The self-regulated learner is often considered the perfect learner: hard-working, independent, confident, accepting of delayed gratification, able to regulate their emotions well, and smart about organising their time and efforts.
These are also the skills that are crucial to successful remote learning. Students need to be far more independent than usual, they need to balance their own time and they need to have the drive and motivation to get all of their work done.
Metacognition: online learning self-regulation strategies
Though it would, of course, be ideal to help students to develop these skills under our watchful eyes, being thrown in at the deep end - as they have been with online learning - offers an opportunity to accelerate self-regulation.
Here are some simple strategies to support students’ self-regulatory development:
1. Teach strategies (not just content)
Online learning lends itself well to the teaching of strategies, such as planning and evaluation. These can often be easier to teach than new subject-specific content, and will also allow you to revisit and revise previously taught content. Strategies could include various methods of planning essays, analysing exam questions and using knowledge organisers effectively.
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2. Help
Make sure your students know where they can go for support. In class, they can put their hands up and get help from you or a TA, or their friends around them. Early on in online learning, I found that where students struggled, they would often just give up because they didn’t know where to go for help.
So share with them the avenues for support. This may include email, class chat-boards, useful external websites and so forth. This is a little like the “brain, book, buddy” process before asking a question in class, and will help to develop their independence, a key trait of self-regulated learners.
3. Coaching calls
I’ve found that schools have been fantastic at making calls home to students to follow up on wellbeing, safeguarding and access arrangements. But we also have the opportunity, when making calls home, to focus on coaching a student through ideas about self-regulation.
You can discuss the concepts of delayed gratification, prioritisation of work, procrastination, a good working environment and so forth. Follow this up when you next make contact with the student to see how they are developing their skills.
4. Tutor troubles
One way to keep the spirit of school going is through the running of live tutor periods. In-person tutor periods are often extremely valuable in dealing with student issues such as behaviour, access to work and homework concerns. There is no reason why online tutor sessions cannot be just as helpful.
Classmates can support each other, provide feedback on the quality of the provision so far, discuss IT issues and celebrate successes. Not only will this be invaluable feedback, it will also help students in developing their ability to support and work with others and reaffirm motivation to keep working hard in future online lessons.
5. Learning to learn
We sometimes undervalue the importance of providing students with high-quality learning strategies. Do they know how to revise effectively? How to take concise and useful notes? Do they have strategies to approach problem-solving tasks? These are all important skills for in-person teaching, but become even more crucial during online teaching.
Can you take some assemblies, tutor time or even subject lessons to help equip students with the learning skills, such as those mentioned above, that will massively support student access and achievement with online learning?
Remote learning is undoubtedly difficult. The workload is high and motivating students is hard. But this period of working from home can provide an opportunity to develop a cohort of resilient, determined and independent self-regulated learners.
Nathan Burns is an assistant progress and achievement leader for key stage 3, as well as a maths teacher
