In one IB class last year, escape rooms were trialled as an alternative means of formative assessment in place of an end of topic test, with students needing to ‘escape from the unit’ before moving on to the next one. The students were incredibly positive about the potential long term impact that this might have on their learning experience.

Through apps such as Gimkit, gamification has also been used to generate engagement over a far longer period of time, with students able to gain credit in acknowledgement of successful learning. 

Augmented and Virtual Reality

Tim Lovatt, a Physics Teacher and Instructional Coach in the Dover Campus High School have been working with some pioneering staff on how VR can be used to create more immersive remote learning experiences. Working closely with Nikki Hambleton - Dover’s Head of High School Art - a virtual art gallery was constructed using CoSpaces. Here, despite not being able to physically visit campus to enjoy our students' artwork, interested parents and students alike were still able to do so in virtual reality during the circuit breaker - and from much further afield than would normally be the case when we had a physical gallery display.

There are exciting potential future applications of how both AR and VR could be used to enhance the student experience. In Primary School, teachers are exploring how to use VR to create immersive learning environments that allow students to use their iPads to take virtual expeditions around the world from within their own classrooms.
 

What next?

As the world and our access to travel and the free movement continue to adapt in response to the pandemic and its after-effects, UWCSEA will continue to explore how we can leverage technology to empower our students to continue to engage and learn beyond the confines of their immediate borders and boundaries.
 

For more information visit www.uwcsea.edu.sg