Module 2: Wayfinding

Essential Question

How do I engage and empower students to become self directed learners?

Why does wayfinding matter in distance learning?

When having limited face-to-face interactions with your students, the design of online coursework must be clear, coherent, and concise in order to provide a smooth, navigable experience. When students encounter an obstacle to access the information or resources they can lose learning momentum. This leads to less overall engagement.

When designing coursework for an online learning space, it is important to ask ourselves if we are reducing the cognitive load on our students. We can do that by making navigation, intuitive, consistent, and free of clutter. Click here for more information on navigation.

Big Idea 1: Workflow

Students need to know how to navigate our online classrooms in order to find information and assignments. Routines and clear standard operating procedures are just as important in distance learning. Also, utilizing the ability to archive work will help students not be overwhelmed by a long list of assignments.

Best Practices

• Make a workflow video: Make a video for students of you navigating how to progress through a day's assignment from the student view.

• Archive regularly: Create and communicate a regular schedule for archiving older assignments and activities in SeeSaw and Classroom. When posts accumulate, it becomes harder for students to see what it is that they need to do. Also if a student has fallen behind on their work, it can be overwhelming and frustrating to see an impossible number of tasks piling up in their feed. Consider "clearing the decks" weekly or bi-weekly for students.

• Feedback Loops: Distance learning provides quality opportunities for feedback. Standard classroom routines around feedback can make the interactions more relevant and managable. This includes directing students to finding feedback as well as timing considerations.

• Support Families at Home : Like a recipe, providing time guidelines for activities can help families coordinate their days as well as know when an assignment has gone off track. Many teachers have used tools like Go Noodle to help students take breaks at home. The introduction of these tools can help families use them independently to suit their needs.

Workflow Examples

Big Idea 2: Use Navigation to Empower Students

Best Practices

• Make learning targets explicit: Knowing the destination makes you a better and more enthusiastic navigator. In an online environment you can also differentiate how you share your learning goals using video and audio tools. Families helping students with their work, will also benefit from understanding the purpose of the activity.

• Minimize clicks: Embed content so students can access it, along with your added context and instructions, without leaving the page. Ask your librarian to make a Guide to organize resources for a larger units.

• Use audio, video, and graphics for directions: SeeSaw has tools for making directions audible and visual. But you can add a quick audio recording to a Google Slide or Google Classroom Activity with an app like Vocaroo.

• Teach students to seek out feedback: See Saw, Flipgrid, and Classroom do not "push" students to review turned in work for feedback. When you give directions on workflows, show students when and how to see their feedback.

• Self Assessment: An an online form, survey or video reflection can help students assess how well they met the goals and how clear they were. Providing ways for students to reflect on their learning processes will increase their awareness of their learning preferences and strengths. This will help them become stronger independent learners.

Big idea 3: Engagement

Best Practices

• Chunk Your Content: A strategy to lessen the cognitive load is by breaking down assignments into digestible tasks.

• Less is More: Even when we share quality resources they can get lost if the page is too crowded, busy or overwhelming. Using just one or two fonts/colors is a quick way to keep it simple.

• Log In as a Student: It is worth setting up an extra Google Classroom or a Sample Student in SeeSaw so that you can regularly see things from a student point of view. It is also helpful to occasionally log in as different students to see what your class looks like from their views. Check to see how it looks when you post an assignment, or unfinished work piles up, or to see how feedback notifications come in. (See your school librarian for student login information.)

Resources:

Recommended App: Wakelet. This web app allows you to easily curate links and post them anywhere. This is helpful if you want to post a unit guide on your webpage, post multiple links for a SeeSaw assignment, or just send someone a few resources. Remember to be choosy and curate; don't "dump" a ton if links under any one topic. It can also be used collaboratively! Learn more about Wakelet.