Art and 3D Design — Top Tips for Virtual Lessons
By: Precious Eclipse
Tags: Home Learning, Education, Virtual Learning, Covid 19, Teaching

1. YouTube Video Demonstrations

If the students can access your virtual (live) lessons, the student can definitely watch your YouTube demonstration videos too!

It is evident that video files attached to download for viewing are not appealing to secondary school students, and many may not have sufficient resources to complete the download of the video. If you have inserted your video file into Google Slides, sometimes giving students access to the video fails repeatedly. This all results in the students not engaging with the lessons, and missing out on their learning.

For creative subjects, visual demonstrations are important and highly impactful. For these subjects and others, simple instructional videos on how to submit work or use a website will increase student engagement, “I did not know what to do” will be bizarre to say, and “I did not know how to submit” or other statements will cease to exist.

How to do this successfully:

a. For offline tasks, clearly record the demonstration using a good quality camera. For online tasks, download and use a screen recorder. For both, ensure your surroundings and screen are well organised and presentable.

b. Edit the video. Step by step instructions must be edited onto the videos. This enables students of all abilities to access the video. This provides another layer of instructions to aid the students in completing the task correctly. If needed, students can translate the instructions, Parents and Carers can use the instructions to help them complete the task.

c. Short and purposeful videos. Give the written instruction, show how to complete the instruction, and timelapse if needed. Lengthy videos are not appealing to students, edit in all the necessary parts of the demonstration, avoid and edit out pauses. I have edited out myself taking 5 seconds to find a tool on Onshape, made it 1.5 seconds instead. Your video is purposed for students of many types of attention spans, hold their attention without obstructing the other elements of the demonstration video, do not do it too fast.

d. Music and no music, the old trick for engagement. Gaming instrumental work the best, and do include instrumental music of all cultures! I like to play some Skyrim OST (classical music), and some Lonnie Liston Smith. Make sure the music is peaceful and compliments the video without it being distracting. Sometimes, no music is best. For some of us, students log onto the computers and watch the demonstration videos from their screen (due to covid rules), to avoid music disruption, do not have music in the video or you can tell students to turn the sound off.

c. Easy to find links. Insert your YouTube demonstration video into your slides, copy and paste the URL link onto the same link. Share the slides to allow the students to view (not edit, do not make them editors of this main instructional slides document) to the slides, during the lesson, instruct the students to view the slides (you will be able to see who has followed the instructions). Present your screen to the students, go through the slides, and play the demonstration video, inform them about how to use the YouTube demonstration video.

Click the link to view a YouTube Demonstration Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEVQyPxiaK8

2. One Lesson Task, One Homework Task

Keep it simple and reasonable. Student autonomy is not something that magically appears in students. To promote the development of autonomy, give one simple (and fun) lesson task and one homework task. It will be easy for them to manage and complete, therefore, setting in stone experience for their individual development in autonomy. Too much and many students will not engage with the lesson.

3. Online Sketchbooks

Create an online sketchbook. On Google Classroom, this is easy to do. This can be in addition to the physical sketchbook, or you can have solely an online sketchbook for the projects.

During the virtual lesson, inform the students to submit their work by uploading it to their online sketchbook. You will be enabled to see who has submitted their work on time, you will not have to search through your emails to check off who has and has not done their work. If your students have physical sketchbooks, you will reduce the workload of printing and sorting the work for the students.

For creative subjects, I have seen an increase in the quality of work produced by the students. Annotations, research, and analysis are written to a higher standard (read Providing Valuable Education: GCSE Art and 3D Design — Importance of Further Research, to be informed about the description of high standard work that I am addressing here). Checking for plagiarism is easier to do, in turn, you will experience reductions or minimum to nill reports of plagiarism. The spelling and grammar checkers when students are writing are so helpful, students of all abilities and myself praise it. Also, due to the instant spelling and grammar checks, it does teach the students how to write better and the benefits of proofreading.

Having online sketchbooks may result in improvements to the presentation sketchbooks. For creative subjects, the presentation of work is important, it should be neat, personal, and meaningful.

4. Celebrate their work

Create an environment where students are taking pride in their creations and learning, if students are being competitive, gently manage it to ensure that it remains a healthy competitive experience for all students.

Ask to view their creations, truthfully praise them (individual progress and development are always something to praise), and provide them with beneficial feedback. Once you have done this for one or two students, other students will request you to view their work, again, praise and provide beneficial feedback. Once, I had a student present his screen to show other students how to use Krita 2 to complete the task, I logged him a +10 on the Go4School system. During the next virtual lesson, another student requested to present his screen for my feedback and to show other students how to use OnShape. It is great seeing this level of student engagement and passion.

Once a virtual lesson has been completed, put the submitted student work onto a celebratory slide for the next virtual lesson. This tells the students that you are present and that the work that they have created is purposeful.

Contact their Parents/Carers to share the news about their child’s achievements in their progress! Call, send an email or a postcard home.

5. Deadlines and reminders.

Students start the task during the virtual lesson, check that all students in the session have started the task. For creative single and double lessons, I place the deadline at 3:00 pm on the same day. If the lesson is at the end of the day, I place the deadline at 6:00 pm on the same day. Schedule reminder email (or Google Classroom post) an hour before the deadline, ensure you have stated a congratulatory message for students that have completed the work. The reminder message should be to round up the remaining missing submissions.

6. Ensure your lesson is well-structured!

Put time and effort into planning the lesson, the layout of the lesson, the layout of the slides, and so on. It is the strongest element in creating a learning environment for each student at home. Enjoy the process, be passionate, we are in a very impactful position for each student, give it your best! Create the joyful classroom reality that you have always envisioned.