Screen schooling during Covid-19: Lessons Learned (Lesson 1)

Our children have very different personalities and approaches to their learning. They also have a learning difference called Irlen Syndrome and wear coloured lenses to help keep the text on the page or computer screen still and clear. During Covid-19 isolation many families who have children with learning differences have had the opportunity to explore, identify and adapt strategies and techniques that may assist their children to learn more easily and effectively. Some approaches do work well but others have not. A school day of digital-face-to-digital-face learning, reading off screens and typing onto screens has exhausted our two students. Balancing the digital platform with other more traditional methods and more frequent breaks from screens would work best for them. Here are some observations that we have made during screen schooling.

Lesson 1: online testing and digital page scrolling

Our eldest is a keen learner, very self-motivated and organised. Over time she has identified how she best learns and studies. She has not done this on her own. Parents, teachers, family, friends, peers and life experiences have joined her on this journey. There are so many subjects that she has enjoyed during her secondary schooling. Mathematics has never been one of them. The answers to maths exam problems have often taunted and teased her – remaining just out of her grasp on many occasions.

Not one to be deterred, our resilient student works hard to understand the mathematical concepts presented to her in the classroom. When faced with online maths assessments during Covid-19 isolation, she discovered something interesting about her own digital learning journey. It was something that definitely impacted her ability to process and solve maths problems correctly and quickly.

Working through online maths tests

The assessment topic was Arithmetic Progressions. Her study was thorough. The maths task required many lines of online working to solve the various problems. It also required frequent scrolling up and down the digital page to refer to the questions. However the online test took our young mathematician much longer than usual to complete. She was not confident with many of her answers.

Unfortunately the test results were not what she had hoped for – receiving a mid-range percentage. The amount of study effort did not reflect the outcome hoped for. However the online testing had certainly caused her problems. Soon after this assessment another online topic test was undertaken. The topic was Geometric Progressions. Our young mathematician studied this related topic in exactly the same way as the previous one. The test result was a well-earned 85%. Her effort and persistence had finally been rewarded!

What had contributed to the improvement in test scores?

Before the second test, our daughter had thoughtfully considered what she had found challenging about the previous online assessment. She decided that the amount of scrolling up and down the digital page during the test had broken her concentration and focus. She wanted to see if the page scrolling could be reduced and if by doing that, it could make a difference to how she processed the information. Doing the test online from home meant that she had the opportunity to take a screen shot of the question and refer to it as she typed her mathematical working and solutions. She eliminated the scrolling up and down to read and re-read the digitised questions. This was such a simple change to her exam technique but it made an enormous difference to the exam result and her confidence. Perhaps mathematics was not the enemy she had thought it was!

The observation made during this recent online testing process could also be applied to future hard copy tests. I know that there were many times during my education when I had to complete a test where the questions were printed on the back of the reference material. More recently, I have been an exam reader or writer for students and have noticed this exam layout still exists. Printing an exam in this way requires constant turning over of pages to find the question or reference information. The ‘flicking’ back and forth between the reference source or question pages creates a similar effect to ‘scrolling’ up and down the digital pages. Concentration and focus is broken. Mistakes are very easily made and often go unnoticed.

Exam layout should create a level playing field

Exam layout is vital. It can make deciphering and processing the information and questions on a test either possible or impossible for those with a learning difference. In fact it is important for ALL students.