Many factors contributed to students’ need for personalized accommodation and support to achieve academically during rapid transitions online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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A study documents how universities’ centres for teaching and learning are responding to helping faculty create quality online courses for all students.
Mathematical models can help figure out class sizes and configurations to minimize disruptions and school closures.
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Schools reopening during the current coronavirus pandemic need to calculate class sizes to prevent the spread of disease and minimize disruptions.
Five-year-old Maverick Denette, left, and his six-year-old sister Peyton, centre, talk with a teacher at St. Thomas More Elementary School in Mississauga, Ont., Sept. 9, 2020.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)
The approach that schools take to addressing how to get students caught up in learning they missed due to COVID-19 school closures may have a lasting impact on this generation.
Six-year-old Peyton Denette works remotely from her home in Mississauga, Ont., on March 30, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Motivating students, encouraging their self-regulation and maintaining home-school communication are ways parents have the potential to positively influence learning outcomes.
Acquiring digital literacy skills is taking on increasing importance.
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Teaching children digital literacy skills is essential to help them learn how to navigate and respond to misinformation. It also helps them grow into adults who can participate in digital democracy.
Signs direct the flow of student traffic at Kensington Community School amid the COVID-19 pandemic on Sept. 1, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio
The turn to private funding of education reduces the responsibility of governments to adequately fund schools and to ensure all children have access to high-quality education programming.
A physical distancing sign is seen at Hastings Elementary school in Vancouver, Sept. 2, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
Addressing children’s and youth’s needs requires the expertise and support of educational assistants, school psychologists and all workers who collaborate to build caring school communities.
Starting the school year during the coronavirus pandemic raises many questions, including how children will commute to school.
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Each year, parents consider when to start allowing their children to commute to school unsupervised. During the coronavirus pandemic, there are additional concerns.
Notetaking by hand is an indispensable cognitive tool and study technique.
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Vague references don’t cut it. The public deserves to know exactly how Alberta is relying on science, realism and high-quality problem-solving in its back to school plans during COVID-19.
Immersive and collaborative lab experiences are now possible online, and in the future they will complement in-person lab work.
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Before the pandemic, only a fraction of students made use of the wide range of curricular and extracurricular experiential learning opportunities, but through online engagement that can change.
Policymakers could seize this time to support schools in choosing to take students outside.
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Moving classes outside deserves serious consideration not only for better ventilation, but also to introduce more education devoted to learning on, from and with the land.
For those who teach children ages five and under, communicating while wearing a mask may have special challenges.
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Children up to age five get a lot of cues from facial expressions. That makes teaching in a mask challenging, but teachers can learn from strategies developed by masked pediatric nurses.
Distinguishing a unique sense of place within a common virtual space of online learning will require significant investment.
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In a world where students can attend any university from their living rooms, universities need a compelling answer to the question: “Why should students come here?”
Parents can use coping-focused language that emphasizes the active role that children and adults are taking together to promote things going well.
Parents can help children feel optimistic by listening to and validating their worries, teaching them coping strategies, reviewing safety protocols and supporting them when they face difficulties.
A seven-year-old boy waits at the bus stop in Dallas, Ga., for the first day of school on Aug. 3, 2020. Canadian schools are reopening in September, but is anyone really thinking about the well-being of the children?
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Any decision that places a child’s physical and mental health at risk shouldn’t be taken lightly, so policy-makers and parents alike should listen to those most affected — the children themselves.
The key to long-term retention of information is to practise retrieving that information.
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Put down the highlighter. Research about the brain and memory shows that leaving time between study sessions and testing yourself frequently are more efficient ways to learn.
Ontario schools plan to reopen after being closed since March 14, 2020.
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The coronavirus pandemic isn’t the first time an illness has disrupted schooling. In 1937, Toronto schools delayed re-opening for six weeks in response to the polio epidemic.
A man on a skateboard and a young woman pass large letters spelling out UBC at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., November 2015.
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Canada should invest robustly in students’ post-secondary education. Data about effects of the pandemic and how students balance classes and work show why we urgently need this investment.
A person bicycles past the University of Toronto campus during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto in June 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Students won’t be allowed to participate in activities at St. Francis Xavier University this fall unless they sign a COVID-19 waiver. That’s forcing them to make a difficult and unfair choice.
Professor, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development, Owerko Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary
Assistant professor, School of Psychology, Scientist, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Assistant Professor, Educational Technology, Chair in Educational Leadership in the Innovative Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts - National Bank, Université Laval