I deal with students from lower socio-economic backgrounds so I find asyncronous teaching is more effective since their access to wifi and zoom is often limited and interrupted during scheduled class times.
Asynchronous learning and synchronous learning have their advantages. The decision for course delivery needs to not be whimsical or one of convenience but evaluated by all levels of the academic team. Both can highlight different learning strengths and should be strategically selected for a course not only related to the subject matter being taught but the learning method being emphaized.
Asynchronous and synchronous teaching are important ways to teach your courses, but they must be organized so that students can easily obtain the materials. I will be using both methods with my students.
I intend to have students post their course questions to Edverum's discussion board to minimize the number of redundant questions emailed to me at the beginning of each course.
Whether the class is synchronous or asynchronou would be considered based on the learning needs and designed outcomes of the course. If needed, synchronous class time can be incorporated between asynchronous class time, like hybrid.
Leaning toward more asynchronous elements to improve online classes
Using both asynchronous and synchronous teaching can be done in the course by allowing students the benefit of both. For example, live lectures via Zoom and YouTube supplemental lecutres that may incorporate more animation relevant to the topic.
Using both asychronous and sychronous when approriate is important
It is very important to set up rules and regulations but most important it is communication of these set rules that the students and facilitator must understand. Having a good discussion board is key to the success of students freely and openly asking questions.
I think it's important to ensure synchronos and asynchronous lectures are balanced to meet the outcomes and unique needs of the students in this covid environment.
It takes alot of time and organization to create asynchronous videos and link them with synchronous classes but if done well, I think it's the best we can do in this new covid environment.
Students need to have self control with asynchronoous learning because it is more independent, but it can also be popular because it works better with individual schedules.
Be organized be effeicent be available every student is a fingerprint they are all a little different so you have to be ready to come up with another solution sometimes to get your point across and make easier for the student to absorb the information because what you think should work sometimes takes a little tweaking to get the lesson across everybody's thought process does't always work like yours
Reply to Gulsebnem Bishop's post:
Ditto this! Without communication with students and seeing how they are doing, we won't improve as instructuors.
I could not agree more about the importance of setting rules and regulations around office hours and expectations of instructor response time. In the asynchronous format, students all too often also assume the instructor is available 24/7. The biggest takeaways are the importance of organization, consistency, and communication for teaching and learning effectiveness in both synchronous and asynchronous modalities.
I found out about async versus sync and how to determine what is best for the course/students. Overall, the information must be organized for students and staff.
Organization of material and effective communication is vital to ensuring an enriched learning environment. Although presenting challenges seem increasingly difficult to address diverse learning styles however, earnest efforts have been made to factor all educational variables.
I am still finding it hard to become comfortable with synchronous and asynchronous teaching. I haven't figured out how to add the questions for a discussion board so students can see and respond. I know this is important to various learning styles.
Make it clear to students the method of teaching that will be provided. Make sure that the method is realistic.
I learned that a pattern of teaching basically characterizes how an instructor provides information to students and how their virtual classroom practice becomes obvious as it is repeated consistently.
