How much time?

Educators now teaching online, whether experienced in this environment or not, may be tired of those they consider “outsiders” trying to offer advice and suggestions. At least, this is impression I get from following social media. I hope most of those considered outsiders are trying to help (and not profiteer) and these outsiders are making suggestions based on experience. Part of the issue is how to offer help when your experience even when extensive has involved a different type of student typically working online for reasons that are often different and because the online experience was perceived as advantageous by the students. Working with situations in which everyone was forced into this setting is different in important ways.

I came across a resource I thought was useful. These recommendations come from a K12-oriented group from Illinois. This group put together a report offering a variety of suggestions. I found this report within a LifeHacker post that was focused on one specific topic from the report. The LifeHacker post presented the recommendations of the Illinois group on time expectations broken out by grade level. Because we have grandchildren of multi-ages now learning from home, it is obvious the expectations of teaches are all over the place. As a researcher, I know of nothing that would address the very practical question of how much time works best under presentation circumstances and how should this expectation be split across online time vs. assigned activities. A group recommendation on an important variable should at least serve as a starting point.

Like so many issues with online instruction/learning, the first inclination is to duplicate common approaches from the classroom. Maybe this is an acceptable starting point, but because there are so many variables that are simply different, an effort must be made to be flexible, to consider recommendations, and to make adjustments.

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