The coronavirus pandemic turned the education sector on its head when it suddenly entered our lives in early 2020. From early years to higher education, teachers and lecturers had to make virtual learning their new normal, whether their pupils were four or 24. So how do we see the future of education?
With an array of virtual tools at their disposal, teachers had to immediately get up to speed with the latest technology resources. All to try to minimise disruption to learning and ensure the quality of teaching didn’t suffer.
At VEO, once teachers and lecturers had the basics in place and ensured their students did too – which included all factors from strong broadband connection to appropriate devices and online safeguarding, we started to see an influx of education leaders who were keen to progress their virtual teaching environments. The majority had the same aim, to make them more interactive and engaging, and to maximise the quality of student learning.
Improving remote teaching
VEO’s secure video-based solution with its adaptive tagging system has helped many schools, colleges and universities across the UK to focus on their key priorities.
One key priority is the interaction between a tutor and their student. And a second is the desire to benchmark remote teaching provision. Just as you’d do in a traditional learning setting with a paper-based approach to assessment
Our video-based platform keeps the connection and interaction between teacher and student intact. For example, many schools have and continue to organise projects and challenges with VEO that involves the whole family or ensures pupils work together in virtual teams.
VEO also enables teachers to provide creative and engaging video-based activities that can be broken up, with pauses and spaces for student response to questions in video. This allows for fully interactive sessions with several students discussing a concept with the teacher, which can be shared with the rest of the class to follow and learn too.
A personalised approach to online teaching
Our video platform and tagging capabilities in particular appeal to remote teaching environments because of the personalised and reflexive approach the teacher can take to a lesson.
They can record themselves delivering a lesson, review that lesson by adding comments and tags, and observe what they need to change or adapt to suit the varying needs of their pupils. This empowers the teacher to self-assess, and enables them to focus on sections of lessons or specific teaching techniques that need improvement. They can also share this with other teachers as an example of best practice.
From a student perspective, they can use video tags to highlight key strengths and areas where they need to develop – often in practical learning experiences. They can also share videos between themselves, securely, to enhance collaboration and team-based learning.
Nurturing online educational communities
As one high school teacher said: “VEO has helped us preserve our strong school community and nurture that in a remote environment – something that we never thought would be possible this time last year.”
Looking much further ahead, COVID-19 will no doubt become a distant memory but the acceleration in education technology will continue. Education establishments around the world have experienced first-hand how to harness technology to improve teaching standards. And at the same time, provide better personalised learning and constructive feedback in a secure and safe way.
