3 Ways to Use Your K-12 LMS for Concurrent Teaching Models

What is the Concurrent Teaching Model?

Schools faced many challenges over the last year when they shifted to remote or blended learning and as they continue to educate during the COVID-19 pandemic. A key challenge for nearly every district was determining the most effective format for delivering instruction to students. From entirely in-person to completely remote and everywhere in between as part of a hybrid education program, schools and districts attempted to calibrate their delivery model to student needs and staff abilities.

As COVID-19 abates and districts return to a sense of normalcy, however, the question of how schools and districts deliver instruction will remain a hot topic. That’s because the forces that were unleashed (along with the systemic weaknesses that they revealed) during this tough and transformative year aren’t going away. If anything, these trends are accelerating, and schools must adapt along with them.

Like so many across the nation, my school decided to formulate a school schedule as we returned last fall through something popularly termed “concurrent teaching.” Concurrent teaching is “delivering instruction simultaneously for students in-person, on campus, and virtually, at home.”¹ Educators also refer to it as a Concurrent Hybrid Model.

Undoubtedly, concurrent teaching can be a challenging instructional model, but given limited resources and a desire to provide flexible options for students and families, it’s a reality. As families continue to expect (and demand) flexible scheduling, concurrent teaching may remain with us this fall and into the future. The good news? You’ve got some tremendous 21st-century technology that can help. Here are three ways to leverage your learning management system (LMS) to be effective in a concurrent teaching model.

The Concurrent Flip

In the now-traditional flipped classroom model, students watch recorded direct instruction screencasts asynchronously at home.² They then do their homework and other activities—like labs—during in-class time. This model is not concurrent teaching because all students are either working asynchronously online—outside of class—or synchronously in the classroom. In this model, the LMS serves as a repository for the recorded screencasts and other synchronous or asynchronous activities.

The flipped model looks different during concurrent teaching since one group of students will always be present in the classroom while the other is online. How might you go about doing this? Dr. Catlin Tucker published a three-part flipped lesson in a concurrent classroom, including a pre-video activity, such as an online discussion or another hook, the flipped lesson, using Edpuzzle, a guided video lecture, and a post-video activity, like traditional individual practice or collaborative work. The idea is that you move in and out of asynchronous and synchronous learning with both the online group and the in-person group depending on student learning needs and the lesson’s requirements.

It’s easy to see how the concurrent flip will remain relevant even if some districts move away from the model as an official policy. Students will still be absent due to illness or travel. Teachers and families may find it more convenient to use the concurrent flip on a limited basis than to jettison it altogether. Under these circumstances, the concurrent flip will remain a viable and desirable strategy.

Concurrent Hybrid Communication Strategies

As with most things in school and life, good communication is key. In a concurrent hybrid model, it’s vital. The good news? Your LMS is designed to empower you to be an absolute communication rock star in the concurrent classroom.

Although geared toward the higher education audience, I think Baylor University has aptly summarized the goals of concurrent classroom communication in their so-called “three C’s… Clarity, Consistency, and Connectedness.”³ Your K-12 LMS, especially as part of an interoperable solution like Unified Classroom, is made for this! Let’s take a quick look at each of these concepts applied to the K-12 world:

Use your LMS to post and establish clear course expectations and daily routines while you create and host video instructions. All K-12 students benefit from clear expectations and directions. An LMS is a much better location to organize for clarity than repeated email communications or live announcements, for example.  

Every time students log in to your LMS, they should know what to expect. So, it’s critical to be consistent when you present class information and content, what the daily routine looks like, and how students are expected to engage with and use the LMS. This doesn’t mean you can’t change up the routine every now and then, but students should recognize that you are purposeful in the approach when that happens. For example, my kindergartners thrive on routine. When they joined their class virtually during a COVID shutdown, their consistent morning routine was kept stable by having their “morning meeting” regularly via the school’s LMS. It helped make a difficult situation smoother for everyone.

Your learning management system should make it easy to pre-schedule posts and other class communication, engage in online discussion boards, and schedule various post-class follow-up communications. The LMS is the golden thread that connects all learners and the teacher during a concurrent learning model. Stay connected to your students by leveraging it.

Speaking of golden threads, when your LMS, empowered by the three C’s, also communicates with your student information system, gradebook, and other critical systems, your district can share data seamlessly in a fully interoperable K-12 edtech ecosystem. That’s a crucial step in reinventing K-12 for years to come.

Stations for All Ages

As a high school administrator, I want to see more station-based teaching in classrooms. Stations are flexible. Stations provide lots of natural breaks during instructional periods, helping students stay engaged. Stations can be intrinsically motivating. Critical to the concurrent classroom at all grade levels, a station-based approach works great when teaching students both in-person and online.

When it comes to planning station-based activities for the concurrent classroom and considering the current COVID-19 restrictions, Dr. Tucker points out that your goal is to plan activities that shouldn’t be dependent on physically moving about the classroom space.⁴ That means planning something like a teacher-led station, an online station, and an offline station—physical movement not required. Here are a few ways you can use your LMS to make your concurrent stations work more smoothly:

• Post station procedures and any requirements specific to the day’s lesson (use the LMS as the hub for all step-by-step activities)
• Record and post videos, not only for the online-only station but as a quick introduction for the other stations, as well
• Conduct a synchronous videoconference
• Provide links and additional resources to pique student curiosity, encourage further learning about a particular topic, and encourage participation in enrichment activities, particularly for students who may complete station rotations quicker than others and would like to challenge themselves
• Collect and share the formative data you’ve collected across multiple applications in an interoperable solution, like Unified Classroom

Lean on Your K-12 LMS

Concurrent teaching is difficult, and there’s no way around that. I have worked with teachers over the past year who have had a difficult time simply understanding all the ins and outs of video conferencing etiquette, let alone how to deliver high-quality instruction. So, let’s make it a little bit easier and take full advantage of your K-12 LMS. Your learning management system is your database, your central repository, your hub for all learning activities in your classroom and beyond. When teaching concurrently, an LMS role in K-12 education is to function as your primary tool for connecting with every student, every day, in the most efficient and meaningful way possible.

Resources

1. Weissinger, K. (2020, August 19). Back to school: What is concurrent teaching? Maya Consulting.
   https://www.mayaconsultingllc.com/blog/2020/8/19/back-to-school-what-is-concurrent-teaching
2. Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012). Flip your classroom: Reach every student in every class every day. ASCD.
3. Baylor University. (n.d.). Concurrent hybrid.
   https://www.baylor.edu/learningtogether/index.php?id=971076
4. Tucker, C. (2020, September 1). The concurrent classroom: Using blended learning models to teach students in-person and online simultaneously.
   https://catlintucker.com/2020/09/concurrent-classroom-blended-learning-models/