VIEWS & OPINION Hybrid learning and the future of education Comment by VINCENT PIAROU, Business Development Manager at Samsung
When it comes to hybrid learning and how this will affect the future of education, it is important to note that this model had started before the pandemic, being utilised when pupils were unwell at home or in hospital as well as in university for international students. As a result of the pandemic, it is clear this model will remain a significant tool for teachers to keep-up direct contact when pupils & students can’t physically attend a class. While being in the classroom does
allow for a lot of interaction and cognitive skills to be stimulated, technology has helped many of the remote teaching and learning scenarios. So much so, that teachers now feel more comfortable in using the technology to support their teaching style in many areas. In a post-pandemic world, communication, learning and teaching with interactive devices is now considered a ‘must have’. Parents are happy to see schools now include interactive devices in their curriculum because user interface mainly runs through a screen at home, as well as in school and enterprises. In the classroom, teachers can use interactive displays as a collective tool, like a giant tablet, and guide pupils to find the most relevant information from all applications and sources. Today, an increasing number of students carry tablets and smartphones into classrooms to fulfil individual exercises and interact with others. When the students leave, they can continue accessing their educational content and take assessments on these devices. It means the display technology on these devices, has somewhat ‘broken the walls of the classroom’. Students are now enabled to learn all day without feeling like they are sat in a classroom, thanks to the gamification elements of many display applications.
Additionally, school boards can use display solutions to communicate with educators and students, as they can use display devices to push out alert messages such as health and safety or security messages to all connected displays with a single click. It can also be automated so both teachers and students can be immediately notified of these alerts. Displays can further support schools and campus communication outside of the classroom too. They can keep users updated on real time events and activities taking place. When it comes to being in class, remote students who need to dial in virtually can be seen, heard and engage with interaction, as though they were sitting in the room. In order to offer a maximum hybrid learning experience through the employment of display technology, it is important to recognise that students use various types of memory skills through the four ways of learning: visual, audio, kinaesthetic & reading (VAK-R) with differing degrees. The benefit of interactive devices like displays, tablets and smartphones, is that they provide three of these dimensions, so pupils can use their preferred way of learning, which enables improved learning outcomes.
For those students who cannot easily understand or memorise a lecture or textbook, displays also provide a complementary approach tailored to an individual’s skills, available in class, as well as from home. With hybrid learning and students being out of the classroom, there are challenges when it comes to fostering engagement and collaboration. Whatever the level of intelligence and connectivity of a device, it remains an end point and an available tool for teachers and students at all times in order to reach relevant content. Engagement and collaboration can only occur from teaching. It relies on the capability of the teacher to attract attention and generate group learning sessions while interactive displays, tablets and smartphones only provide the right tools for such activities. Some education content editors and publishers have identified the benefit of these end points to stimulate learning with games, both individually and in groups settings. The use of classroom chat rooms can help students remain connected when it comes to group work anywhere
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www.education-today.co.uk September 2022
and anytime. But notably, this is only a complement to what teachers deliver.
In the past, teachers were carrying universal knowledge in their brain and delivering it to students in class. Now, through education display solutions, that universal knowledge is accessible to students at all times. I think I’m right in saying, that those parents who had to home-school during the pandemic, now recognise the task teachers face if they didn’t already, and acknowledge their pedagogical skills and understand that teaching is ultimately a very challenging task.
Now, due to access of interactive devices, teachers today can deliver their knowledge, stimulate group learning in addition to coaching their students on a creative journey. This creativity is particularly prevalent in lessons on coding, which has now become an essential part of the education curriculum. The teaching of coding provides students the tool to create their own programs and generate their own vision of the world, with no longer any limit between imagination and reality. Through hybrid learning, the classroom now has an open window to the world, which is not restricted to connecting with remote students, but with other countries, continents, experts, languages, cultures, the list goes on. Even Latin/Greek teachers can now use internet sources to bring to life 3D renderings which represent artefacts from history. In the past they simply relied on books.
One of the notable challenges teachers faced during the pandemic was how to bring their teaching into a display interface. It generated a sort of ‘glass barrier’ that restricted the use of body language to check if something was understood or not. Virtual teaching initially prevented group working and fostered feelings of isolation. But, very quickly, thanks to teachers’ adaptation along with government and school bodies approval to use the technology, teachers were able to bring their methodology and content to a world of online tools, which actually worked out well for them.
Interactive displays were deployed along with education tools, which did require specific training for teachers. Samsung introduced the Flip, an intuitive interactive board that requires no training and helps teachers to focus on pedagogy and completely forget the device itself. We believe this is the right approach to gain the highest level of user adoption. Flip is very secure and enables teachers and students to connect, import, export to and from any device brand, operating system, sources and applications they want. As a result teachers and students can seamlessly work in class and remotely.
In the coming years, it’s important for device manufacturers to concentrate on this end user approach , so teachers no longer need to adapt to technology but rather technology must serve them, not the other way around.
It is clear that hybrid learning will remain here for good. It will only grow and enable teachers to reach out to field experts and classrooms located in other countries around the world. We can expect to see group working becoming even more exciting and collaborative on an international scale.
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