10 Reasons Why College Zoom Classrooms are Better than In-Person Learning
A New Jersey middle schooler shuddered of loneliness as she entered … her Zoom classroom. She had just transferred to a new school. Then the pandemic hit. Her bright eyes once eager to make new friends became sullen as she stared vacantly at the lifeless names of of her classmates with videos off.
Her mental health was in shambles. How can you find your way when you click through screen after screen where nobody knows who you are?
Stories like this give remote learning a bad rap. Both press and parents around the country have cursed the massive change. Yet now, a year-plus into the pandemic, teachers have found ways to adapt. Even thrive.
This post outlines 10 ways that learning over Zoom can be better than in-person learning. One of the biggest drivers of these benefits is a change in how young people socialize.
Ways Remote Learning is Better:
1. Transition to an online social landscape
Social norms are radically evolving for Gen Z. While older generations made friends primarily through in-person gatherings, many of today’s kids make their friends online through video game communities and internet platforms. Today, 64% of Gen Zers and Millennials feel better understood by specialized online communities than by their family and real-world friends.[source?] That’s because the internet allows for wider exploration of interests and access to the exact niche interest group: “Anime Fans of Austin” “Parkor Crew Unlimited” “Health smoothie makers”. This shifting social landscape may cause making friends over Zoom to feel more natural.
2. More intimate conversations
Most teachers complain that Zoom is not personable; you can’t be “present” with students. I disagree. You can be more present with students over zoom. I had a student who was clearly flustered. We moved into a 1:1 Zoom breakout room and she explained to me that her mother lost her job at the start of the pandemic. She cried while I offered support. This connection would be difficult in a brick-and-mortar classroom where, at best, we’d try to nook ourselves in a corner away away from prying eyes.
3. More accessibility
Zoom allows for seamless recording of class sessions. These zoom video recordings are often more accessible for people hard of hearing and seeing. Viewers can pause, zoom in, re-listen to parts. The recordings ensure people with poor wifi can still access the content afterwords. The recording also makes learning easier for students with mobility challenges — no more shlepping through slippery snow or dangerous weather to get to class.
4. Easy recordings for different learner types
The proliferation of recordings creates more ways for students to digest content at their own pace. Students can watch on 2x speed or pause and return to points they don’t understand well. Teachers can turn lectures into self-paced tutorials, opening time in class for more active learning. Teachers can allow for multiple ways to consume a class. Students like that.
5. Student choice of engagements
We can move beyond the blanketed “do this activity” and now give students a choice in how they want to engage. Here’s an example of kinds of options I gave students:
6. Quicker student groupings
With Zoom, students can instantly be put in groups and rejiggered into new ones. Teachers no longer need spend valuable learning-time pairing up students. It’s easy. For groups that consistently meet (like a team for a project), I assign each team a number and then they go to that specific breakout room during work time:
7. Better data collection
I find Zoom polls to be more effective than alternative methods for sourcing data from students. They pop up on everybody’s screen, which yields a better click-through rate than electronic links to polls. Here are a few things I poll regularly to ensure my class meets student needs:
Sourcing this data, sometimes ad hoc during class, allows me to be more agile in meeting student needs.
8. More time to study, sleep, form relationships
The commute to class now involves rolling out of bed. While I have no data to back this up, the number of rolls it takes from your bed to your home office is significantly less revolutions than a commute by car or foot.
9. Practice for remote work
Many companies are transitioning their employees to remote work. Building your classroom in a remote work style equips students to succeed in this environment. Teachers can also devote 5 minutes of class to reinforcing successful remote work habits too!
10. Better training of “executive functions” and healthy habits
the average 18 year old’s executive functioning — self-management — is underdeveloped. This is of even greater concern in the remote learning world where our laptops are hotbeds for distraction. The healthy habits naturally structured into our days, such as going for walks, are absent.
Surprisingly, remote learning might help students get more control over their executive functioning. You see, remote learning frees up time that is traditionally spent walking around the building from room to room. This time can be used for quick micro-meetings. Students can now click into a brief 5 minute meeting over zoom without the headache of logistics. At Make School, we used this structure to create “practice groups” for categories of executive functioning. Students were able to improve their productivity, diet, and exercise with a curated group of others who shared the same goals. This is just an example of the remote learning innovation we will see emerge.
In the end …
Most cases against remote learning are that students need social interaction, they need to move around, and they need community. These are a byproduct of school — not its explicit focus. If the students can realize those benefits on their own, and schools can create structures to facilitate it, then Zoom learning can be a valuable approach.*
* A note: many students suffer with remote learning because of their home environment: they don’t have space for focused work, have a rough family life, or lack a laptop and quality internet. Remote schools should fight the good fight for equity by rerouting buses to public libraries for students to work, funding laptops, and using creative alternatives to meal plans. In-person-schools-turned-remote-schools can definitely pay for all that given the money they will save from reduced real estate!
