The five benefits of live class v. recorded lessons
Pre-recorded material can be valuable for online learning, but only when paired with live engagement with experienced teachers and student peers. Here’s why.
Haileybury Pangea’s curriculum delivery method has been designed by brilliant teachers and leading educational experts to combine the benefits of real-time engagement and self-paced learning.
While some schools may rely on pre-recorded lessons, our approach enables students to build constructive learning relationships and receive instant feedback from the comfort and convenience of home via real-time engagement with teachers and peers.
Why is real-time instruction so essential?
Fun, engagement and motivation
Countless studies have shown when learning is fun and engaging students are motivated and achieve better results — and with pre-recorded material it is near impossible to recreate the engagement of a real-time lesson. As a result, when students are purely self-directed, with little or no real-time instruction, motivation can suffer, along with results.
At Haileybury Pangea we deliver the fun and engagement needed to motivate students with real-time engagement on Microsoft Teams via interactive video calls and on our central learning platform Canvas, via teacher feedback. The below recording of a Year 5 Chinese class is the perfect example. Students are asked to mime actions that represent each word, help Pokémon translate key phrases and have conversations with their teacher. This brings the language to life to motivate and engage students in their learning.
Real-time feedback
Watching pre-recorded material is a little like reading a textbook or a course guide. It can be helpful for rote learning, engaging with new material and reaffirming existing knowledge, but there are limitations.
Without real-time teacher engagement, learning can’t be personalised to identify and fill students’ knowledge gaps. What’s more, if students are only engaging with pre-recorded material, they may not learn self regulation, a skill that enables them to identify their own knowledge gaps and evaluate their own work.
Instant feedback via real-time instruction is the solution. As you can see in the class recording below of Units 3 and 4 Global Politics, the teacher asks questions to test knowledge, explains self-directed learning materials and makes himself available for one-on-one instruction to address knowledge gaps and answer questions.
Interactivity and group problem solving
Most careers require the ability to interact with colleagues, work together to solve problems and enjoy healthy competition. An education consisting solely of self-directed learning and pre-recorded lessons simply does not prepare students for this eventuality.
On the other hand, real-time engagement with teachers and peers in lessons is the perfect training ground for the real world. Students can socialise in a structured online classroom setting where they can learn leadership skills, how to communicate diplomatically and work together constructively.
You can see this learning happening in real time in the below recording of a Units 3 and 4 Algorithmics class. Students have been split into two teams to work together to solve a real-world problem using their shared knowledge of data modelling and algorithm design.
Emulating the classroom environment
Students have learned in classrooms for thousands of years for good reason. It works. Having a teacher and student peers present and available to interact with and learn from in real time, simply achieves the best results.
That is why Haileybury Pangea’s online learning community has been designed to combine the many benefits of real-time instruction with the flexibility and independence of real-time learning. By using smart technology our teachers deliver an online learning experience with all the benefits that physical classrooms provide — and many they don’t.
