How can virtual K-12 schools address the gaps in communication skills caused by the pandemic?

 Anshul Bhagi

The COVID-19 outbreak has had devastating consequences for all age groups, but perhaps the most debated and least understood has been the outbreak’s lasting impact on kids.

 It’s hard to size learning loss and future income loss for children whose academic, social, and emotional lives have been turned upside down, but the global academic community has reached consensus on at least two undeniable facts – first, that missing 1 year of school results in a setback of greater than 1 year in learning and development, and second that the lower income / lesser privileged communities of children that needed support most have suffered disproportionately more than those who were able to scramble to find local teachers and online teachers during this time.

 Private and Public sectors have mobilised to address this gap, and the outbreak has spurred the largest ‘online movement’ ever seen in the history of education. Across the globe, offline schools have gone online, using tools like Zoom to meet students wherever they can find internet connectivity; in India, individual educators and teachers have resorted to using Whatsapp for asynchronous content delivery and assignment sharing. Parents who had never before tried online learning for their children witnessed first-hand the value of being able to meet a good teacher from the convenience of home, and online schools like Camp K12 have scaled up as quickly as possible to offer personalized 1-on-1 and affordable group learning options to families and institutions in need, including to non-profits and NGOs free of cost.

 Communication Skills for kids – the silent victim

 Researchers and educators often measure learning loss based on numeracy and literacy scores, measured via school and standardized exams. The impact on kids’ communication skills goes relatively unnoticed.

 The role of a school education is not to stuff knowledge into brains, it is to equip kids with skills that will help them succeed in their lives, personally and professionally. Beyond a base level of math and science and literacy, success in a dynamic 21st-century world will come from kids’ ability to think critically and creatively, to communicate and collaborate effectively, and to be able to adapt rapidly to changing socioeconomic, business, and life contexts (to ‘reinvent oneself’ as author Noah Hariri describes in the book 21 Lessons for the 21st century).

 The need of the hour, therefore, is to evolve our educational institutions and systems for modern times, and to enable kids to have meaningful social interactions as part of their day to day academic lives, both in class and beyond.

The Way Forward

Remote learning was inevitable. We could not have anticipated it happening so soon, but it was bound to happen because it solves one of the most stubborn problems of K-12 education – the shortage of good teachers available within students’ localities.

 But building an online school capable of holding a child’s attention is no easy task; building trust with parents, and demonstrating to them that an online school can be as effective as, if not more, than a traditional institution, takes time and hard work. Helping children feel comfortable in new online environments, enabling them to start forming relationships and communicating with classmates freely, is no easy task.

 As a teacher for almost 15 years, and as an ed-tech entrepreneur for the past 10 years, I consider it the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to put on my technologist hat and my educator hat to shape what online schools of the future might look like.

 A few principles I have found to be helpful while trying building online schools for COVID school lockdowns and beyond:

 1. Choose Interactivity and Engagement over Standardisation: Don’t try to replace the teacher with pre-recorded videos. Both to maximize the child’s learning outcomes and to enable the child to practice communication, enable two-way interactions via Live Video and Audio streams.

2. Invest in your teachers, train them for online platforms and online pedagogy: Without good teachers, you won’t attract any students. Start early in building a teacher training, monitoring, and re-training function to ensure that your teachers scale with your demand.

3. Create curriculum that has built-in communication and engagement hooks: For example, group projects or end-of-class presentations where a child shares his/her work with classmates. At Camp K12, each 60 minute session’s curriculum includes a Start Ritual and an End Ritual that involves collaboration or competition between multiple kids in the session. We play games, do multiplayer quizzes, etc.

4. Create a pedagogy that encourages communication and interaction: For example, when a child raises their hand to ask a question, allow another child to answer the question (peer-learning / peer-teaching). If one child finishes early, ask the child to become a Teacher Assistant and help the others, or to showcase his/her project to all.

5. Tweak your classroom environment to maximize fun and learning – for example, take UI/UX seriously, experiment with gamification features like leaderboards, quizzes, multiplayer games, and make it easy for kids to get help from teachers 1:1 even in the midst of a group class.

6. Enable out-of-class interaction and communication between kids: build a school where learning doesn’t stop when the class ends. Kids should be able to play, compete, collaborate with their friends outside of class just like they do in traditional schools via afterschool clubs and sports activities. At Camp K12 for example, we have a kids community where kids teach Live workshops to other kids on our YouTube Channel, they participate in group debates and presentations, and they play 1-on-1 Coding and English quizzes against each other via our mobile app.

The writer is Co-Founder, Camp K12