Kanban for Educators: Adapting to the New Normal in Education

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way we handle our usual activities, including the way our children are educated. Some parents who have no option to homeschool their kids decided to go with the new method teachers are implementing, and that is by running their classes online. Virtual meetings and conferences have long been a part of our lives, especially for professionals who handle a lot of virtual work. But for some educators, this can be a new concept and there will be a lot of growing pains before everything runs smoother. To help make sure that online classes are well organized, it can be a good idea to adopt a task management method, which is Kanban for educators.

Using Kanban for Education

Kanban is a project management method that has been widely used by many businesses and professionals in various industries. But apart from helping business professionals manage their time and productivity, Kanban can also come in handy for a school’s task management, as part of an educator’s teaching tools, and in handling online learning more efficiently. Kanban for educators can be very helpful as it will make it easier for them to manage all the tasks that they need to accomplish and keep track of their students’ performances across various subjects.

6 Ways You Can Use Virtual Kanban in the Classroom

Thanks to various educational technologies, it has become a lot easier for teachers to handle online classes, which is the optimal solution nowadays in terms of continuing our kids’ education while keeping them safe from the virus at the same time. By implementing Kanban for educators, it will become less stressful and overwhelming for both teachers and students to handle the new educational environment and make the most of their online education. For educators, here are some ways you can use a virtual Kanban board in handling your online classes.

1. Post your regular class schedule

By deciding to implement Kanban for your online classes, you are choosing to give yourself and your students the power to conveniently monitor their scholastic performance and accomplish their tasks. To make sure that you are maximizing the use of the class’ Kanban board, see to it that they have a place there that will keep them updated on their regular class schedule, including any classwork deadlines or even schedule changes that might come up in the following days or weeks. This allows your students to also be more responsible in meeting deadlines for their schoolwork and commit to their regular class schedules.

2. Allow students to submit tasks and projects easily

Another convenience of using Kanban for educators is that it can help you keep track of your student’s daily schoolwork or projects. Since a virtual class will mostly require online documents and virtual collaborations, it will be easier for you to monitor who among your students’ participation in your class by allowing them to submit their school tasks through your Kanban board. You can simply create individual Kanban cards for each student and add checklists on each card. Your students can then attach files or provide links to their completed tasks, be it an essay, research, an artwork, or a video. Kanban for educators can be a great tool when it comes to monitoring and managing their students’ tasks.

3. Organize your daily lessons

Preparing your daily lessons will always take up a lot of your time and effort. But with the right tools and strategies, you can be more efficient in preparing everything you will need to conduct your online classes. A Kanban board can serve as a visual representation of your lesson preparation. You can create individual cards for all the prep tasks you need to accomplish. This way, you won’t miss out on any important detail and also keep track of all the lessons that you need to prepare for the following weeks. You can create a separate board to give you a visual of your lesson plans and simply connect each lesson to a separate Kanban board that you can use for monitoring your students’ task and project submissions. 

4. Make communication easier between you and your students

One of the difficulties of handling online classes is maintaining open communication with your students. Without a proper channel for different types of communication, it can be difficult to guarantee their participation and sustain their interest in learning. If you have a number of instructions that your students should constantly keep in mind, it’s best to create a Kanban card on your class board to serve as a reminder of your instructions. This way, there will be less need for back and forth communications as everything they will need to know will be on the board. You can also provide them with additional links and references that will help them accomplish their school tasks. Now more than ever, you should see to it that you provide your students with all the necessary knowledge that will help them complete the assignments, tasks, and projects that you give them for each lesson. For this, Kanban for educators can be a very useful tool.

5. Collaborate a lot easier with your students

For online classes to work, collaboration is very important. Since face-to-face interactions can not be done, it’s important that you establish a method that will allow you to collaborate with your students in an easy and stress-free manner. This is where a Kanban for educators can come in handy. Aside from making it easier for students to submit projects and consolidate references, a class Kanban board can also allow your students to collaborate with each other during team projects.

6. Be more transparent in grading and rewarding students

Encouragement can do a great deal in helping students perform better. If you are the type of educator who always sees to it that credit is given where it is due, then a Kanban for educators can be a great tool if you want to introduce gamification to your online classes. Introducing some game-like elements and rewards system into your lessons can help motivate your students to do well and aim for better marks. To do this, you can set up a goal or set of goals that your students will have to meet. And for every student who qualifies will receive a certain reward, such as an additional grade, an exam exemption, or a gift that they will enjoy having. This gamification method can also be a good way for you to be more transparent in how you are grading your students.

Making the Most of Online Kanban for Educators

A lot of things have changed in how teachers are handling their classes nowadays. To make way for the new normal and to make things a lot easier for both you and your students, you should make it a point to use the right productivity tools. Kanban for educators can be a great method for better student task management, lesson planning, and overall productivity as a teacher. For an online Kanban tool that you can use for your online classes, check out Kanban Zone.