Freedom, you see, is not actually all it's cracked up to be. Especially for adult learners who spent their entire childhoods and adolescences (and probably much of their adult lives) following a rigid learning schedule that dictated what time they had to wake up each morning, when to take restroom breaks during the day, what time they ate lunch, and when they were allowed to relax in the evenings. Very few adult learners today have experience with facilitating their own learning 100% of the time, which means that going to an asynchronous only online learning model turns their world upside down.
Enter synchronous learning experiences in your online courses. If you work with adults who like some structure (whether they admit it or not), perhaps you could try incorporating some synchronous learning experiences into your online course. While the asynchronous activities are great (in fact, they are the foundation of online teaching as we know it today) because they do provide busy students with the flexibility to make learning convenient to their hectic schedules and lifestyles, they aren't great at providing the same level of support that synchronous learning experiences give.
Some methods for facilitating synchronous learning are:
- Magnetic Brainstorms: In this activity, collaboration and brainstorming are both in full swing. Students respond to a prompt or question by posting words or phrases that come to mind on a shared whiteboard space. Magnetic brainstorming allows students to share their personal thoughts and opinions with the class in real time.
- Stone Soup: Learners are separated into breakout rooms based on an interest or response to a topic or question. Once in breakout groups, the students of like minds work on a project or task together.
- Cracker Barrels: Students divide up into breakout groups. In each breakout group, there is a facilitator (usually another student, but could also be a guest speaker or other relevant person) and a group of students. After a specified amount of time, the students rotate their breakout groups, moving to the space of a different facilitator. This activity allows several students the opportunity to act as facilitators or instructors, and lets the learners discuss a variety of topics throughout the class meeting.
- Is the product cross-platform, and does it work on all browsers? (For a list of free synchronous meeting host products, click here.)
- Are your students in different time zones? Make sure you find a time that works for everyone. If you can't find a time that works across time zones, make recordings available to the students who were unable to attend.
- Is a software download required for your students? If so, be sure to make that clear before you begin.
- Are you familiar with the product? If you're iffy on the details, be sure to set up a practice run.
Do you have any experience with synchronous course facilitation? What works for you and your classes?
References:
Finkelstein, Jonathan. Learning in Real Time:Synchronous Teaching and Learning Online. 1st ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Print.
This is an excellent post, Emma! Not only did you provide suggestions for hosting an effective and engaging synchronous class meeting, but you also provided the context for why this is important. In your introductory paragraphs, you did a great job presenting a strong rationale for synchronous learning. Nicely done! I'm looking forward to reading your peers' feedback.
ReplyDeleteEmma, These are great questions! The activities are wonderful for increasing student engagement and accountability...and, of course, for increasing presence and for learning content. My favorites are the Cracker Barrel and Stone Soup.
ReplyDeleteI just had so much to say in response, that I had to make two responses - I wrote too much!
Synchronous facilitation, as with any strategy, brings with it a variety of issues worth considering....for the faculty as well as the student.
PURPOSE: Why is it that you are meeting synchronously? what is the purpose or objective of this meeting that makes it worth everyone carving out time from their busy day to meet? The quality of connection, content, discussion needs to be worth everyone’s time….requiring much planning and consideration to make the session worthwhile Every activity needs to have a reason to be used….
TECHNOLOGY: this one is tough as there will always be those who issues with the technology. One problem with this is that those with issues often consume a lot of class time that is designed for other purposes. Perhaps meeting individually with everyone to make sure they all have a chance to practice on whatever device they plan to use - will help allay those issues. Power outages, loss of connectivity cannot be be “fixed” with practice...but familiarity with the learning platform can.
SOCIAL PRESENCE: I love the idea of fostering presence, and synchronous meetings can foster that presence..but again… is that one of the purposes behind the meeting. Holding private - and not-so-private chats during class certainly lends itself to developing presence, but the facilitator needs to be able to multitask - to keep and eye of chats and what is happening...AND the attendees need to understand that they have a certain responsibility, too - they need to not facebook, tweet, play games, read, and do other tasks during the synchronous session. sometimes we feel we can hide behind a computer screen...but that still impacts our learning.
Part 2: Sorry for going on and on and on . . . Well, not really :-)
ReplyDeleteVIDEO BEST PRACTICES: So MUCH goes into this aspect.
Time and length of session. In the past I taught classes of around 20-25 students using video-streaming and learned a lot by doing so. First, was the logging in process. I learned to log on 30 minutes in advance and to require students to log in at least 15 minutes in advance to make sure their technology worked. This way we were able start on time and it limited the number of folks “coming in late to class.” (A throwback to a F2F class, I suppose :-) What did they do while waiting for class to begin? Several chatted amongst one another. for those who did not want to chat, I posted a powerpoint loop that proposed questions and answers, reviewing course material for that session, and several students mentioned they enjoyed the review. How long should sessions be? Some of the research suggests sessions should last no more than an hour without a break...but the term “break” can be defined in a variety of ways. We were scheduled to meet for 3 hours...Three hours???? on a screen? Na uh…… I learned to do 15 minute chunks of content, followed by activity, then reflection, then 10 minute coffee break, then repeat in some form…. Students seems to enjoy this: it gave them the opportunity to stretch, refill coffee cups, take a restroom break, and even fix a snack (One of my video-streamed courses was a doc level research design course on Fridays from 4:20 pm to 7:20 pm...Need I say more?)
Background, for instance. What is behind you - what can be seen by everyone when you turn on your webcam? How well is your area lighted? We often forget the background and fail to consider our background could be very distracting. Ii cannot tell you the number of times I have held a synchronous meeting where students had underwear hanging up behind them, pets off screen being extremely distracting - ‘nuff said there - bright light or none at all….I tend to privately message students making suggestions about their background, discovering they often did not even look into their camera to see what was visible...
Noise and microphones. Should they be muted when not speaking? Yes. We may not hear what is going on around us in our homes, but microphones nowadays can pick up quite a bit, so muting mics when not speaking is courtesy for the rest of the class. It is amazing how loud typing on a keyboard can be :)
Webcam on or off? This depends on the system. some web conferencing systems such as Adobe Connect and BigBlueButton allow for all attendees to appear on screen in little boxes. This method is ideal for several reasons. Now no one can hide and do other activities - it is more like a F2F class where students can be held accountable for being and doing. As a facilitator you can see when others are confused and can re-explain a concept or provide more examples. As a student, you can see one another….taking us back to social presence and the importance of the visual contact with classmates.
Clothing. PJ bottoms and fuzzy slippers are fine…..but… bright colors, stripes, polka dots, patterns all “move” on the screen, making focus difficult...and I have known students who suffered from motion sickness while video streaming due to this movement.
i know the above items sound trivial, but in a large video-streamed synchronous class, these items can be just as important as the activities…..and they take such little time to do - much less time to teach folks synchronous course etiquette, allowing the facilitator more time to concentrate on crafting and preparing for meaningful activities.
This almost makes a synchronous session seem more and more like a F2F class, doesn’t it? At least the better parts of one :-)
Emma, what an awesome job you have done with this blog post. I really feel connected to your post having read your referenced text, Learning in Real Time: Synchronous Teaching and Learning Online. The questions that you list are excellent ones that any facilitator should be able to answer before embarking upon synchronous class facilitation.
ReplyDeleteI would like to also offer your readers another source that I found to be most excellent as well, in sharing very meaningful guidance for synchronous class facilitation. Jennifer Hofmann authored The Synchronous Trainer's Survival Guide: Facilitating Successful Live and Online Courses, Meetings, and Events. This book is full of information that will prepare a facilitator to be ready for almost any challenges that arise within a synchronous environment. Hofmann provides her readers with a very easy to read, survival guide, that focuses on what she describes as her “diary of things that went wrong and how I fixed them for the next time.” I was particularly interested in her descriptions and scenarios related to a “producer” being in attendance with the facilitator whenever possible. The “producer” is really an assistant to the facilitator. Someone that can man the chat box, provide catch-up for late comers, and just make a synchronous session flow more smoothly.
I also want to provide a link to a useful YouTube review for this same book. I found this review by Anna Sabramowicz to be informative as it actually convinced me to purchase and read the book.
http://youtu.be/8tB9FRECMGs
Finally, I am including a link to the book, at the publisher’s website, for additional information. You may want to purchase the book yourself. It is a great read!
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787969435.html