PROMOTING PARENTS’ INVOLVEMENT IN HYBRID LEARNING

By : Putu Desy Krisma Yani

After the global school lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries need to be aware on how to help students in transitioning from online to classroom learning. Students will have to adjust to the school environment after more than a year of at-home learning. One way to manage this transition is through Hybrid Learning. But what exactly is Hybrid Learning?

Hybrid learning is an option that government and teachers can consider during the transition to reopening schools. Hybrid learning combines at-home learning (online) with home visits or classroom learning (offline) and is found to help students meet the required competency standards. Remote learning can be conducted via Zoom or Google Meeting to deliver class materials to students, while classroom meetings were held once a week, for when students had to complete school exercises.

Present-day education during the pandemic has put family engagement at center-stage and has never been more important for continuity of learning across all classroom settings. Parents take on multiple roles in order to meet the student’s needs. Based on this, we’ve compiled some practical suggestions for parents in an effort to support students in hybrid learning models.

Parents should stay active and informed too

Having an open conversation about hybrid learning with the younger members of your family kills two birds with one stone: your children will see that you are actively interested in what is going on in their lives, and you will learn with them and perhaps even from them.

Now is the perfect time to bridge the generation gap. With some humility and willingness to learn, you can make better students out of your children by becoming a student yourself and letting them bring you up to speed. After all, sometimes teaching a concept is the best way to master it. Ask your children relevant and thoughtful questions about hybrid learning and you will all come out on the other side as better, more informed netizens with a stronger bond of love, communication and trust.

What matters is that you should never face this new chapter in your lives with preconceived notions such as ‘all screen time is a distraction’ and ‘the Internet is inherently inferior to books as a source of reliable information’. All learning requires an open mind and educating yourself about hybrid learning is no exception.

Set reasonable limits

Casting yourself as the student and your child as the teacher, however, does not stop you from having more traditional parental duties as a guide and sometimes an enforcer of rules.

Always remember that the keyword in hybrid learning is ‘blended’: while not all the time spent doing online assignments should be demonized and seen as taking away from effective studying, not all learning has to come from online sources. Encourage your children to take healthy breaks from their devices and supplement their online learning with the traditional methods you are more familiar with; textbook and encyclopedias have not, in fact, gone extinct!

Another important thing you can do as a parent is help your children establish a schedule and take responsibility for their own education. While a day of hybrid learning looks very different from a day of attending a brick-and-mortar school in the morning, doing homework in the afternoon, and being free once your duty is done, structure and routine are still essential, especially in an educational model that encourages forging your own path. Depending on your child’s level of maturity, the increased flexibility of a blended learning schedule may or may not lead to procrastination and other damaging study habits, and it is up to you as a parent to remind them of their assignments (where notifications fail, that is) and impress upon them that keeping up with their schoolwork without opening any other tempting app pays off in the long term.