Learning can take place in any setting, whether a classroom, a virtual environment, or a library. Learning can range from deep to superficial. This post is intended to assist teachers who are seeking ways to make hybrid and online learning more substantive and less superficial.
In this article we’ll go through three specific and practical ways for promoting deep learning in hybrid and virtual environments (and traditional classrooms, too).
What Is Deep Learning?
A method for pupils to gain a thorough comprehension of key concepts and procedures while also being able to apply what they’ve learned. It shows students know the significance of what they have learnt.
First Strategy: Make Every Unit a ‘Study In’ a Big Idea
Covering all of the content at the expense of providing students time to digest and think about the material has always been an ineffective technique for encouraging deep learning because it’s pointless to go through the subject if students aren’t comprehending it in the first place.
Attempting to ‘cover’ too much content frequently results in superficial effects as well as fragmented learning that does not last long. The realities of hybrid and online learning, with their shortened instructional time, exacerbate the problem. Teachers to look for the biggest of the big ideas when designing and naming their course units. Below are some examples of units that were conceived as studies in larger concepts or universal themes:
- The Four Seasons: A Study in Renewal
- Decimals, Fractions, and Percentages: A Study in Equivalence
- The Rainforest: A Study in Balance and Harmony
- The story, Frog and Toad are Friends: A Study in Relationships
Notice that the unit addresses the content topic or a skill using “A Study In….” emphasizes an aspect to focus learning around transferable ideas, rather than discrete skills, and isolated facts. This makes student engaged to find evidence for, and examples of the larger concepts both within the units and to topics and situations beyond it.
As a result, this is an excellent moment to integrate larger concepts and topics into the curriculum. Infusing this shift will foster conceptual thinking by keeping the key ideas at the forefront of both teachers’ and students’ thoughts.
Second Strategy: Use Essential Questions to Promote Exploration of Big Ideas
Framing teaching units around Essential Questions is another technique to guarantee that learning is focused on big ideas. These are open-ended, thought-provoking questions that encourage pupils to investigate and discover ‘big concepts.’ These questions are intended to stimulate students’ thinking, ignite debate and discussion, and raise more questions for further investigation, rather than just provide a single, ‘right’ response.
Examples of such questions are:
Geography: Why is ________ there? Government: Who should decide?
History: Why study the past?
Literature: Should a story teach you something?
Mathematics: What do effective problem solvers do when they get stuck?
Third Strategy: Begin Units with Inductive Learning
Deep learning happens when students actively ‘create’ meaning for transferrable and abstract concepts and processes. They are, in essence, formulating principles and notions based on specific cases. Based on the pioneer efforts of Hilda Taba, inductive learning is an effective technique for engaging pupils in this type of meaning-making.
The pupils are given a ‘set of words,’ which could be related to reading, lesson, or topic they are about to begin. For example, young pupils learning about the Ancient Egyptians might be given the following set of words: scalpel, stars, Geb (earth god) Kushta (medicine plant), surgery etc.
Students go over the concepts again, look up any new words, and then put them together based on common qualities before naming the group.
The groupings are used to forecast what will be learned in the future. Students might make predictions like, “The Egyptians believed in numerous gods” and “There were Egyptian doctors who employed equipment and plants to help sick people.”
Students test and modify their predictions as they learn more. For example, during the Ancient Egypt lesson, students collect data from readings, and as they proceed through the unit, they seek any material that challenges or verifies their assumptions. This stage of evidence-gathering transforms the lesson into an inquiry and keeps the learning active, addressing one of the most significant obstacles of online learning.
