At the end of 2021, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission issued the Implementation Plan for the Digital Transformation of Education in Shanghai (2021-2023). In recent years, many schools in Shanghai have broken through the barriers of traditional classroom teaching through technical means such as artificial intelligence, big data analysis and augmented reality, constructed high-quality classroom teaching behaviors, enhanced learning experience, and improved teaching efficiency.
This article takes you into the Minhang Science and Technology Senior High School affiliated to East China University of Science and Technology. In 2019, the school was selected as one of the first batch of Shanghai Education Informatization Application Benchmarking Cultivation Schools. At present, the school has explored a variety of models for normal teaching and application in the digital environment. Among them, the virtual class that will be implemented in 2020 is an innovative move to break through the class teaching system and teach according to talents.
*This article was originally published in Shanghai Education Magazine, No. 36, 2021, the original title was "Virtual Shift: Cracking the Problem of Teaching According to Talents in Class Teaching"
At 2:50 p.m. on Friday, teachers and students from Minhang Science and Technology Senior High School (hereinafter referred to as Huali Kegao) affiliated to East China University of Science and Technology began their seventh class.
In this class, the 8 classes of the third grade of high school are arranged with math classes. Yesterday, all the students of the whole grade did a unified math week exercise, and today's lesson is to comment on yesterday's weekly practice.
However, in the classroom of 8 classes, the math teacher was not seen.
Under the leadership of Qian Huiqing, director of the Huali Science High School Student Development Center, we met the place where four teachers from the senior high school mathematics preparation team attended classes: Fan Shujuan in the 213 office of the administrative building, Fan Jinping in the faculty home, Shen Aiming in the party affairs conference room, and Chen Qiubo in the library. All four teachers turned on their computers and wore headsets to teach live through the online teaching platform.
At the same time, more than 300 students in 8 classes sat in their seats, put on headphones, logged into the online teaching platform through tablets or mobile phones, and chose to enter one of the math teachers' live classes according to their own situation.
Although the live lectures held by the four teachers at the same time were all for the same exercise paper, the content and difficulty level of the commentaries were different, and they were aimed at students of different learning levels of weak, basic, intermediate and advanced, and commented around different emphases.
Students of the whole grade enter the corresponding teacher's live class according to their weekly practice results, thus forming 4 virtual classes, which the school vividly calls as 2G class, 3G class, 4G class, and 5G class.
Qian Huiqing said that this is the school has been exploring the virtual class teaching practice for more than a year, and now the third grade of high school began to try the virtual class in the second year of high school, and has formed a relatively mature mode of operation, and expanded to more grades for promotion and application.
Students enter the live broadcast room of different teachers to listen to classes in layers, through virtual classes, to achieve layered teaching In order to create a real classroom learning atmosphere, but also to facilitate teachers to intuitively feel the learning status of students, teachers will also invite some students to sit on the live broadcast site and serve as "small teaching assistants".
Why implement virtual shifts?
When it comes to why they thought of trying to carry out virtual shifts, teachers believe that the suspension of classes under the prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic is a trigger point.
From the "Information Technology Experimental School" and "Digital Experimental School" in Minhang District to the benchmarking school of education informatization in Shanghai, the school has been exploring the use of technology to promote the teaching of teachers and the learning of students, especially to meet the individual learning needs of students.
Through continuous exploration, the school has formed the characteristics of "LEMON Classroom", the core concept of which is Less-teaching, Essentialized-teaching, More-interaction, Open-concept, and new-structure.
In 2017, the school moved to a new location and built a relatively leading digital learning environment: the school has 4 future classrooms, 8 innovation laboratories, 20 smart classrooms, 7 laboratories, 4 art-specific classrooms, each classroom is equipped with nano blackboard, intelligent recording and broadcasting system, tablet computers, electronic class cards and other intelligent equipment.
Teachers try more accurate teaching based on data support, prepare lessons in a targeted manner according to pre-study data before class, instantly obtain students' classroom performance data during class, accurately grasp the learning situation, and help students implement targeted improvement through differentiated homework after class, and the teaching efficiency is significantly improved.
In 2019, Minhang became one of the 8 "Smart Education Demonstration Zones" created by the Ministry of Education and was the only area in Shanghai to be selected. In Minhang, "smart education" mainly focuses on the use of information technology to achieve "large-scale individualized teaching driven by data".
Specific to the daily teaching of schools, how to achieve large-scale teaching according to talents? In particular, how to further break through the limitations of class teaching to teach according to aptitude?
Under the epidemic, classes were suspended without stopping, and Huali Kegao took the lead in opening the online teaching mode for all employees in the city. In the process of online teaching for more than 2 months, Principal Qiao Changhong has been thinking: such large-scale online teaching has its obvious advantages, can it be combined with the advantages of offline teaching, to maximize the different learning needs of students, while further improving teaching efficiency, to achieve large-scale teaching according to their aptitudes?
Therefore, when the epidemic ended and students fully resumed school, Qiao Changhong threw this topic to the teachers. After discussion, the school believes that it is possible to start from the lecture and evaluation of the mathematics subject, teachers and students log on to the online teaching platform, 4 teachers use the live class to implement layered teaching, students enter the live broadcast room of different teachers to listen to the class, through the virtual class, to achieve layered teaching.
In this way, the teacher does not have to repeat the same lecture content twice in 2 classes as before, and the students will not have enough to eat and some people will not eat well in the same class as before. More importantly, students of different learning levels can follow the teacher's targeted teaching and improve on their own original basis.
How is the virtual shift implemented?
The virtual walking class of the Huali Science High Mathematics Discipline Lecture Can be divided into the following steps:
The first step is academic testing
This year's senior year begins in the second year of high school and will have a weekly practice at the end of each new lesson in math class.
Fan Jinping said that the weekly exercise is to test the students' mastery of the content learned this week, and the weekly exercise questions should be designed around the teaching content and the students' learning conditions, and the difficulty should be well distinguished between different levels of learning, so it takes a lot of work to polish every time.
The four teachers in the teaching and research group take turns to prepare weekly practice questions, and many of the questions are original.
In the second step, students are stratified
After the weekly exercise, the teachers scan the students' answer sheets online, and then conduct an online reading, the paper reading is completed, and the students' score report is immediately generated on the platform. At this time, students log on to the platform and immediately see their score reports, and students can see their answers in this exercise and their performance level throughout the grade.
Therefore, everyone has a good idea of which teacher's live class to listen to tomorrow's lecture is the most suitable for their own level.
Over the past year or so, among more than 300 people in the third grade of high school, according to the difficulty and ease of change in the content of the exercises, the number of students who choose 5G classes is between 50 and 70, the number of students who choose 2G classes is between 20 and 40, and the number of students who choose 3G classes and 4G classes is relatively large, between 90 and 110 respectively.
The third step is to prepare lessons in layers
After the teacher reviews the exercises, the platform will generate multi-dimensional answer analysis data, which the teacher can retrieve as needed, such as the total score of each student in each class and the score data of each question, the score rate data of each question in each class, and so on.
Because the platform clearly records the students' answers and intuitively presents the students' academic performance, teachers can quickly and comprehensively obtain the answer information of each class, each student, and the implementation of each knowledge point.
Through data statistics and analysis, teachers can also clearly understand which are the common problems of students, which are the personality problems of students, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of different students' learning.
On this basis, the 4 teachers synchronously prepare lessons in layers according to the level content they are responsible for, so that the teaching content is located in the recent development area of each level of students, so that students at each level can gain and make progress on the basis of the original.
For example, according to the difficulty of the questions and the scoring rate of each question, the background data analysis will mark each question with green, yellow, orange, and red colors, and the teacher of the 2G class should focus on the green mark when preparing the lesson, which can completely ignore the red mark of the topic, and the more the red mark of the topic, the more the 5G class teacher should focus on the lesson preparation.
The fourth step is to walk the shift virtually
At the beginning of the lecture, the 4 teachers each found a quiet space, logged on to the platform, and opened the live broadcast room of the corresponding virtual class; the students sat in their seats and took out their respective terminal devices, some of them used the school's tablet, some used their mobile phones, logged on to the platform, and entered the live broadcast room of their corresponding virtual classes to listen to the lessons.
For some students to use their mobile phones to attend classes in this class every week, the school has communicated with parents in advance and signed and agreed by parents.
In order to create a real classroom learning atmosphere and facilitate teachers to intuitively feel the learning status of students, usually the four teachers will invite some students to sit on the live broadcast site and serve as "little teaching assistants".
During the virtual shift, in the real space, the students still sit in the fixed seats in the original administrative class, but after logging in to the platform through the terminal device in their hands, in the virtual space, the students in the same classroom enter 4 different virtual classes. At the same time, what they learned was different, but they did not affect each other, did not disturb each other, and each took what they needed.
The fifth step is to teach in layers
After the students entered the virtual class online, the 4 teachers began to teach in layers. At this time, each teacher only needs to make a comment on students at the same level, and the content is more focused.
Generally speaking, 5G focuses on the deepening and expansion of knowledge points, focusing on mathematical ideas and mathematical methods; 4G classes focus on the knowledge points and appropriate deepening; 3G classes focus on the strengthening of basic knowledge, through one example and three to strengthen training; 2G classes focus on the combing of basic knowledge and the training of basic skills, while giving more encouragement to students.
Step 6: Feedback follow-up
The end of the lecture does not mean that the virtual shift is over. Shen Aiming said that after the live class, the teachers will go to the two classes they teach to check the corrections and notes of the students' exercises, and urge the students to further grasp and implement the knowledge points they have learned.
Fan Jinping said that according to the situation of weekly exercises and lectures, the mathematics group will compile another weekend practice paper for students to consolidate and improve.
At the same time, all live classes can be viewed on the platform without restrictions, students can look back at the original class if they have not heard clearly, and students want to see what other teachers have said in class, and they can also watch them one by one.
In addition to virtual shifts, there are also accurate teaching based on resources and data, cross-class integration of online and offline, and integrated interactive teaching of intramural and on-campus connectivity, etc
What kind of benefits does the virtual class bring to students?
The implementation of virtual shifts focuses on meeting the individualized learning needs of students and achieving large-scale individualized teaching. After implementation, whether it is the student questionnaire survey conducted by the school or the individual questioning of the students by the teachers of each class, the students have expressed their liking for this form.
In this process, each student can find their own positioning, through their own learning content and learning methods, on the basis of their original knowledge and experience are constantly improving.
Takeaway 1: Enable on-demand learning
Zhang Chaoxia is a math teacher in the second grade of high school, and is in charge of the 5G class when she walks the virtual class. She said that every week of practice, the difference between students is very large. For example, in the past few weeks, after practicing, 10 people in a class scored 100 points, and for these students, they all mastered the exercises this time, and they didn't need to listen to the commentary anymore.
At the same time, there are also students in the class who score 20 or 30 points, and for them, they need to talk about every question. When walking virtually, the teachers of the 5G class generally only talk about one or two problems, and the rest of the time is all used for expansion and deepening; the teachers of the 2G class will explain the topics one by one, explain thoroughly, and talk about all the content that students must master, as for some particularly difficult problems, they can also give up and not talk about them.
In this way, everyone's learning needs are met, and everyone takes a step towards their recent development zone.
Harvest 2: Learn to manage yourself
After each exercise, the teachers are immediately reading the papers, students can see their own results and the correct and wrong situation of all the questions in the background that night, and for the wrong questions, students can view the correct answers, analyze their own error process, and make targeted preparations for the later lectures. Mao Liuming said that such a process of traditional education is not available, and students have more room for autonomy.
In choosing which teacher's virtual class to enter, the student's autonomy is more obviously reflected.
Before the implementation of the virtual class, the 4 teachers of the math group gave a lecture to the students in their respective classes, allowing students to choose the virtual class they wanted to enroll in, and the statistics were not much different from the teachers' expectations, indicating that the students had a clearer understanding of themselves.
After the official implementation of the virtual shift, the math group also made rules for which students listen to which level of classes at the beginning, such as the 2G class for the last 15% of the students and the top 25% of the students in the 5G class.
Later, there is no need for teachers to prescribe it at all, and students immediately know which class they should go to when they see their grades.
When walking virtually, you can also see the display of student autonomy. Zhang Chaoxia teaches 5G classes, she said: "I usually say to students at the beginning, which topics I will talk about in this volume today, you see, if you think it is okay, I will listen to it here." Some students may want to listen to more topics, so they can always change to other classes to listen. ”
Teachers in other classes also reflected that they would encounter the situation of students changing classes in the middle, such as listening to the 4G class, thinking it was too difficult, they changed to the 3G class, originally listened to the 3G class, felt that they had mastered, and changed to the 4G class to listen.
Behind this behavior is actually the independent choice made by the students after rational judgment.
Harvest 3: Improve learning awareness
All teachers stressed that the form of virtual class walking especially requires the consciousness of learning, and when implemented, those students with higher consciousness and better learning habits will also benefit more.
Zhang Chaoxia said that some students have been doing well academically, most of the time in the 5G class to listen to the class, a certain exercise is not done well, he will go to the 4G class class, but after the class he will go back to the 5G class class, to do the 5G class to expand the topic, and then ask the teacher alone. Zhang Chaoxia has met students like this many times who come to ask her questions.
Shen Aiming is in charge of the 3G class, and once the student used the method she did not talk about in the class, she asked the student how she came up with this method, and the student told her: "I learned this method from the 5G class." "It shows that students went to see the 5G class teacher's class after class and learned new methods from it."
Therefore, the more self-conscious students are, the richer the learning resources they receive from virtual shifts.
Virtual classes and hierarchical teaching will also bring certain psychological boosts to most students, prompting them to improve their self-consciousness of learning. For example, students in the 2G class, they don't want to be in the 2G class all the time, they will study hard, strive to do better next time, and give themselves the opportunity to enter the 3G class. Similarly, students in the 3G class will also work towards the level of the 4G class.
In this overall atmosphere, teachers in both grades said that most students can learn more consciously.
Harvest 4: Develop information literacy
When the virtual class is taken, the student has a terminal device in his hand, will this "hook" the student's soul?
For this problem, huali kegao's approach is to stand in the dimension of information literacy cultivation, cultivate students to establish the concept of digital learning, and guide students to regard mobile phones as one of the digital learning tools.
In the first semester of high school, students of Huali Kegao will learn a course - digital learning methods and skills, including waste-picking search, concept map construction, the use of electronic notes, micro-video production, the application of geometric drawing boards and formula editors, the application of Google Earth software, the application of various electronic platforms in the school, etc., so that students can experience new learning methods to adapt to the changes in learning styles in the digital environment. In this process, a variety of terminals around students can be the carrier of learning.
Virtual shifting is undoubtedly a kind of real digital learning, in the subtle, no matter what kind of terminal equipment, has become an effective digital learning tool in the hands of students.
Students in the same classroom listen to different teachers
What challenges does virtual shifting bring to teachers?
Today, the virtual shift has achieved obvious results, and it has been promoted to more grades and more scenes. Along the way, there have been breakthroughs and creations that teachers have faced challenges head-on.
At that time, the high school mathematics teaching and research group undertook the task of virtual class walking, and this teaching and research group had several characteristics: the average age of 4 teachers was 50 years old, which was the largest in the school; 4 teachers were senior teachers; among the 4 teachers, one was the director of the school's teacher development center, one was the director of the political and educational office, one was the leader of the teaching and research team, and one was the elderly who had served as the leader of the teaching and research team.
Pushing such a team to the forefront of the application of digital teaching to explore large-scale individualized teaching, the school expects them to play a leading role and produce a demonstration effect.
Just find a quiet space to take a live class
Challenge 1: Is the use of technology a challenge?
In response to this question, Fan Jinping, the oldest in the group, said: "If we don't know technically, we will learn, and it is not difficult to find out once we learn." ”
For example, he said that after each week of practice, he needs to scan the student's answer sheet online, he will not use the scanner at the beginning, he asked other teachers to teach him, after learning to operate the scanner every time, more than 300 answer sheets in the whole grade, ten minutes will all be scanned, very quickly.
Shen Aiming, who was the second youngest, replied happily, "It's not difficult at all!" She introduced that the online scan of the good answer sheet, on the mobile phone can be corrected, 4 teachers are divided into good work, more than 1 hour to complete the correction, very convenient. The next online live broadcast of the virtual shift is even less of a problem, and teachers and students have already applied it skillfully during the suspension of classes.
Liu Fengling, who rose to the third year of high school and returned from maternity leave, joined the team and seamlessly started to teach virtual shifts, without encountering any technical obstacles.
In Huali High School, the application of information technology in daily teaching has been very extensive.
Wang Tianxiong, director of the school information office, said that the normal application of Hualike in the high digital environment has emerged a variety of models, in addition to virtual classes, there are accurate teaching based on resources and data, cross-class integration of online and offline, and integrated interactive teaching of intramural and internal and external connectivity, etc.
Challenge 2: How to ensure the learning effect of students?
Mao Liuming, the leader of the mathematics preparation team in the second grade of this year, said that when the school first began to explore the virtual shift, he had doubts in his heart, and the main concern was whether there would be problems in the completion of teaching in this way.
Shen Aiming has repeatedly introduced the implementation of virtual classes in the district and the city on behalf of the school, and the most concerned question of the peers is also: when the live class is held, the teachers are not in the classroom, will the students listen carefully to the class? Can the teaching effect be guaranteed?
In this regard, Shen Aiming said that first of all, we must trust students. Huali Kegao has installed cameras in the classroom, which can record the whole process of classroom teaching of each lesson in real time, and after class, teachers and students can log on to the platform to review.
After the live class, the teachers sometimes went to the class video of their own class to see the learning status of the students, and they found that the overall participation of the students was still very high.
Secondly, in actual teaching, teachers will be supplemented by corresponding technical means before and after class.
For example, when 4 math teachers take a live class, each class teacher will walk around the class classroom if he has time, and problems can be solved in time; the cameras in the classroom are installed on both sides of the blackboard, and the teacher sometimes asks the students to turn the desk and chair and sit with their backs to the blackboard, so that the teacher can also see the student's screen in the live broadcast room; after class, the teacher will immediately collect the student's exercises and notes, check the student's correction and notes.
Third, in the process of virtual shifting, teachers are also constantly exploring and improving the implementation details.
For example, in the beginning, the teachers were alone in the office and the students were all in the classroom listening to the lessons. After the class, the teachers proposed in the discussion, so that the class can not see the students' reactions, nor can they order the students to answer questions, if you invite several students to sit next to them during the live broadcast, will you have a more real sense of the classroom?
When I tried it, it worked very well, and some students also liked to listen to the teacher's lectures face-to-face, so the limited number of seats in the live broadcast room became very sought-after, and students often came to grab seats.
Since then, this practice has been retained and become a fixed model. For example, in the past, students entered the live broadcast room, the teacher could only see how many people had entered their own class on the interface, but they could not see which students had come in, especially often in the middle of the class, there were students who quit this class, went to other classes, there were also students who quit other classes, entered this class, in the end who left, who came, need to go to the background to rummage, very inconvenient.
To this end, the school immediately contacted the platform and improved this function, everyone showed their real names, and the teacher could grasp the students' movements in real time.
Challenge 3: Will the burden on teachers increase?
The implementation of virtual shifts has undoubtedly increased the workload of teachers, but teachers do not think that this increases their burden, but feel that they have reduced the burden on teachers to a certain extent.
Fan Jinping is responsible for the 4G class, aimed at students at the middle and upper levels of academic level, his teaching content is not only to explain the topic, but also to lead students to learn from each other on this basis, to carry out certain expansion and improvement.
To this end, he spends 2 to 3 times more time preparing for class than before. After each weekly practice results come out, he first analyzes the data of the students' answers, and then considers which topics to talk about and to what extent, and then prepares the PPT, because the students are listening to live lessons on mobile phones and flat panels, and he always wants to make the PPT as exquisite as possible. This kind of lesson preparation process, the teacher in charge of the 2G, 3G, 5G class also has to go through.
However, in the eyes of the teachers, the increased workload is not an additional burden, because after the effort is invested, the effect is very obvious.
In the previous exercise lecture and evaluation class, teachers need to speak in 2 classes, and due to time constraints, they can only pick the wrong concentrated topics, high-level students cannot improve, low-level students cannot keep up, and now 4 teachers divide labor and cooperate, each teacher only needs to focus on one of the levels of teaching, and only need to speak again.
Shen Aiming said that this actually reduces the burden on teachers and improves the efficiency of teaching.
Not only that, but the teamwork between the four teachers in the lesson preparation team has become closer and deeper. After each weekly practice result comes out, the preparation team will immediately share the answer analysis data exported from the background, and after everyone analyzes and discusses it together, they will prepare their own lessons separately to meet the learning needs of students at all levels during the evaluation.
Whether it is 2G class, 3G class, 4G class, 5G class, the teachers of each class are grateful to the other teachers, and everyone works together to achieve not only the success of the two classes they teach, but the success of all students in the whole grade.
Photography | Xue Tingyan