Classroom

5 Tips for an Effective Hybrid Instruction Experience

To spark and maintain student engagement, educators must adapt their teaching style to thrive in the remote learning environment.

Calvin Hennick

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Calvin Hennick is a freelance journalist who specializes in business and technology writing. He is a contributor to the CDW family of technology magazines.

With the rise in hybrid learning, it’s crucial to adopt a comprehensive and proactive approach to optimize student engagement. Many K–12 school districts across the United States have found their footing and are now able to provide rigorous remote instruction and seamless classroom management for all.

Common Sense Education, an educational nonprofit that provides resources for tech use in the classroom, suggests that educators focus on these key considerations when planning for hybrid teaching and learning.

1. Emphasize Positive Relationships Between Students and Teachers

This goes back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Students can’t engage in meaningful learning without building positive relationships with their teachers, which may take extra time and effort in a remote setting.

2. Don’t Replicate the Classroom — Reinvent It with a Technology Focus

Different modes of teaching call for different strategies. Supervised labs and hands-on lessons may be replaced by videos, presentations and other materials that allow students to learn at their own pace.

3. Communicate Consistently to Spark Student and Family Engagement

Routine communication will increase student and family engagement. Simply letting families know that you’ll be sending an email each Monday morning with the week’s schedule and assignments — and then following through — can go a long way.

4. Consolidate Tech Tools to Alleviate Stress

Less is often more. If students are asked to use more than three to five tech solutions, they will quickly become overwhelmed. Choose up to five ed tech tools for the remote classroom and stagger implementation to reduce stress for students.

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5. Teach Digital Citizenship

In a remote learning environment, it’s even more important to cover topics such as finding credible news, responding to online hate speech and dealing with digital drama. Common Sense Education offers a digital citizen curriculum to help educators overcome distance and hybrid learning obstacles. It’s critical to establish a culture of digital citizenship in the classroom to help students safely navigate the digital landscape.

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