by Siti Asjamiah Binte Asmuri, Senior Educational Therapist, Dyslexia Association of Singapore(DAS)
The year 2020 was indeed one to remember. Students and teachers in Singapore schools had their taste of full Home-Based Learning (HBL) during the Circuit Breaker period of April to May, in an effort to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus in the community. Amongst the affected school-going population, about 10% have specific learning differences and needs, including dyslexia (Sandhu, 2017). Now that online learning looks more set than ever before to be the new norm, it is time we ask pertinent questions about how we can better meet the varied learning needs of students accessing learning in the online platform.
Students with dyslexia are known for their phonological and language processing difficulties resulting in a spectrum of varied reading, writing and spelling challenges. Attempting such tasks and learning in traditional classes require much more effort and time than their typically-developing peers. Impaired functions in the language-based procedural learning system also result in some learners having difficulties performing tasks requiring automatisation and picking up skills and habits that to us, require little conscious effort such as communicating their thoughts and listening to the teacher and taking notes at the same time (Fawcett and Nicolson, 2007). In other words, it is especially difficult for them to manage two or more tasks simultaneously.
Conversations with three of my students diagnosed with dyslexia, of varying ages and school levels, offered some interesting insights into their experiences engaging in HBL. Below are some snippets of their sharing. Their names have been changed for confidentiality. HBL mentioned in this sharing encompasses the use of both synchronous (e.g. Zoom) and asynchronous (e.g. Student Learning Space) modes.
On lessons (synchronous & asynchronous)
(on video lessons)
“It’s just them writing on the textbook…They will record the screen and then they will go through the worksheet, but we’re not there. It’s just pre-recorded. …don’t really explain as much than you actually go up to them and ask them”
Kayla (Pri 5)
“teaching a new subject over HBL is really difficult, so hard…. difficult to grasp”
“I was quite lost in Chemistry…I texted my teacher a few times… I really couldn’t understand what she was texting …I have to read it a bunch of times, bit by bit…”
“…it is easier in person to explain certain things. Sometimes things you say have a different meaning over text or over writing.”
“…it is difficult to read when teachers use their mouse to write..”
Sasha (Sec 4)
“There are a lot of times in the morning when I get up, all the way from 5 to 7, I will be doing one maths work, and if it’s very hard, I refer a lot, and study a lot, and then when I finish with it, I realise that I did the wrong working, I have to do it again.”
Ian (Sec 1)
A key component of effective teaching, including online teaching, is student engagement. Improvements in student performance and motivation to learn have often been attributed to student engagement. More should be investigated on how this can be sustained in the online classroom environment (Martin & Bolliger, 2018). Research investigating effective online instruction has identified collaborative learning and strong instructor presence as key factors (Dixson, 2010). Although student response to video lessons in asynchronous environments may vary, Kayla’s feedback suggested that when interactions between learners and teachers reduce due to distance and a lack of teacher’s social presence, she might not be able to address any misconceptions or questions she might have. This could possibly trigger feelings of vulnerability over gaps in understanding she might not be able to address immediately on the asynchronous platform. Likewise, although teachers are socially present via teleconference on the synchronous platform, monitoring students’ attention and engagement could become a more formidable challenge than in traditional classrooms. While a diminished teacher-student proximity in the online learning platform offers greater student autonomy, it also puts teachers at a higher risk of losing track of their students’ pace. This could probably account for Sasha feeling ‘lost’ in her online Chemistry class. Some students may not be comfortable disrupting the lesson with questions and having them heard loud and clear by others.
In addition, activities conducted in both synchronous and asynchronous modes are mostly reading and typing, which rely quite heavily on memory, self-organisation and automatisation skills that they are hugely lacking. Unlike traditional classroom settings, synchronous environments may also require students to toggle between browsers, windows and applications while focusing on texts presented, listening to teacher’s explanation and instructions and typing responses almost simultaneously. These activities tend to impose additional cognitive load on learners with dyslexia who are already struggling with phonological processing difficulties, short term memory and retrieval skills, resulting in delayed response and loss of focus. Often, these students also have to spend many more hours in their own time, going through notes and asking their teachers questions repeatedly to clarify (Beacham & Alty, 2006; Snowling, 2000; Woodfine, Nunes & Wright, 2008).
On Feedback
“They don’t really explain… . I actually prefer doing and letting the teachers mark it and letting them go through.”
Kayla (Pri 5)
“I don’t know if I am doing things correctly or wrongly”
“We cannot ask the questions because sometimes we cannot see the teacher…. a lot of difference. Like you have a question in mind, you cannot tell him immediately. You have to wait….sometimes other lessons, there’s no verbal interaction, like we ask question, we don’t get it immediately.”
Ian (Sec 1)
“It’s simpler in class, like after class I can ask him questions.”
“..we didn’t have him right there in front of us so that he can see us struggling and give us more time. If we needed more time, we would have to text him….he would always take so long because he wasn’t always on his phone.”
Sasha (Sec 4)
There seemed to be a strong emphasis on the need for teachers’ guidance through verbal feedback. Feedback is an integral aspect of instruction and assessments (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Kayla explicitly mentioned her preference for her teachers to mark her work and “…letting them go through” so that she could have opportunities to understand, respond to and act on the feedback given. While synchronous modes of instruction may be able to facilitate this, asynchronous modes require students to do independent self-checking and monitoring of tasks. Students with dyslexia lacking in self-monitoring skills are often easily confused and may not know how to approach certain tasks. They need structured explanation to help them understand concepts and explicit strategies to perform self-correction.
For some activities such as Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ), students would submit their completed work and receive an automated response. However, no explanation would be given for incorrect answers. Students will need to seek clarification from their teachers separately via email or text messages if they want to understand more. Unless teachers check their emails or messages frequently, students do not usually get an immediate response, as mentioned by Sasha. For students with dyslexia lacking self-monitoring skills who do not independently make it a habit to seek, clarify and follow up with their teachers or peers, the gaps in understanding will widen if left unresolved.
What are they telling us?
It is apparent that serious consideration will need to be given to ‘…the way e-learning materials are designed and delivered’ and how online learning is managed in future if we want to give all students the best opportunities to succeed (Beacham & Alty, 2006, pp. 75-76). In our efforts to provide greater accessibility and promote inclusivity for all in both conventional and online education, there is a need to look into whether students who are already struggling in traditional classes will struggle even more in the online learning environment. All we probably need is to look for opportunities that the online environment could possibly offer to make the necessary adjustments and accommodations. Let us look at some suggestions how these can be done.
Small groups & Differentiation
Similar to traditional classroom environments with large teacher-student ratio, sustaining students’ engagement in large-group online Zoom lessons would likely remain a challenge. However, one advantage the online environment offers is the opportunity to conduct small group discussions and differentiated instruction with minimal interruption and disruption. Students could either be engaged in online, small breakout group discussions or separate meetings with the teacher. Groups can be assigned different topics, tasks and goals and teachers could then monitor their progress more closely. If dialogic feedback is not practical in large-group synchronous sessions, perhaps teachers could arrange separate appointments to meet students in small groups. In these short, small group sessions, teachers could possibly include the teaching and sharing of specific learning strategies to facilitate transfer of knowledge from working to long-term memory.
Delivery & Presentation
Where possible, provide simple reading or learning materials beforehand and break down lesson content into smaller parts. When teaching a new concept, consider using a consistent and predictable screen layout with an uncluttered appearance, with not too many pictures or diagrams put together on the same page, putting items in bullet points or numbering them in order and placing important items in boxes. Should continuous prose be presented, it is highly recommended that an estimation of a finger spacing in between words and lines be provided and clear headings in between paragraphs be provided. Should information from two different sources (e.g. text and diagram) be presented on the same page, they should be integrated to maximise retention. For example, written instruction could be embedded within a diagram or an audio text inserted to explain what is shown in a picture.
Leverage on tools and applications
Teachers could also take note of several dyslexia-friendly features and applications that could help learners navigate online materials with much less frustration and greater independence. These include using applications with Text-to-Speech (TTS) function that allow learners to adjust the speech pace of aural material, Speech-to-Text (STT) function that aids in spelling, as well as the Dictionary and Spell-check functions, among others. Padlet and Popplet are some examples of online tools that can help students learn to organise ideas into visual mind maps, facilitating discussion, understanding and retention. To sustain student engagement and reinforce understanding of concepts, teachers could also explore the use of online quizzes and games which would enable them to design topic-specific questions for assessment.
Conclusion
The experiences of students with dyslexia using both synchronous and asynchronous e-learning modes during HBL suggest that there are issues beyond design and accessibility that educators need to be aware of. Dyslexia is a condition that is not outwardly visible and it is certainly inevitable for us to lose sight of their learning challenges in our efforts to cater to the diverse needs of our students. While it may sound like an additional load for educators to have to make some adjustments, it would be comforting to know that these may not necessarily disadvantage other learners. Indeed, the additional supports or modifications made may offer benefits and ‘access for everyone’ (O’ Hanlon, 2005; McCarthy & Swierenga, 2010, p. 151) to succeed in this new normal of distance e-learning.