The sudden rush to online learning during lockdown will be a defining feature of Scottish education in 2020, with ramifications that are likely to be profound and permanent with regard to how our young people are taught. Yet that narrative ultimately splits into two when you compare schools with further education.

On 23 July, education secretary and deputy first minister John Swinney announced a dramatic change of policy: just as schools were heading off on their summer break, the plan for blended learning on their return was discarded - for the time being, at least - and there was to be a full-time return of pupils to schools from 11 August across the country.

The same did not happen in the FE sector, however. In line with advice from the Scottish government, a large proportion of all teaching has continued to be delivered online, with most students only occasionally attending campus for face-to-face tuition.

After months of teaching remotely what are often highly practical, hands-on subjects, college teachers and their management have learned crucial lessons that they feel can benefit other education institutions looking to improve their online offering. That experience and expertise from FE colleges could become increasingly useful for schools, as they continue to pick their way through the most uncertain of years, with the potential difficulties of students isolating and local lockdowns constantly on the horizon.

Tes Scotland asked teaching staff and principals from four colleges across the nation to share the keys to their success when it comes to remote learning. Their advice could benefit people working in any sector of Scottish education, whether it’s about giving lecturers more freedom, hooking up multiple devices at once, letting students take control of your screen, the competitive use of GIFs - or why staying in your pyjamas is not necessarily a bad thing.

Julia Belgutay is head of FE at Tes and is based in Scotland. She tweets @JBelgutay

‘Once they were in their jammies, they just relaxed into it’

Sarah Sutherland and Frank To, lecturers at Inverness College UHI

For Sutherland and To, the key to successfully delivering education to their students has been identifying innovative ways of connecting with them through technology. To, a contemporary art practice lecturer at the college, has created his own makeshift art studio to deliver art lessons. Using a number of devices, such as cameras and his phone, he delivers the practical elements or his art classes in a way that means students can change perspective and watch him work from different angles.

“Using Webex [video-conferencing software], I can work on multiple devices that are connected, so the students can see me doing practical demonstrations from different angles,” he says. “It is like they are there. They can really see what I am doing.

“In an oil-painting session, for example, I would have the camera on the canvas and another one on the palette, so they can see the canvas actually transform but they would also be able to see the mixing. Art is about the process, but it is also about the theory.”

The most important thing, he says, is to maintain a connection with his students: “Students can speak to me one-to-one to make sure there is a human connection.”

His colleague Sutherland, an accountancy lecturer, has found that focusing on how she engages with her students - in what is a more theoretical subject - has been crucial.

She records lessons so that students can watch them in advance of her more interactive classes, which are mostly made up of exercises and discussions. She has also used other tools such as a Kahoot! quiz league, chat boxes, “GIF wars” (two people go back and forth on social media in an attempt to outdo each other’s GIFs) and themed classes, in an attempt to make them more fun and engaging.

“I have been using MEDIALecture [a means of uploading videos quickly] to record lectures so [students] can watch in their own time, so that when they then come to the class we can focus on exercises and discussions,” she says.

“Feedback from students is that they love having the video. On top of recording the lectures, I also record myself doing entire exercises, so they can watch that in their own time, too.”

Sutherland says another way of engaging students has been a themed class, whereby students decide the theme for how they dress for their online session. One particularly successful class involved all students and herself dressed in their pyjamas, and even the most reluctant among them had no concerns about switching their cameras on and engaging with their peers.

“Once they were all in their jammies, they just relaxed into it,” says Sutherland.

And, given the lengths they have gone to in recent months, perhaps it is no coincidence that both Sutherland and To have seen demand for their courses increase this year.

‘We have got to be brave with the technology’

Mark Catto, Stem/electrical engineering lecturer at Borders College

Using technology to make classes interactive has been a recipe for success, explains Catto. He teaches electrical engineering and says the Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) department at Borders College had moved a lot of its material online prior to lockdown. “That came in very handy,” he explains.

Significant resources have also been invested in making sure students in the department have access to the right technology. “All my class had college laptops that they would bring into class with them. So when we went into lockdown, we were able to say, ‘You are just going to do this from your bedroom.’ For us, the biggest change was getting students into the right headspace.”

There are 15 learners in his class at the moment, and the key to making the set-up work is the interactive nature of his classes. Sharing his screen and allowing students to manipulate it means they can interact.

“They have to be actively participating in the class, rather than just watching me do something,” Catto says. “I have had nearly 100 per cent attendance. I am constantly doing interactive stuff with them.

“On a Friday, I have them all day, and the last thing they want to do is sit in front of a computer for six-and-a-half hours. So what we normally do is, I get them on in the morning, and we’ll sit for half an hour or 45 minutes and do some maths or electrical principles and a little bit of interactive stuff. Then I give them stuff to go away and do, and then we’ll catch up later in the day. I am contactable all day. If they have got a problem, they just message me through [Microsoft] Teams.”

Sometimes students will hesitate to speak up in a large group, so contacting their lecturer privately through Teams suits them better. “Messaging is a great way for them to contact me if they are too scared to speak in the class,” adds Catto.

He says the course contains a lot of maths, and he recommends BBC Bitesize resources for that. Students also commonly have to design electrical circuits - something that is normally done in college using college software. With no access to that from home, he says he was concerned about how this would work remotely. However, he found software online that allows his students to carry out the tasks, and it works “brilliantly” (see circuitlab.com/editor). “I have been using a lot of software for circuits,” he explains.

Catto’s advice to teachers, whatever sector they work in, is simple. “I would say to people: don’t be scared of the technology. There is lots of stuff out there, [but] we use Microsoft 365 [a means of subscribing to Office, Teams and other Microsoft software]. Keep your lessons as active as possible. If you don’t, you will start to lose [the students].

“We have got to be brave with the technology. Also, speak to your colleagues. Some of my colleagues have had great ideas that I am now using. Don’t let the technology scare you - you will get some people who will be more confident than others - and help each other out.”

‘It’s about how lecturers design their teaching around the technology’

Jackie Galbraith, principal of West Lothian College

The key to making remote learning a success at West Lothian College has been a close partnership with West Lothian Council, says Galbraith.

She says students have been really positive about the college’s offer this term - despite her having been concerned originally that they might be “a little deflated” amid all the restrictions enforced by Covid-19. And making remote learning work was not a choice: “If we want our students to be successful, we had to put our heart and soul into it,” says Galbraith.

Keen to support her staff in being innovative, she set up a learning and teaching engagement fund that allowed people to bid for small amounts of money and buy a piece of equipment to try something new. “What worked best during lockdown was to give lecturers permission to use what they felt was right for their learners - so we got real engagement,” she says.

Galbraith’s overriding message is about the importance of making sure that there is time for teachers to think things through. “The biggest message for me is that the technology is there, but the most important thing is how lecturers and teachers design their teaching around the technology - pedagogy is really important.”

To ensure that young people get a concise and well-structured offer at all stages of their journey through education, the college has worked closely with the council - through its digital learning group - and schoolteachers.

Both the college and the council’s schools ended up using similar technology to deliver remote learning - a move that, like so much during this year of Covid, was not planned but has proved useful. “It is how we work with the council. The council’s ambition - and our aim - is to have more young people engage with the college. Young people in West Lothian schools use Microsoft Teams, and they use very similar technology. One of the West Lothian Council staff works in the college two days a week, both on general school-college work, but also on digital learning,” explains Galbraith.

Making more use of Glow, the national digital learning platform that has been widely used in schools for years, is also something that the college is looking at.

‘We asked the students how they wanted things to be delivered’

Simon Hewitt, principal of Dundee and Angus College

Dundee and Angus College’s response to the pandemic has been twofold, says Hewitt: one part being the delivery of learning, and the other support.

“That is what colleges do - we provide support for some of the most deprived members of our society,” he explains.

“We wanted to focus, really early on, on making sure the subject-based stuff was really good, but we also wanted that other stuff to be good. We developed a new induction hub, which included a 360-degree walk through of all of our campuses, including the one-way system and other measures we have introduced in response to Covid.”

One notable innovation in how students engage with their college and find support came with the development of a new app, called My D&A Life, which more than 5,000 people have now downloaded.

Hewitt says the app is not simply for learning, but also provides a gateway to all support services at the college. It includes videos from key staff in student support, and offers ways to meet - in a virtual sense - those members of staff. “They can see the staff, learn a bit about the service and how you access it.”

The app also provides the students with access to their timetable, attendance data and - among other things - information on their bursary payments.

Students co-created My D&A Life and, says Hewitt, this is crucial to its success, ensuring that they get the hands-on, practical information they want.

“It wasn’t about what management thought the students wanted - we actually put together a team of students, who told us what they wanted to see and how they wanted things to be delivered,” he explains. “That has been a huge success. The number of assumptions we made about what they wanted to learn and see that were completely out…”

And let’s not forget that a focus on online learning does not mean that college buildings are completely out of action.

At Dundee and Angus College, amid concerns that a significant number of students did not have access to the right technology or a peaceful workspace for their remote learning, “safe zones” were set up on its campuses. These are areas where learners can study in peace, using college equipment.

The shift to online approaches during Covid, then, is not purely about ensuring that learning keeps pace in colleges - it is also about making sure that students are in a good place, in every way.

As Hewitt puts it: “Colleges are much more than learning and teaching”.

This article originally appeared in the 13 November 2020 issue under the headline “Remote control”