Hints and Tips - 5 minute read

Matt Dilley, OCR Subject Advisor

This blog was originally published on the 18 May 2020

We understand the challenges of teaching remotely and want to assist you in doing so as effectively as possible. Below are some resources I have previously shared with some further additions and some ideas you may wish to use when teaching remotely.

Our resources

You will find endorsed text books and resources available from Hodder Education, there is a specific section on home learning within their website.

In addition you can visit our teacher resources and here you’ll find presentations and student activities that you can use. You may also want to set some student, check in tests, or use some of the student activities found in the teaching activities section.

Our sister organisation Cambridge Assessment has also made all their resources free to support teachers during the pandemic. There are some excellent teacher and student focused products that can be found on their website.

Teaching and learning resources

Free resources provide topic knowledge and explanation that can be used as stand-alone resources or combined with our assessment materials.

• BBC business news publish many up-to the minute articles, and given the current environment business is never far away from headlines.
• Business case studies has links to many well written real-life case studies. These make excellent pre-reading or follow up work for students and allows them to link theory with real life examples.
• Khan academy includes interviews with famous entrepreneurs, use the search tool to find in depth visual and audio explanation on a range of topics, there’s also self-marking quizzes and topics to spark discussion.
• Revision world is designed for students to use and provides simple, user friendly information ideal for students working independently.
• The Bank of England website has a wealth of information and free teaching resources that will support your students.
• The Tutor2u site have a range of great online lessons using a blend of videos, research tasks and news articles to challenge and support students on a variety of business topics.
• Beebusinessbee has many topic based and exam board based resources that are excellent for use online or to set as independent work.
• Time2resources produce a variety of business focused resources. Ranging from work based on news articles to exam specific content and conferences.

What makes high quality remote learning?

Ofsted have recently published an article on how to do remote learning 'well'. Interestingly the notion that live lessons are a gold standard has been dispelled. Instead a focus on keeping it simple and sticking to the basics are advised in the article which has been written by the head of research – Daniel Muijs.

In addition to this Teacher Toolkit also offers 47 different ideas about teaching online, some are very interesting and will be applicable to your lessons. Picking and choosing the right ideas for your students is vital, this is why having a bank of ideas like this is an excellent resource.

Some practical ideas

When teaching online you can prerecord yourself or you can live stream to the class. Prerecording may take a little planning, but you can cut any mistakes and ensure you get straight to the point. If you also label and save the lesson clearly you will have a superb resource to use in the future for a “flipped learning” homework or similar.

Working as a team can also support you if you chose to prerecord lessons, you don’t all have to prerecord everything. Support each other by taking key topics and allowing colleagues to use your recording, anything we can do to support each other’s workload in these times is essential.

If you prefer to live stream you can save yourself some time by having some simple technology next to you, using a webcam such as a Zumint bendable webcam or having your phone connected to your PC or laptop should allow you to have a portable visualiser which may save time scanning and preparing documents. Just have them prepared and next to you when you do go live.

Being creative

We all know that a 2 hour zoom meeting can be draining and hard to focus on, imagine being a student and having entirely remote lessons. You can do many things to engage them in their work.

• Prepare students with a “discussion rota” each lesson some students will be required to talk about “x” subject.
• Have break out rooms. Instructions on how to do this on different platforms can be found here: Zoom, Google Classroom or Teams, you won’t be able to see all students all of the time, but with a well set task you should get some interesting responses.
• Using the resources listed above, set some work to watch one of the videos on a topic then have an online debate, or get students to prepare a presentation for their peers.
• You may have seen but not created a “doodly video” before, there are many cheap packages which offer pre made drawings and sketches that you can edit and voice over. They really can support student engagement.

Final word

Remember you aren’t alone in these unprecedented times. We are here to help you every step of the way, if you want some advice or ideas feel free to contact us through any of the channels below.

Stay connected

Tell us about your most useful remote teaching resources in the comments section below.

As always, we are here to support you and your students. If you have questions you can email business@ocr.org.uk or send your tweets @OCR_BusEcon where we share resources and updates.

You can also sign up for email updates to receive information about resources and support.

About the author

Matt Dilley - Subject Advisor

Matt joined OCR in April 2020 as part of the Business and Economics advisory team. He has a degree in Accountancy with a focus on Financial Accounting. His work experience includes commercial banking and 12 years as a teacher of Business Studies and Economics where he was a faculty lead. Outside of work Matt is a keen cyclist and supports the mighty Aston Villa.