Peleton Pedagogy for Asynchronous Instruction

Peleton, the exercise mobile app, excels at offering a gamified, community-centric workout experience. This “Peloton Pedagogy” employs direct modeling and instruction, complemented by uplifting storytelling and consistent positive reinforcement. As students, we value teachers who provide clear, step-by-step guidance. Yet, it’s often the educators who blend this direct approach with engaging narratives and prioritize positive feedback who leave lasting impressions. By incorporating screencasting and formative assessment tools, teachers can adopt this method to enhance their students’ learning experiences, allowing them to practice and reinforce skills and content effectively from anywhere and at any time.As an avid rider on Peleton, these strategies have made me not only become a better rider, but more committed to practicing and ensuring I am working out often. As a result, I have been pondering whether a platform like Peleton with its embedded pedagogy work for K-20 education?

Beyond these foundational pedagogical elements, Peloton extends its teaching approach to on-demand and live classes by recording them and making them accessible on the user’s dashboard for participation at any time. Schools and teachers can adopt a similar strategy by filming numerous lesson segments throughout the school year, creating a substantial content library. Each mini-lesson integrates direct instruction with Peloton-inspired techniques for asynchronous learning and includes formative assessments to gather student data to guide future lessons. Schools and districts could do something very similar and develop their own libraries of on-demand lessons for students.

For example, if this was available to students, students could choose from a variety of lessons in their required content areas offered by their favorite teachers, available on the school’s learning management system. An Algebra teacher might record a brief session demonstrating how to use linear equations to measure growth over time, enriching the lesson with an inspirational story about how linear and non-linear progressions can reflect various aspects of personal growth such as achievements, goals, and wealth. This approach not only delivers content but also uses stories and positive reinforcement to engage students, who then complete practice problems and earn badges displayed on a school-wide leaderboard, adding a gamified element. Additionally, the use of interactive tools like Edpuzzle, Nearpod, Curipod, Quizizz Live, or Pear Deck could be provided with these recordings allowing students to engage with the content actively, stopping the video to complete the interactive practice assessments that provide valuable insights for tailoring future instruction to their classroom teachers.

Khan Academy and Peleton are exemplary models for how schools can develop this type of system at the school and district levels. Similar to Peleton, Khan Academy provides a robust framework that schools might consider emulating to enhance their own teaching methodologies. By offering a wide array of resources that include video tutorials that have explicit direct instruction and modeling, interactive exercises for formative assessment and retrieval practice, and immediate feedback, Khan Academy supports self-paced learning that can be adapted to the specific needs of individual schools. On a smaller level, teachers can record chunks of the explicit modeling and integrate what they’ve developed with interactive tools such as like Edpuzzle, Nearpod, Curipod, Quizizz Live, or Pear Deck to provide for opportunities for students to re-watch and interact with content anywhere and at any time.

Overall as we move into the future schools should consider integrating Peloton pedagogy with EdTech tools so we can revolutionize asynchronous learning for our students. Although it requires more effort initially, teachers and schools can curate playlists of educational content that effectively reinforce skills and knowledge acquired during the year. This method enhances learning and introduces an element of choice, allowing students to select which teachers they prefer to learn from during their practice sessions. Furthermore, teachers, schools, and districts can develop an extensive library of content that remains valuable and can be utilized year after year.

Are there any schools and districts out in the world that have developed an on-demand platform like what I have mentioned in this post? If so, please reach out as I am certainly interested in learning more!