A guide to using online learning for explicit teaching

As a teacher, you want to do everything you can to boost student motivation, increase engagement and drive stronger learning outcomes. As an evidence-based approach, explicit teaching does just that and helps students master new skills and learn new content confidently. 

According to the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), explicit instruction is a “systematic, engaging and success-orientated teaching approach” that optimises learning. 

By leveraging online learning tools, teachers can effectively implement explicit teaching strategies in the classroom to drive greater learning gains. 

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What is explicit teaching?
• What are the benefits of explicit teaching?
• How to use online learning for explicit teaching: four techniques to try 
• How to redeem your free explicit teaching resources bundle 

What is explicit teaching?

Also known as explicit instruction, explicit teaching is an instructional teaching method designed to remove ambiguity for students to ensure they clearly understand what success looks like and the path to get there. 

Explicit teaching is a highly structured approach. It involves educators showing students exactly what to do (and how to do it) rather than asking students to connect the dots alone.  

Typically, explicit teaching involves several key steps to help students understand, store and recover information, including:

• Establishing clear learning goals and expectations to set clear guidelines and measures of what success looks like.
  
• Explaining why students are doing a task gives learning a sense of direction and purpose. 
• Showing how this task relates to and builds up existing knowledge to avoid cognitive overload and help students move information from their working, short-term memory to long-term memory.
• Clarifying how to do a task by fully demonstrating and explaining every step of the process in practical, manageable chunks of information. 

In a classroom setting, teachers following this approach would first demonstrate the task and then get the class to practice the task together before asking students to practice alone until they’ve mastered it. Not only are students constantly applying these new skills, but they’re continually receiving feedback to ensure they reach mastery before moving on to the next task. 

What are the benefits of using explicit teaching in the classroom?

There is strong evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of explicit teaching. 

Research by the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) and the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland (UQ) examined exam results of 16,000 secondary students. Here’s what the researchers found: 

• Students who experienced explicit teaching demonstrated greater learning gains than students who did not.
• Explicit teaching offers both short-term and long-term benefits. When a student experiences explicit teaching practices in Year 7, they’re shown to be four months ahead in learning by Year 9 (regardless of whether they continue to experience explicit teaching after Year 7).
• Plus, explicit teaching helps to foster resilience and perseverance in the face of learning obstacles to support stronger learning motivation and engagement. 

Plus, the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) reviewed more than 320 studies looking at the benefits of explicit teaching across a range of contexts and student groups. This review found that explicit instruction has a positive impact on student achievement across subjects (from maths to science to spelling), works for both primary and secondary students and benefits students with and without additional learning needs. 

So, why is explicit teaching so beneficial for students? It boils down to this:

• Students master content before moving on to new concepts 
• Students achieve mastery to minimise learning gaps 
• Students generate more meaningful connections between content and the real-world 
• Students are more confident, engaged and more likely to reach key learning outcomes

How to use online learning for explicit teaching

Wondering how to implement explicit teaching practices in your classroom? With online learning platforms, you can reduce the hassle and hard work out of building lesson plans and revision resources aligned with this high-impact teaching strategy. 

1. Use online learning to set clear learning intentions

The first step to successfully implementing explicit instruction is to ensure your students understand the learning objectives and goals they’re working towards.

With online learning platforms, you can share success criteria with students at the beginning of a new module to clarify your expectations and remove ambiguity about what success looks like. 

In practical terms, consider:

• Using an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Gemini to quickly summarise lesson plans and produce clear learning intentions and success criteria.
• Ensure students can easily access and download the learning intentions for each area of study in your online learning platform to keep these front-of-mind.
• Present content in digestible chunks that students can easily understand and absorb without getting overwhelmed, illustrating how each video, quiz or resource links back to their key learning outcomes, too. 

2. Harness curriculum-specific content to implement guided practice

When first introducing students to a new task or concept, it’s important to offer step-by-step instructions and opportunities for guided practice. 

By modelling how to complete a task, educators can demonstrate exactly what success looks like in clear, specific terms. 

From worked examples to producing exemplary responses, online learning platforms can be a powerful tool to support the implementation of explicit teaching techniques. Here’s how:

• Access a library of curriculum-aligned practice exam questions, allowing teachers to easily work through and demonstrate how to craft a perfect response.
• Use instructional videos to explain the steps involved in completing a task across a range of real-world scenarios relevant to your students.
• Leverage interactive virtual whiteboards to workshop the best way to approach the task and how to apply new knowledge in different situations. 

3. Use assessments and revision sessions to check for understanding

A key element of explicit teaching is ensuring students have mastered a concept before moving on. 

With online learning platforms, teachers can easily gain classroom-wide insights into how students are doing by continually tracking their progress, addressing learning gaps and ensuring students have truly achieved mastery.

In practical terms, here’s how online learning platforms can enable educators to check for understanding:

• Running short quizzes and practice tests regularly to ensure students are gaining continuous feedback and real-time insights into how they’re tracking.
• The best online learning platforms will offer continuous reporting tools and even AI-driven feedback to help educators assess a student’s performance and give learners instant, actionable feedback to help them reach mastery sooner.
• Plus, online learning tools will offer insights and results at a classroom level, helping educators to pinpoint trends, identify learning gaps and tailor revision resources to suit individual learner needs. 

4. Assign differentiated revision tasks 

Every student grasps new concepts at different speeds. With online learning platforms, it’s easier for educators to monitor student progress, identify opportunities for improvement, and even assign tailored resources tailored to the learning preferences of each learner. 

Once educators have guided students through a step-by-step explanation, it’s time for learners to practice their new skills independently. 

Here’s how online learning tools can ensure these revision resources are tailored to each student’s unique needs:

• Use short quizzes to assess how well students have grasped a new topic and identify those who might need further revision and those hungry for more complex material.
• Quickly assign revision resources aligned with each student’s needs and abilities, taking the guesswork out of what students must complete for homework by making these tasks easily accessible in one online learning portal.
• Ensuring students receive the tailored, differentiated revision tasks they need in a discreet way to reach mastery in their own time. 

Keep reading: Discover how to unlock student potential by using edtech for differentiation. 

Download your free bundle of explicit teaching resources 

Ready to take action and experiment with explicit teaching in your own classroom? Our bundle of free explicit teaching resources are designed to give you the practical tips, guidelines and frameworks to leverage this high-impact teaching strategy with confidence. 

Download your bundle now