 Welcome everybody to this session at the ALT Conference. I'm chairing the session but Sammy's doing all the actual hard work. The session is asynchronous study for adult learners and I think we've got about 25 minutes in total up to we'll leave five minutes at the end of questions. Do drop any questions or comments into the chat as we go and I'll note down salient questions and we'll come back around to them at the end and we'll try and get through as much as we can. So I don't want to take up any more time I'm going to hand over to you Sammy for the session over to you. Oh brilliant thanks very much welcome everybody thank you for being here with me today and it's lovely to see you in the chat please do leave comments questions if any of this resonates with you as we go through please do share in the chat as well and I'd love to I've got both screens so I can keep an eye on this and just a little bit about me I won't take too long. My name is Sammy I'm a further education maths lecturer with one eye on ed tech I've recently just done my Associate Seamult so if you are at the award ceremony this evening I will see you there and I teach maths at Further Education College but I specialise in adult study adult education community centre practice you may know it as as well or community college activities. Before we start this is a very small scale action research that I undertook I'm hoping to expand it this year the same model is happening this year it starts next week and it's been expanded to 16 to 19 year old students as well. I do have a secondary school background as well so I'm conscious that a lot this wouldn't necessarily apply in a secondary school model so I'm keen to see where it sits in the 16 to 19 model as well. And I'm also conscious that this is personal and it's me and my students and I'm telling their story with you today but I have gone back post results day to them and some of them didn't get the grades that they wanted and with it being teacher assessed grades that's quite hard to sit through and but we've re-interviewed and rediscussed some of this as well post results day and they still had these things to say and they wanted to get this message across today as well. So if you can cast your minds back to September last year we were in the midst of in and out lockdowns and we were returning to face to face teaching and I was given a choice I was given a choice to see my students once every four weeks face to face or I could see them all the time online and I thought well it's not really my choice to say I thought I'll ask my students what they want so the very first session I brought them all into the building and we had to have eight in a room and we had to bring eight in a room for and out 45 minutes clean the room take the eight out and put the next eight back in that's how it worked and I asked each of them I said you have a choice you can come once every four weeks to see me face to face or we can study together all the time online and you can pick and choose when you want to study and overwhelmingly they all chose to study online independently and asynchronously there are some synchronous elements and I will go through these but that was the choice I had with my physical classroom and if you're not familiar with adult education I will share a bit with you now about what my students typically look like if you can imagine a student who is returning to education who hasn't got their maths they're returning to education perhaps they are a parent perhaps they are a grandparent perhaps they are working they have all these situational factors already going on and then they're opening themselves up to being vulnerable to returning to education and the core part of my job is to make them feel safe and welcomed in the space so let's take a look I've done a literature review and this is all available at the end as well but adult space a range of situational institution on dispositional barriers as they navigate learning opportunities they've come to us because there is a reason for them to be here something has led them to us perhaps it is the teaching assistant who wants to be a higher level teaching assistant perhaps it is the ambulance driver that wants to be a paramedic and both of whom were in this cohort they cannot progress in their careers without this magic maths so they open themselves up and they make themselves vulnerable to coming in to our wonderful world of education but typically childcare costs and the costs of learning and the time costs of traveling to and from our community centres as well for their education make this a difficult transition as well for them online learning gives an opportunity for adults to engage with the education at a time convenient to them they've time to think about what it is they want to do and how they want to engage and we all know that we get much more out of education when we are active obviously you're very passive at the moment I'm talking at you but if you are actively involved in your learning there is a much more positive experience for you when I moved to a synchronous study I was conscious that I wanted to build this active element in as well and I chose to focus on asynchronous because the literature was telling me that students have time to consider their responses research has found that they engage in a more meaningful dialogue but the informal learning can occur through alternative communication channels which supports a deeper learning experience because of the flexibility of the asynchronous approach and that students take more responsibility for their learning when they're in an asynchronous environment developing their student agency my alternative communication channels and how the active element came to the fore for my students was an online chat space built within the domain so bound by the rules of the college system and in there they could share what was going on for them how they were feeling how the tasks were happening so although they were studying at their own pace some of them would get a sneaky peek of what was coming up but also they could be prepared for how long a task would take but that peer support became invaluable to them we could see in the conversations one student was having a problem with her daughter who was teething now although that's not related to her learning that is a barrier to her learning and another student was able to offer a remedy to solve that for her that's the peer support and that's the level that these informal communication channels can create the pressure to engage was lifted for them they didn't have to join in in the um in the online chat they didn't have to join in with any live sessions either there was a synchronous element that went along too and it was more of a mop up revision session not a teaching session as such and they felt that they could dip in and dip out as they went through we know from the literature that peers can motivate and inspire learners to even progress they're studying beyond the current qualification that feeling of euphoria when you achieve and you've achieved with your peers you then want to take that into your next qualification and the studies are also told us that students spend longer engaging with material in a asynchronous manner than in a traditional face-to-face environment and studies show us that this means that their metacognitive abilities are increased but this does come with a cautionary tale of teacher well-being so as much as the well-being of the students of the adults is being catered for and that they can do this asynchronously the pressure is lifted for them they can have peer support they are being well looked after this can come at the cost of teacher well-being again the literature tells us that teachers invest far more time in creating online learning materials and I think we've all felt that recently and it also requires a significant time investment in course design as well but there is a cautionary tale from the literature and it certainly happened to me in that online transactions can permeate outside traditional lesson hours causing an impact on teacher workload they might be new to these technologies as well and then they seek teacher support well that then permeates outside the traditional lesson as well so we have to manage that when we're looking at this this happened to me at the very beginning once when we were in there there was lots of pressures on my time and demand to come back to them with responses but once they were settled once they had that peer support established it didn't permeate for me they were just the set days and the set time that I looked after them and they knew that I would respond to messages in the chat when I was at my desk on these days and I think managing expectations is a key factor in this what I wanted to do when I made this material asynchronous I wanted to make sure it was web based on demand and that there was a synchronous option as well web based is a key thing for me I'm a huge fan of the gist digital insight surveys and the statistics in that of 15 percent of students accessing things on their mobile data most students using a mobile phone as their device of choice therefore web based has to be a key consideration of the activities that you choose in when you're doing this course design online especially asynchronous because you're not there to support them if they have any issues making it web based as well meant that it was on demand for them and this voluntary checking of this synchronous so they would be given the materials at the beginning of the week and the synchronous option happened once a week and it was just me in a very passive environment for them just tackling misconceptions that they've given me ahead of time and then they could respond in the chat of how they felt they had gone and then they could stay on as well I also wanted to include well-being check-ins for them so they also had 15 minute bookable slots with me once a week and each of them were in waves from the very beginning of the when they were brought into the building so wave one would have four four slots available to them and there were eight students in that group and then it would be another four weeks before that they got their next wave of one-to-one slots that they could book with me so you're probably wondering now she's talked for 10 minutes what does the lesson look like well I'm going to get one of my students to tell you and I'm going to read it aloud just for accessibility so sami set is going with enabling us to access pre-recorded videos of the lesson and setting all the work across a PowerPoint talking us through each step I know it sounds dull but it does get better this student found it absolutely fantastic it enabled them to work at their own pace at their own time sami set a time frame to ensure the work set each week was completed for the following week's lesson giving them a full week to complete the work and they're also giving the option to join a class call each week to discuss the work and discuss any complications to make sure they fully understood like see kala saying in the chat managing expectations is one of the most important things it really is kala so I gave them a full week to do the work I didn't care when they did the work as long as it was handed in by that time that was it for me now the talking the pre-recorded videos over the PowerPoint what I was recording there was the teacher talk elements the teacher talk elements that I would have done in the classroom that five ten minutes at the board when I would just explain something perhaps model something and then set them going on the work I was just capturing that in a video and then letting them go with the work this was given to me by an adult female student who was working full time I think it's really important to stress that if she's working full time to give her a full week of the work again it eases that pressure lightens that cognitive load so um this is the an example of it and it's built in google forms it's very crude in its design I didn't want to complicate things so they reflect on the learning intention they get to watch the video then they get an online task that is web based and then they indicate their score and upload their evidence there is no logging into a learner management system controversial I know but what I found with learner management systems and I'm a google certified educator trainer coach innovator all of them what I wanted to do was make this as simple as possible for my students each of these aspects as well has a choice as well using branching logic or go to section based on answer depending if you're an ms forms or a google forms user so they had a choice after they'd watch my video do they want another video when they did the task if it didn't go well or they didn't like the task they had a choice to do another task and then they would reflect again on how they're learning intentions um they'd gone against the learning intentions they didn't have to sign into anything this is all clicking a link watching a video that was open to anyone with the link clicking a link to a web based self-marking activity obviously the time taken for me to curate that and prepare those and was challenging but it's done now and and we've got it and then they would take a photograph either of their handwritten notes or a screenshot of their work and upload it into there that then comes to me as a google sheet all nice and neat and then I can work through there and obviously I color coded it conditional form of today there's an option that if they felt that they were struggling it would just go red and then I would get a notification as well that someone needed some help that was it as simple as it could be I can see there's lots of questions in the chat so I will come back to those did I have a visualizer for writing mathematics I did I've made every type of visualizer going and I now have a drawing tablet and I use a web based interactive whiteboard math whiteboard is my whiteboard of choice for doing my maths and I wanted to share with you an example of the chat so this is the synchronous element so the synchronous element would be whatever we'd covered during the week I would just go through some questions and then they would they would then come along and and and dip in and dip out I'd say 20 minutes we're going to do these ones 20 minutes we're going to do these ones come along whenever you want so someone come at the beginning and someone come 20 minutes in and this is just an example of the chat is it 6 30 again tonight and then a screenshot of their question could someone please remind me again and then another student for the first one you need to subtract the powers and the next one oh I got that one it's the next one I'm unsure of I'm not doing the legwork there me as a teacher I'm sat back watching this and they're helping each other it certainly did develop their agency so that was quite a lot about the literature quite a lot about what I did and I thought it's really important to hear what the students would like to say I would like to point out as well that I did leave the organization partway through so I left the organization but I did leave them with these lessons ready so before I left the organization I completed the action research and I asked them when do they do their study did they do it synchronously at set time or asynchronously and 80 percent of them said and again this is very small scale but 80 percent of them said they do it at their own time but then I asked if they had caring responsibilities and 80 percent of them did and so I'm interested to see if there's a correlation between that this year as I go into my next term with a new cohort and then when do you study on your course I'm still thinking about these 80 percent with caring responsibilities 70 percent study in the evening 20 percent study in the weekend and the 10 percent study in the day now this 10 percent I know who this 10 percent is and that is because they work full time but they work night shift so majority of the students were choosing evenings and weekends so another student gave me these comments here as a moment to working in a primary school during the pandemic this was an amazing approach to take it enabled me to juggle work home life and complete my work at a pace without feeling under pressure to get it done putting zero pressure on us I think as a teacher that's what we want all the time isn't it a student to say that they felt zero pressure and this was a male student you can pick it up and leave it it can be your bedtime reading it doesn't have to be three hours done by a set time because of the pandemic I felt safer and I introduce at the beginning that vulnerability of my students for me this means the world for me this means the world that this student feels safer they feel safer because of the pandemic and they feel safer because of the vulnerability of returning to education they also said you were supported even without a teacher we had each other to bounce off and I showed you some of the informal chat and then this bit nothing changed after you left me you did it all for us things carried on so even after I left the organization the lessons just carried on for them overwhelmingly students prefer to study at their own time students valued the one-to-one elements and the optional drop-ins the option to book in quality time with me I've got another quote here for you my teacher is very good at recording video teaching and explaining all the skills we need by paying attention to it I found it very helpful never thought online is going to be a thing but I am enjoying it so we've got students feeling zero pressure enjoying it and they have each other to bounce off but most importantly of all they feel safer I think this is a really valid point and something that I just wanted to end with and I'm going to read it a largest flexibility I also think even without the pandemic and going forward this approach would work fantastic for returning students who have children and work commitments etc to ensure they can complete the education they want and feel that they are managing it and not becoming swamped taking on extra work while continuing their own home work life I put my students well-being at the heart of what I was doing I created a model that let them choose when they wanted to study to manage their well-being to look after themselves and I created informal chat spaces for them to support each other and from that point in they just ran with it and it worked I can actually say for the first time she made maths enjoyable and I just want to end on this point adult education is just that they are adults and I think all too often we try and apply a model that we've either used with schools or we've used with 16 to 19 cohorts and we don't take account of the barriers that our adults face returning to education and we need to just put the front of our minds their adults they can do this if we create the right conditions for them to thrive in if you want to read more about this I'll read the types of report it is on my website which is what the trig.co.uk and I think that should be about time for questions thank you hello yes there is time for questions because you run perfectly to time thank you for that obviously we've had people chatting away there so I'm going to sort of go backwards there's Emily there asking did you find that monitoring your peer support platform also took up a lot of your time so I think there's something interesting in terms of student well-being staff well-being and all of those kind of structures yeah and definitely immediately I wanted to be in all their conversations and I'd be sat there going and I was responding and this is really old school but do you remember when you did your teacher training and they said you need to stop doing the talking and let them do the talking and your your observer would remind you of that the time and I just treated it like that and so I would leave it and leave it and then when I felt it been left long enough I would respond and in the end we came to an agreement where I set office hours of when I would be in their chat space obviously I was in their chat space more than that but they could expect a response from me during these hours when I was in their chat space I mean there's been some a bit of chat about how the technology tends to push expectations of response times to more and more immediate I mean how did you find did you find it got leaky did people or I mean how did you have what what do you do when people operate it outside of the expectations you were setting yeah I think I think a key an example of that without being too graphic is safeguarding referrals with adults are huge where we are and I would have to be on there because those safeguarding issues will be coming by private messages and expecting an immediate response and then you've got the burden of dealing with that and then all the other things that are expecting an immediate response as well and I got some really good advice from the safeguarding officer who said you just need to shut off and you just need to say these are the hours unless it is extremely urgent and then he was great and he was like just pass all the safeguarding to me and I will take that off your desk but it's it's more from me as well because I want to be that caring person because that's why we are teachers we want to care we care so much and I think we just wanted to I wanted to care so much that I would forget to look after myself and so I had to be very very strict on that but the the pressures are there and it does leak 100% it does but I have a sanction and reward system for myself if I do good time management of my own skills I give myself a little tree and if I don't I get really cross with myself and I don't let myself do something else so yeah whatever works for you I think it's just lovely that you call it a sanction and reward system it's funny it's the old high school teacher yeah yeah yeah wow I'm imagining you've got a star chart up on there I have just that there we go there it is so there you go everybody who's who's in the session that's that's how you do it just make yourself a star chart that's the secret I've got a question an interesting question from Sonja here um no yes could be pronounced like that um did you do anything specific to encourage students to engage in the informal chat because it's it's one thing to set an expectation it's a bit like you can't just go okay everybody start informal chatting go so I mean how did you build that kind of culture up yeah I think really good great question I think I put a lot of effort into building community at the start so when we did our live face-to-face and I gave them the information I um I had like little jerky conversations with them that sort of told them that I wasn't a traditional stand at the front boring teacher and I would then I started being formal chat space by asking like what's your favourite film or what's everyone doing you know or is anybody going to and there was a local event I was like is anyone going to this event um and all those sorts of things and it just brought down those barriers and brought people in and I always say there's a difference between saying you're open and actually bringing people in so what are you doing to bring people in and those that weren't coming in I would private message and say hey you've not said anything in the group chat yeah are you coming in okay so I'm just going to finish off with a sort of final commentary thought um because and I just want to know your feeling on it it kind of brings together a few things that happen in chat I hope is um to what extent do you think your students perceived all of the community building stuff and the informal stuff and the peer stuff as anything to do with teaching and learning or not I think I think they didn't until I sat them down and pointed it out to them I think they were just having a lovely time they were very short they didn't turn up for drinks on results day they couldn't quite understand why I wasn't there because for them that was their community and that was their activities that they were doing and they you know the tea then remedy example there were 100 other examples of them helping each other out I can see that as them overcoming their barriers to learning but they just saw that as making friends and building connections yeah no yeah okay that's really interesting because I think one of the challenges probably for everyone in the session is how you build all of that community building work and all the informal stuff into perceptions of your actual job and what the what the job of being a teacher is um whereas I think sometimes it's seen as what you have to do before you can do the teaching which I don't really believe in because I think it's all one thing so absolutely it has to it has to come to both but I would just point people to um Dr. Lou Mycroft's keynote coming up in the week and the values like practice of joy and that's a key influence on my work as well I can see that thank you and that was a that was a lovely joyful upbeat session and we're two minutes over I've been reliably informed yeah sorry everybody thank you to you Sammy for such a yeah a clear and concise session and a really positive session as well which is always welcome in these times and thank you to everyone for contributing as well we'll we'll see you in the next bit I guess and this will be available as a recording cheers Paul