Work-from-home Innovation (Pri): e-PD Sessions Supporting Online & Blended Learning

Written by Dashni Ravindran and Avie Mercado (with input from Nelson, Jasmeet, Nurul Ain, Suziana, Evelyn Lim, and Sharifah Aliah)

1. What were these sessions about?

The implementation of the circuit breaker earlier this year necessitated innovations in professional development delivery. To support the teaching fraternity in spite of our physical distance, four different teams in the Primary unit came up with new ways of delivering mandatory workshops, so as to empower teachers to make instructional decisions that improve student outcomes.

2. What tools and platforms were used?

MOE Kindergarten Team

• What: Two consecutive mandatory workshops for beginning teachers.

• How: Zoom and Google Classroom allowed for online synchronous learning, where participants could clarify misconceptions with facilitators, pose contextualised queries, and crystallise their learning.

Our experience with Google Classroom:

• We consolidated different tasks on the platform. YouTube videos could also be embedded into the platform, enabling participants to visualise the enactment of pedagogies.

• We leveraged the platform to provide opportunities for reflection and the exchanging of ideas.

• The platform was a means of safeguarding the privacy of the teachers and students featured in our in-house videos. Due to these privacy concerns, we initially considered using Zoom's screen-sharing function to display the videos for participants, but lagging occurred. Hence, we uploaded the videos to our Google Classroom site instead, and scheduled their publication to coincide with the Zoom session. During the session, after directing participants to the site, the facilitator could observe them to ensure that no one was recording the videos on their phones.

STELLAR Team

• What: A mandatory syllabus implementation workshop for beginning and experienced teachers.

• How: Google Sites allowed for online asynchronous learning, where participants could review information gleaned from previous workshops and learn about the content of the current workshop. Afterwards, school communities even took their learning offline, with one Head of Department engaging their team in an asynchronous discussion to translate what they'd learned from the Google site into practicable ways to improve their teaching and learning.

How we used Google Sites.

The Reading Team

• What: Mandatory workshops for beginning and experienced teachers involved in implementing the Tier 2 intervention programmes.

Learning Support Programme (LSP)

• How: Increasing participant engagement through tools that facilitate multimodal online asynchronous learning, such as Google Sites, Google Drive, Padlet, and OPAL. Zoom was used for online synchronous learning.

How we used Padlet (right).

How we used Zoom.

Reading Remediation Programme (RRP)

• How: We used Canva to create an infographic that gave teachers an overview of what they would learn during the session. Zoom, Google Drive, and Slido were also used.

Our experience with Google Drive and Zoom:

• As some participants had asked for access to the training slides so that they could take notes during the session, we uploaded our slides to Google Drive.

• Though we had instructed teachers to pre-register for the Zoom session to receive the meeting code and password, some of them still had difficulty entering the meeting. An officer was thus assigned to resend the meeting invitation to them.

• Zoom enabled us to gather real-time feedback from teachers via the group chat and the 'reactions' feature. These functions enabled us to assess teachers’ progress and identify their misconceptions.

How we used Zoom (left) and Google Drive (right).

Our experience with Slido:

• Slido was effective at immediately consolidating participants' views. When a participant asked if RRP would be continued next year in the withdrawal mode, we put up a poll on Slido to determine what participants felt about the withdrawal mode of implementation for the programme. When the poll results were instantaneously revealed on the screen, we invited teachers who preferred the original supplementary mode of implementation to share their concerns or struggles with the current pilot mode.

3. Any words of advice for other officers?

Here’s a personal reflection by one of our officers, Sharifah Aliah, on facilitating learning in an online environment:

'There were a few considerations I had in mind. Before the session, I carefully thought of the challenges that I would encounter and how they could be mitigated.'

The guiding considerations are as follows:

1. Creating a list of frequently-asked questions

2. Managing technical difficulties

3. Managing participant involvement

4. Creating a non-threatening online environment