Believe it or not, strong remote teaching strategies help your students learn even more effectively than they do in a physical classroom. But it’s important to make sure you do it properly and with the right tools.
At Brainscape, we've spent years dedicated to perfecting remote learning in our web & mobile flashcards study app for teachers.
We love learning here at Brainscape, so we've put together some top tips for optimizing your learning and teaching cycle remotely.
Use these 4 tips to take remote teaching to the next level.
[Check out our guide 'Top mental strategies for studying at home' for even more advice for your remote learners.]
1. Making flashcards for students
Brainscape’s flashcards are the perfect complement or replacement for typical study guides or online lecture slides.
Start by creating your class on Brainscape: Simply click the “+” on the My Classes list on the main dashboard, and name it (e.g. Biology 101). Then you can start creating individual Decks (e.g. Unit 1) as needed. You (or your T.A.) can easily invite other students to your flashcards once you are ready for them to study.
[See also: Our comprehensive guide to creating great flashcards, and the perfect job for your T.A.]
2. Having students make flashcards
If you prefer more collaborative remote teaching strategies, you can use flashcards to construct a collaborative editing environment. Brainscape allows you to easily delegate “Edit” permissions to collaborators such as your T.A. or students. Just click the Learners tab in your class, and choose class members to appoint as Editors.
To promote student agency, you can delegate editing assignments one lesson at-a-time, where students are assigned to a single deck of flashcards representing that lesson or chapter. (Learn more about using Brainscape for collaborative classroom activities).
Either way, by the end of the semester, you’ll have a complete student-generated study guide ready for the final exam!
3. Enabling students’ critical thinking
Even if you had authored the initial flashcards yourself (without giving students Edit permissions), you can still encourage a deeper level of knowledge processing by training students to use the Edit button while studying.
Whenever a student without “Edit” access clicks the Edit pencil icon in the corner of a flashcard, Brainscape displays a short form asking the user to “suggest an edit”, which will send you an email each time the form is submitted. Students can use this both to suggest edits to your flashcards (e.g. to make them clearer) and/or to ask you questions about concepts they don’t fully understand.
This feature creates an even more constructive environment for one-on-one educator/student dialog than the hustle and bustle of live classroom environments.
4. Monitoring students’ study progress
To see how much each student has been studying, click the Learners tab. Our stats reflect not only the number of flashcards that have been studied but also each student’s self-assessed % Mastery. You can even click on a student's name to see their detailed Mastery of each Deck.
Many educators use this class-wide visibility to make studying in Brainscape a part of Participation grades. For example, you can set a target of studying X flashcards every Y weeks for full credit on remote participation.
Double your student's retention knowledge with Brainscape
Whether you're teaching remotely or in the classroom, the goal remains the same: improve the learning capabilities of students. That's not always an easy task when students struggle to focus or lack an interest in learning at all.
Brainscape's scientists have collected invaluable insights for teachers over the years of analyzing our adaptive flashcard platform. We've collected these insights to help you retain student knowledge, boost motivation, and use our analytics to optimize your teaching.
Be sure to dive into our guide How to DOUBLE your students’ retention of knowledge and these other top educator blogs we love for even more advice. We love learning, so if you're an educator, we'll walk with you every step of the way.
References
Carnegie Mellon University. (2024). Students lack interest or motivation - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University. https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/solveproblem/strat-lackmotivation/index.html
Loveless, B. (2024, January 19). Strategies for building a productive and positive learning environment. Education Corner. https://www.educationcorner.com/building-a-positive-learning-environment/
Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., Jones, K., U.S. Department of Education, & Center for Technology in Learning. (2010). Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. In U.S. Department of Education. https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf