Pandemic Learning Tips
Fall 2020, school looks different from years past--you might need to re-stock pencils and papers, but back-to-school outfits? Schools in southern California are largely required to teach remotely until they meet State guidelines for in-person instruction. With that in mind, and with an eye to online learning being a part of many K-12 students’ education, we’ve gathered some expert tips from UC Irvine’s School of Education and Online Learning Research Center.
General tips
#1: Perspective is important. Your child will have years of education. Children learn things informally that are key to future success. This is a pandemic. You are probably juggling some issues yourself. Kids feel the anxiety and stress in the air right now. Teach them how to navigate anxiety and stress with good habits -- exercise, fresh air, healthy eating, connecting with friends and family in a safe way. These habits will last a lifetime. Keep an eye on your relationships first and foremost and be kind to yourself -- even if you were trained as a teacher, teaching your own child is very different. Takeaway: Be gentle with yourself and your child. Physical and mental health are your first priority.
#2: Online learning is different. Without face-to-face interactions, it can be isolating and less engaging. Take opportunities to interact with the teacher and classmates when they are available. Online learning also requires a lot more self-regulated learning skills and independence. This is probably not a strength of most children (self-regulation is developmental and is not fully acquired until young adulthood). Online learning is also less linear and requires navigating often information-rich environments over multiple sites and apps. We have some strategies that may help (parents will do most of this in the early years, but gradually release the responsibility to your child): Master HyperDoc. Create a single Google or Word document with all the basics hyperlinked to it, ideally in the order your student (or you) will be accessing it: School website, learning management system (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology), Google Classroom, online library, course online grade management system (e.g., Aeries). Teach your student how to add to this including how to hyperlink to websites so the information is just a click away. Setting up this early will save you time and frustration later. Put a link to it on your desktop for easy access. Calendar. Consider 3 types: Monthly for planning, a standard weekly routine, and a daily planner. Paper or digital, your choice. Whatever you use, teach your child to make notes when an assignment is due and backward plan for the steps leading up to completion (a few nice 3-5 minute videos from Cornell help explain this). After the assignment, they should reflect on what worked, if they are happy with the results, and whether they would change anything next time. Once a week (usually Sunday afternoon at my house), make a plan with your child for the next week. Go over each class’s online space (Google Classroom or learning management site) looking at announcements, the syllabus, and posted assignments. This is also a good time to check online grades and email for notes from the teacher. This helps make sure your child doesn’t fall behind and gives you a sense of the challenges for the upcoming week. If your child learns this type of planning, they will be far ahead of most college students.
Elementary
Reading. Any where, any kind, any mode. Books, magazines, comics, graphic novels, online. It all counts. Let them follow a passion -- do they love trains? Super heroes? Plants? Some libraries are allowing curbside checkout, most have digital resources you can check out. Read together. Read outloud. Read silently. Just keep reading.
Middle school
At this age, students should be learning the scheduling practices above in our general tips with supervision. This is also a great time to practice some highly effective study skills to prepare them for high school and college (see below, “High school”).
If you haven’t made sure your child understands digital literacy and safe social media practices, now is the time. Middle school students are very focused on their peers and during social distancing online may be the only way to safely connect with others (fun tips for all ages on socializing right now). There are great resources out there (check out Edutopia). Make sure to model good practices yourself--ask before you post pictures of your child.
High school
While parents of little ones may long for older children, high school counts in a way that creates additional stress--grades are a key determinant of college access. Taking challenging courses online is daunting, especially when many teachers have not been giving the resources to devote time and energy into revamping their face-to-face curriculum. Our tip for this age group: double down on the most effective and efficient study skills based on research and science.
Rigorous planning, using the general tip above is key. Knowing what the instructor expects is especially important for an online course and something your teen should learn to navigate on their own. Students will need to read the syllabus carefully and keep up with course announcements.
Have your student take the time to learn how to actively study, using self-testing (old fashioned flash cards or apps both work for this), and how to space out their study rather than cramming. We have some great resources , and we also recommend the many 10-minute Crash Course videos on Youtube that are quite well-done and cover study skills, and planning (these are accessible for even later elementary students).
Tate, T. P., & Warschauer, M. (2019). Keypresses and Mouse Clicks: Analysis of the First National Computer-Based Writing Assessment. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 24(4), 523-543.
10.1007/s10758-019-09412-x
The quality of students’ writing skills continues to concern educators. Because writing is essential to success in both college and career, poor writing can have lifelong consequences. Writing is now primarily done digitally, but students receive limited explicit instruction in digital writing. This lack of instruction means that students fail to take advantage of the affordances of digital tools. The writing process is shaped by the tools used, which makes digital writing, to an extent, different from writing with pen and paper. To better understand students’ digital writing skills, we take advantage of the information provided by computer-based assessments—keyboard and mouse activity data. We examine the relationship between students’ use of the keyboard and mouse during the assessment and students’ writing achievement. Our data comes from the first national computer-based writing assessment in the United States, the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessment. Using data from over 24,100 eighth-grade students, we found that the number of keypresses had a distinct and direct effect on writing achievement scores, controlling for word count. We also identified several different patterns of keyboard and mouse activity on the computer-based NAEP assessment.
Tate, T., Warschauer, M., & Kim, Y.-S. G. (2019). Learning to compose digitally: The effect of prior computer use and keyboard activity on NAEP writing. Reading and Writing, (), 1-24 DOI 10.1007/s11145-019-09940-zWriting is critical for college and career readiness, yet secondary students in America are not good writers (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012 ). Unfortunately, researchers know relatively little about secondary students’ writing skills, and even less about their digital writing. In this study, we explored prior computer use, keyboard activity during writing, and their relations to writing achievement using the 8th grade 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress writing assessment, the first national computer-based writing assessment for U.S. secondary students. We found that prior computer use predicted students’ writing skills directly (0.08) and indirectly (e.g., keypresses, 0.14) via keyboard activity during the test. We found differential effects for certain groups including current English learners and disadvantaged students. We also found a small positive interaction effect of prior use and keypresses on writing. That is, the benefits of prior computer use for school writing and the value of students’ additional keypresses on writing achievement were amplified when both were present.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-019-09940-z
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-019-09940-z
Tate, T., Collins, P., Xu, Y., Yau, J., Krishnan, J., Prado, Y., Farkas, G., & Warschauer, M. (2019). Visual-Syntactic Text Format: Improving Adolescent Literacy, Scientific Studies of Reading. DOI 10.1080/10888438.2018.156170 https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2018.156170
Seventh and eighth grade students in a within-teacher randomized control study read from visual-syntactic formatted text for 44 minutes per week over the course of a year. On the annual state assessment, we found small statistically significant improvements on the overall English Language Arts scaled score (ES = 0.05, p<.05) and the writing assessment (ES = 0.07, p<.01) for the treatment group compared to the control group. We found no interactions between gifted, special education, or English learner classification and treatment status on the effect on overall ELA score, but our categorical and subgroup analyses showed that the use of VSTF provided a modest benefit to middle school students who were near or at grade level in the prior school year.
Tate, T. & Warschauer, M. (2108). Going Beyond “That Was Fun”: Measuring Writing Motivation, Journal of Writing Analytics, 2, 257-279.
The use of validated measures of writing motivation is imperative to improving our understanding, and development, of interventions to improve student writing utilizing motivation as a mechanism. One of the most important malleable factors involved in improving student writing is motivation, particularly for secondary school students. This note systematically examines the measures of writing motivation for students in grades 4-12 used by researchers over the last ten years and summarizes their psychometric and measurement properties to the extent provided in the underlying literature. This collection of measures and their properties and features is designed to make researchers more aware of the various options and to point out the need for additional measures.
The use of validated measures of writing motivation is imperative to improving our understanding, and development, of interventions to improve student writing utilizing motivation as a mechanism. One of the most important malleable factors involved in improving student writing is motivation, particularly for secondary school students. This note systematically examines the measures of writing motivation for students in grades 4-12 used by researchers over the last ten years and summarizes their psychometric and measurement properties to the extent provided in the underlying literature. This collection of measures and their properties and features is designed to make researchers more aware of the various options and to point out the need for additional measures.
Tate, T., Warschauer, M., & Abedi, J. (2016).
The Effects of Prior Computer Use on Computer-Based Writing: The 2011 NAEP Writing Assessment, Computers & Education, 101, 115-131.
doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2016.06.001
The Effects of Prior Computer Use on Computer-Based Writing: The 2011 NAEP Writing Assessment, Computers & Education, 101, 115-131.
doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2016.06.001
Writing achievement levels are chronically low for K-12 students. As assessments follow the transition to computer-based writing, differences in technology access may exacerbate students’ difficulties. Indeed, the writing process is shaped by the tools we use and computer-based writing is different from writing with pen and paper. We examine the relationship between reported prior use of computers and students’ achievement on the first national computer-based writing assessment in the United States, the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessment. Using data from over 24,100 eighth grade students, we found that prior use of computers for school-related writing had a direct effect on writing achievement scores on the computer-based NAEP assessment. One standard deviation increase in prior use led to a 0.14 and 0.16 standard deviation increase in mean and scaled writing achievement scores respectively, with demographic controls and jackknife weighting in our SEM analysis. We also looked at earlier NAEP assessments and found that prior computer use did not positively affect the earlier pen and paper-based writing assessments.
Book Chapters
Tate, T.,& Warschauer, M. (2018). Digital divides and social inclusion. In K. Mills, A. Stornaiuolo, A. Smith, & J. Pandya (Eds.), Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures (pp. 63-75): Routlege.
Tate, T.,& Warschauer, M. (2017). One-to-one device initiatives. In K. Peppler (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning (p. xx-xx). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483385198
Tate, T.,& Warschauer, M. (2017). Computer Access in the Home. In K. Peppler (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning(pp. 120-121). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Tate, T.,& Warschauer, M. (2017). The digital divide in language and literacy education. In S. May (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Vol. 9, Language, Education and Technology, S. Thorne (Ed.) doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02328-1_5-1
Zinger, D., Tate, T.,Warschauer, M., (2017). Learning and teaching with digital media: Technological pedagogy and classroom practice. In J. Clandinin, & J. Husu (Eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education. (pp. 577-593) London, UK: SAGE
Tate, T.,& Warschauer, M. (2018). Digital divides and social inclusion. In K. Mills, A. Stornaiuolo, A. Smith, & J. Pandya (Eds.), Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures (pp. 63-75): Routlege.
Tate, T.,& Warschauer, M. (2017). One-to-one device initiatives. In K. Peppler (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning (p. xx-xx). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483385198
Tate, T.,& Warschauer, M. (2017). Computer Access in the Home. In K. Peppler (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning(pp. 120-121). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Tate, T.,& Warschauer, M. (2017). The digital divide in language and literacy education. In S. May (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Vol. 9, Language, Education and Technology, S. Thorne (Ed.) doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02328-1_5-1
Zinger, D., Tate, T.,Warschauer, M., (2017). Learning and teaching with digital media: Technological pedagogy and classroom practice. In J. Clandinin, & J. Husu (Eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education. (pp. 577-593) London, UK: SAGE
