Speaker 1: Hello everyone, how are you? I'm very happy to be here with you today on the second day of E2. I hope that you are enjoying this event. My name is Mario Alejandro Rodriguez Ramon. I'm a computer science teacher from Tabasco, Mexico, and I have just over 10 years of experience teaching 10th to 12th graders, such as in the design and delivery of teacher training courses. Today, I'm going to spend some minutes to talk with you about building a robust hybrid learning environment focused on the student. We'll review the elements of hybrid learning and share some recommendations with you to implement them. Before we start, please take a little time to think for a moment of what hybrid learning is. What do you currently think of when you hear the phrase hybrid learning? Based on your current thoughts about it, how would you describe hybrid learning to a parent? If you describe it in one or two sentences, what would you say? Go ahead and type your explanation in the chat window. Very good. Good. Oh, in-person and virtual interactions. Very good. Thanks everyone for sharing. It is great to read your explanations and learn what your current view is of hybrid learning. Now, let's start. Look at the picture. Last year, the schools around the world were like that. Empty. No students or teachers. It was a difficult time. COVID-19 pandemic radically disrupted every aspect of life, including education, and left educational institutions clamoring for systems and structures that ensure students' ongoing learning. While hybrid learning has been a part of educational systems for many years, for most institutions, this learning model is being fast-tracked to the COVID-19 pandemic. As institutions examine the best way to reconvene on campus, many educational models have arisen, including partial opening, when some schools are allowing only specific students to return to campus. Synchronous and separated. Some educational institutions are conducting face-to-face and online instruction at the same time. Some students are in-person, while others are joining the same class remotely. Rotational. Other schools are rotating students on and off campus throughout the week. Students attend the classes on campus on specific days, while their peers work remotely, asynchronously on the same days. On other days, the attendance flips, and those working remotely go to school, while the others work asynchronously. A hybrid learning environment is a mix of all these models. A hybrid approach to learning builds on the successes of these models to intentionally create a learner-centered experience that is profoundly personalized, relevant, and engaging. In other words, hybrid learning is not a quick fix for educational institutions. Instead, it is a student-centered approach that combines the best of in-schools and remote learning with digital engagement to enhance and accelerate learning to meet diverse learners' needs. Educational systems moving to a hybrid learning environment will need to focus on specific elements to ensure their students and instructors have what they need to be successful. The five elements of hybrid learning are learning environment, class community, lesson design, engagement and interactivity, and assessment and feedback. Okay, let's check in the five elements of hybrid learning with one another. The first element is learning environment. This is about optimizing both the physical and virtual learning space for your student. To create a student-centered hybrid learning environment, educational institutions must create physical and virtual learning spaces that are conducive to dynamic interactions with students who are both in-person and remote. Educators are comfortable in their physical learning environment. We have worked to optimize our space, foster communication and collaboration, and promote an efficient workflow. When shifted to hybrid learning, you must decide how you will create a similar workflow and learning space in virtual realm. Microsoft 365 is the perfect digital platform for educational institutions. Microsoft Teams offers a flexible and dynamic digital hub for all educators that simplifies the workflow for both instructors and students. Microsoft Teams can, of course, be the digital hub for your hybrid learning environment. Posts, files, class notebooks, assignments and grades can all be incorporated to create a workflow that is similar to one in your classroom. Here, for example, are two areas of in-person interactions that can be moved to virtual with Teams. Channels allows you to create learning centers or organized units of study, while the file tabs allows you to share resources and instructions in the class materials folder and provides a place for your students to collaborate on PowerPoints and other documents. Let me share with you some of what I do on each of my class themes. First, I make a class notebook where, in a sequential and orderly way, I put the content of the lessons that I will address in class. The next theme is that I structure my class by creating channels. In this way, I keep the content of activities that the students will carry out organized. In the files tab, my students can locate the resources with the necessary information to complete their activities and assessments. When there is an important file and I require the students to have it on hand, I add it in a tab. This way, they have faster access to the document. The second element is class community. Once you have created your virtual in-learning environment, you will need to explore how you can build a sense of community with students who do not see each other in person every day. You will want to find creative ways to connect with one another regularly and help students see you and others authentically, so they feel connected and safe to share their thoughts and needs. Building a sense of community among students is crucial for every classroom or course section. In a hybrid model, educators can create community through the variety of experiences. Students need to feel connected to one another and to their instructor. Students connect best with instructors who are not afraid to show their personalities. Educators must consider how they will create a welcoming virtual learning space for students and how they will establish their teacher presence within that space. One of the best ways to promote online communication and collaboration is to use the Pause tab in your class theme. You and your students can have conversations related to schools, as well as special channels where you and your students can socialize and get to know each other. In the Pause tab, I usually put a welcome message as well as some instructions, such as a dynamic to break the ice and meet my students. They can respond to this message and share their expectations, interests, suggestions, and feelings. In the same way, I can generate a quick poll to find suggestions to carry out in class and that attract their attention and motivate them. On the other hand, a tool that I love to use with my students is Flipgrid. Flipgrid empowers the voice of my students. Here, I usually add a short welcome video to encourage students to introduce themselves and share their expectations and interests with the class. It is very important to clearly establish the instructions and rules in these types of activities to guarantee and promote cybersecurity and digital citizenship among them. The third element is lesson design. When transitioning to a hybrid learning environment, instructors must evaluate their content and curricula to determine what is most essential for students to learn. Many educational institutions have found that less is more when looking at what content needs to be delivered. A strategy that can help you streamline your content as well as meet the needs of individual learners is backward design. In this strategy, you have to keep in mind that you need to design with the end in mind. First, think, what do you want students to know at the end of the lesson? What will the final assessment be? What will students need along the way? What will you cover in your lesson? What greetings will you share? What activities, assignments will they complete? Once you have all that ready, you can use Teams calls, Microsoft Stream, and Class Notebook to deliver content in multiple ways. That's the beauty of Teams. The tools within the program meet a variety of needs in a hybrid learning model. Whether designing for synchronous or asynchronous experiences, Teams is a wonderful avenue for content delivery. I recommend to all of you to use multi-modal communication methods to share learning goals, announcements, and directions with students. During your video calls, you can encourage your students to participate in an orderly and respectful manner. One way to do this is by using the raise hand option so that students can participate while respecting each other's turn. Another Teams tool that you can use is Whiteboard. I really like to use Whiteboard during my virtual sessions and ask my students to participate and collaborate in class. For example, I can ask them to share suggestions or ideas for us to work on in class, and with the Whiteboard, they can work on the activity at the same time. I also like to use it to carry out explanations or feedback on a topic. The fourth element is engagement and interactivity. We know that engagement and interactivity are frequent challenges, even in a physical classroom. We also know that the key to student engagement and interactivity is voice, choice, and agency. Students who are given the opportunity to connect with content in meaningful ways and at a deep level are more engaged than students who are simply asked to reproduce what their teachers have taught them. Teams offers a variety of tools for quick check-ins with students during a learning session, as well as more extended interaction for collaborative work. The beauty of Teams is that with the add tab feature, you can include many interactive programs like FreeGrid and Pear Deck in your team so students do not have to leave the team to engage with the learning materials you have presented. Breakout Rooms and Collaboration Space in OneNote provides students with designated spaces to work on authentic tasks. When you work with your students, try to do this. Break students into small groups to solve problems, discuss concepts, or debate topics. Provide students with hands-on activities that allow them to practice or visualize concepts. Give students time to process and practice concepts individually. With the Breakout Rooms feature, you can join into the rooms to see what are your students doing, provide assistance if it is needed, give specific instructions, or collaborate with them. The third element is assessment and feedback. Student growth is the focus of education. Evaluating student growth is conducted with formative and summative assessments. Remember that formative assessments occur throughout the unit and evaluate student progress. They do not have to be graded, and students rely on feedback from these assignments to learn how they can improve and grow in the content. Students can complete practice problems in OneNote, a poll, practice quiz, entrance, exit, tickets, and forms, summary of understanding in OneNote, graphic organizer with the Whiteboard app, or answer questions posed by the teacher. Summative assessments occur at the end of the unit and are graded and final. Activities like essays, objective tests, demonstrations, portfolios, problem-based tasks are good examples of what your students can do to show their learning. A variety of Teams tools help educators evaluate students and provide feedback. Insights is a great feature to visually see how students have been participating in the course. Microsoft Forms is a wonderful way for students to practice concepts and receive immediate feedback with the auto-grading feature, creating a type of virtual tutor for your students. With Assignments, Tab, and OneNote, educators can provide feedback in a variety of ways, including audio feedback, which is incredibly effective for students. When I need to do formative assessments on my students, I use Kahoot. I really like this app because I can add it directly to Teams in a tab and generate both evaluations and attractive and meaningful feedback to my students, as well as allowing them to learn while having fun. In this way, I am able to motivate them and achieve that the contents reviewed in the classes are assimilated in a better way. I also make use of Microsoft Forms during formative and summative assessments, as it allows me to generate auto-grading tests and also provide feedback to my students. I can also obtain statistical data that helps me decide what knowledge should be reinforced to support student learning. Finally, I use Insights to keep track of the performance and participation of students during classes. With the information I obtain, I can detect if a student has difficulties or lags and, in this way, provide the support they require. Well, we have just arrived at the end of this presentation. I hope that you have all been able to strengthen your knowledge, learn something new, and that from now on you can adopt this hybrid learning model in a better way. Remember that if you are still working remotely with your students, you can gradually adopt this model so that when you return to your face-to-face classes, it is much easier to move to this model. So, what's next? Well, today I have a special gift for all of you for being participating in this day on E2 and to be attending this presentation. You earned recognition on Mac's Today Session. Log in to education.microsoft.com. Click your profile circle in the upper right corner and select Redeem Achievement Code. Enter the code that is shown on the screen right now. Then, find the session on your transcript by clicking My Profile and then clicking on View Transcript in the upper right corner. It will say Custom Training. If you aren't an MIE yet, once you've joined us for two hours of content and redeemed the associated codes, you will earn your Microsoft Innovative Educator badge. Great. That's fantastic. Thank you for all your time and attention today. You have been wonderful. Please continue to enjoy this beautiful event. This is Mario Rodriguez saying goodbye from Tamasco, Mexico. Hasta pronto amigos. See you later. Microsoft Mechanics www.microsoft.com www.facebook.com www.youtube.com www.facebook.com www.youtube.com www.facebook.com