Module 2 in the All Things Multisensory Series
In this module, you will discover some great ways to incorporate multisensory learning into your online tutoring sessions.
Time to complete: 40 minutes
Let’s Reflect
Here is a practical exercise for you to try!
We know the importance of using a multisensory approach in our tutoring sessions. Practically, this means including at least the “big three” sensory modalities – auditory, visual and tactile-kinesthetic. And when we can, trying out activities that stimulate our learner’s sense of smell and taste to get many areas of the brain activated and making connections.
Helping our learners engage many senses at one time as they learn new information is just as important when we tutor online as when we tutor in person. How are we helping our learners to do that?
It’s beneficial to check in with ourselves from time to time to observe what tutoring strategies we typically rely on and to challenge ourselves to shake things up a little. Let’s check in with ourselves and take a look!
What is your multisensory quotient?
Rate yourself on how much you use multisensory activities in your tutoring sessions.
Set aside about 20 minutes to fill out this 
Self-Observation Checklist
As you fill in the chart, don’t worry if you are “doing things right” or “not doing enough”. This tool is just a check-in to increase your awareness and to give you the opportunity to tweak your sessions. You may find that you are engaging in more multisensory learning tools than you realize or that current activities can become multisensory with a minor tweak!
Have fun with it and let it inspire you!
Read, Listen, Watch
Read the information. Or, if you prefer, click on the audio to listen to the text read aloud.
Multisensory Learning Online
You have been reminded how important it is to incorporate multi-modal strategies into your tutoring sessions and you have identified a few that you would like to incorporate into your online lessons. Many of these activities are physical and use tangible materials. So how is it possible to observe our learners using these tangible materials when we are working online on a platform like Zoom?
Auditory strategies online?
Zoom certainly lends itself to an auditory learning style. As long as our microphones are working, there is no limit to verbal interaction in a tutoring session. And there are many online resources that have auditory elements – like audiobooks, audio-visual resources, podcasts and speech software. On Zoom, we’ve got auditory covered!
Visual strategies online?
What about visual strategies? Well, with the Zoom screen sharing feature, we can include a lot of visual digital information in our lessons – like digital images, graphics, videos from websites and digital files like Word documents or PDFs.
Where the gap exists in using a visual approach on Zoom, is being able to share hands-on tangible materials that are pertinent and important to your learner – like workbooks, physical handouts, manuals/materials from work, forms, bills, municipal notices, government documents, flyers or personal letters.
These kinds of documents are often directly related to our learner’s goals and are highly relevant. It’s vital to be able to work with these documents when tutoring on Zoom.
Tactile-kinesthetic strategies online?
As you can imagine, a tactile-kinesthetic approach is a bit trickier on Zoom. We can certainly incorporate some of these strategies into our sessions – like doing air writing in front of the camera, incorporating some movement into various activities or building in movement breaks.
We can choose to use digital resources that are interactive – like websites or tools where our learners can interact with the screen by clicking buttons, moving sliders or navigating dropdown lists. If your learner has a device with a touch screen, there are tactile opportunities to swipe, draw with a finger, drag and drop digital objects and tap to select or move from one element to another. Even typing on a keyboard has tactile-kinesthetic benefits.
But nothing replaces the types of activities that require big body movements and touch – like moving word tiles around, physically sequencing information on flash cards, rolling letter cubes in a word game, or handling tangible materials.
These activities are essential for a robust multisensory approach!
The online conundrum
On its own, the Zoom platform gives us lots of possibilities to engage the senses but a crucial gap for you and your learner is the difficulty in using physical materials, objects and documents in a way that allows you to observe and guide – like you do in your in-person sessions. It’s a big gap.
Consider the types of things you identified in your self-observation reflection – the things you wanted to incorporate into your sessions. Can you easily do those online? Or is there a barrier?
How can we close the gap and remove that barrier? By using a document camera!
A solution – tutoring with a document camera
A document camera plugs into your laptop or desktop computer. It captures everything on your physical work surface and shares it on your Zoom screen. If either you or your learner use a document camera on Zoom, everything you do on your work surface can be easily seen by the other person. Just like when you are working in-person!
Watch this video to get a sense of what you can do online with a document camera.
Quiz Time
Test your knowledge with a fun, interactive drag and drop activity.
Read each of the boxes below the grid. As you read each one, ask yourself the following:
- Will I be able to observe my learning doing this activity in an online lesson on Zoom?
- Will I need a document camera to observe my learner doing this activity as we work online?
Drag each box into the correct area of the grid.
When you are ready, click on the grey “show results” bar and compare your answers with ours.
Write words in the air
Tap, snap or clap out syllables
Act out words, ideas, concepts
Use a mouse, touchpad or finger to interact with screen (clicking, dragging, tapping)
Move around while learning a concept
Get up to move in between activities
Write on a physical whiteboard
Build sentences with word tiles
Use play-doh to form letters
Use a highlighter on physical text
Manipulate ideas on sticky notes to sequence a story
Receive new information via physical demonstration
Show knowledge through physical demonstration
Bring materials from home/work that are relevant to their goals
Write words and sentences on paper or in a notebook
Play word games with moving pieces
Summary
Here’s a quick summary of what you covered in this module.
You reflected on how you’ve been tutoring online and put some thought into some actions you’d like to take to strengthen your multisensory approach online. You learned what types of multisensory activities are easily and not-so-easily done online and you’ve seen the possibilities that a document camera can open up.
Why not try the challenge below.
Tutor Challenge
Go to the next level!
Review the multisensory checklist and questions you filled out earlier (if you need a reminder, click here to go back to that the checklist activity).
Use the multisensory checklist each month to reflect on how your tutoring sessions have changed since doing this module or to motivate you to think of ways to make your online session more multisensory.
Next Steps
Here are some ideas to go to the next level!
Congratulations!
You have completed Module 2. You are ready for the Module 3 in this series. Click on the link below.