Online Synchronous Learning: Real-Time Distance Learning

When teaching an 8-week course to instructors about how to teach online successfully, I try to include an example of every major technology and strategy. With all of the useful free tools out there and the varied teaching methods they introduce, this is truly an impossible task. But that doesn't stop me from trying! Here I introduce a difficult technology to master, but one that has endless positive potential for participating students.

Online Synchronous Learning: If you're going to use it, make it a regular event

Recently in my online teaching course, we had our synchronous learning experience. We only have time for one session, because again, it is an 8-week course and I am trying to use our limited time to introduce several different educational technologies. I explained to the participants that this is unideal... when they teach online, if they decide to incorporate synchronous learning into the online experience, it should be a regular and recurring event. The reason being that it takes a couple sessions for most people to get comfortable with the technology. If you are going to take the time to teach your students the technology, and if they are going to make the effort to struggle through the learning it, you might as well use it enough times to make the investment of time and energy worthwhile.

Make sure the tool helps your students meet the course goals and outcomes

As with all educational technology tools, synchronous learning may seem exciting and engaging, and may meet a need. But it is imperative that you evaluate whether this tool (or any other) truly helps your students successfully achieve the course goals and meet the specified outcomes. After all, when transfer schools, graduate programs and potential employers look at a transcript, they have certain expectations about what a grade is a particular course really means. It is our responsibility as teachers to make sure that our assessment of a student's performance lines up with grades given and associated outcomes.

When done right, online synchronous learning has great potential value to students and instructor alike

Not all synchronous learning sessions and instructors are created equally. I consider myself an intermediate synchronous learning instructor, but am getting better every week since I am teaching a regular online Hebrew language class. However, even if I am still honing my skills, and I believe a lot of teachers share my shoes, I have experienced many synchronous learning sessions and have a good idea of what works, what doesn't, what's engaging, what's boring and the value to synchronous learning beyond the information that is delivered from instructor to student.

Building student community and introducing a touch of humanity

A good synchronous learning series can help bring students together, establishing peer camaraderie and a comfortable, safe learning environment. It can also introduce humanity, which is sometimes missing from fully asynchronous online courses. When students work in small group scenarios (which is a possibility with all the major synchronous learning and meeting software), they are able to collaborate and interact with classmates even if one student is in Palatine, IL and the other is a soldier stationed in Germany. And like a face-to-face course, the instructor can use real-time inquiry and polling to get a sense of student interest, understanding, concerns and questions.

At minimum, participation can include raising your hands, voting and chatting... much like participation a large lecture course

Most major synchronous learning and meeting software includes the option of "raising your hand"; voting thumbs up or down; highlighting, spotlighting or marking up whatever appears on the computer screen; and even chatting from one student to another in a semi-private conversation (semi-private because only the participating parties AND the facilitator can read the chat.)

Real-time group work is a major plus

One of the best features of synchronous learning is the facilitator's ability to put students into groups to have them work on a group project or participate in a group discussion. Once the students are comfortable with the technology, they will be able to talk to one another, collaborate via the whiteboard to communicate their ideas to one another and the class at large, share their computer screens with one another, take group quizzes, and even create full presentations.

In a face-to-face small group discussion scenario, the instructor may walk around from one group to another, doing her best to listen in and observe the dynamic, making sure the students are on task.  Similarly, in an online synchronous learning session, the instructor can virtually jump from one group to the next doing the same thing without disrupting the flow of ideas or communications between students. What's even nicer is that when the instructor puts students "into groups" online, each group is able to work completely independently of the other groups. There are no background noises, conversations or happenings to distract the groups since they are basically placed into their own separate webinars.

Tips for a successful online synchronous learning experience

I am still learning to master some of these techniques myself, so don't be disappointed if they don't come to you overnight.

1. Lecture for no more than 5 - 10 minutes. Even though your webinars and online faculty development training may be one hour lectures, that doesn't mean that's the ideal. In fact, consider how engaged you really were last time you had to watch a webinar lecture that was 20 minutes or longer. The other consideration is the fact that those webinars and training sessions are independent lessons; someone is just trying to throw as much information at you as they can in the allotted time and knows that it is not realistic to expect you to commit time before the webinar to complete assignments or related work. 
2. Interact with the students every 5 - 10 minutes. This does not mean that you need to have a new full-blown activity every five minutes. It simply means that you should keep your students engaged. This should be an active and not passive learning experience. When you consistently ask your students to submit comments via chat or to share their opinion with the thumbs up/down feature, your students are more likely to stay alert and engaged with our lesson.
   
3. If possible, bring in at least one other voice to break up the monotony (even if it is only for a minute or two via a video or audio clip.)
4. Use a webcam or at least post a photo of yourself so that the students can connect with you as a person. Some people don't like to be on video so they choose to be a faceless voice. But statistics show that being able to see the instructor makes a significant positive difference for the students and adds an important touch of humanity to the experience. Also, if your students see you as "a real person", they are more likely to be respectful, gracious, and considerate when addressing you, whereas students who never get to see you can sometimes be more forceful when it comes to arguing a grade, or are more easily offended by your innocuous comments simply because a familiarity is lacking. Familiarity is a powerful tool that is in your favor.
5. In your case, assuming you are going to host a recurring online synchronous session, you can set the expectation that your students will prepare for the session by reading, watching, researching, writing, or whatever they need to gather the necessary knowledge. I also suggest having them participate in discussion boards or turn in assignments prior to the session; this allows you time to read their work and assess their level of understanding coming in to the learning session. The information you gather will help you determine the topics that need to be covered in a lecture, and those that can be readdressed through activities or a follow-up discussion.
6. Take advantage of your time with your students to have them participate in an activity that they will find engaging, and that you can use as an assessment tool. I'm not saying that you have to have a graded component to your synchronous session. What I am saying, however, that sometimes it is easier for instructors to recognize the source of student misunderstanding when we engage with our students in real-time. For example, we can give multiple choice math quizzes and realize that a student doesn't understand a concept. But when we see the student mark up the whiteboard explaining his thought process to the class, we may be able to pinpoint the exact source of his misunderstanding, which will help us offer better support to that student. Here are just three sample activities:
1. Have students research and share images or short video clips (30 seconds or less) that show examples of a concept you relayed in the homework. They can each explain why they chose the specific image or video. For smaller classes, this can be done as a whole class discussion, whereas for larger classes, you may want them to present to one another in groups after having submitted the image/video to you ahead of time.
2. You can show an image, text, diagram or video of your choosing and have the students discuss it in small groups. From there, they can present their thoughts as a group to the whole class. Their presentation may utilize the whiteboard, a screen share, and/or additional media found online.
3. Use polling technology such as www.PollEverywhere.com or a built-in polling software (if your synchronous tool has one) and ask your students to respond to the prompt. Then have your students discuss the question as a group and respond to the prompt again. They can change their answers based on the group discussion or keep their answers as they were. After you close the polls, you can share the results and the correct answers with the students.

Peer Reviews and Post Replies... Facilitating Effective Student-to-Student Interactions

So you have this great idea... you'll exercise your students' critical thinking skills while asking themto apply what they learned in class by having them complete peer reviews. Nice! Just make sure to work out all the kinks so that the process goes as smoothly as you had hoped.

The Scenario:

I developed a project for my Teaching Online students that involved completing an assignment, posting the assignment to a Blackboard discussion board, and reviewing one other student's assignment. I also specified that students should review work that has no feedback before reviewing any assignments that have already been reviewed. Not only are the students required to reflect carefully on their own assignments, but they are asked to make effort on behalf of their classmates. One of the nice things about projects like this is that if an online community has been developed, students will put extra effort into their peer reviews, because it is not solely about the grade... it's also about helping another community member attain success.

Challenges:

Peer reviews require completed assignments to be reviewed. Only two students were able to complete their assignments well before the due date (Sunday night at 11:59pm); the rest submitted their work late Sunday night, which means that only two people were able to review those assignments, following the directions specified above. Other students were forced to review assignments that already had reviews or face the penalty of late assignment completion. (Of course, I don't penalize my students for being unable to complete the assignment as specified, but I don't let my students know that: A core goal in this class is to develop sensitivity to course structure, delivery, and expectations, and recognize how these factors affect  students.) Students who regularly go above and beyond will most certainly review some of the later submissions, even if they had already reviewed one of the original two, but since we can't count on that, potentially there could be students who receive no peer feedback.

Solutions:

Although many online courses are run by week, you may want to create a midweek deadline for any assignments or discussion threads that need peer reviews or replies. This way, students know that after that deadline, there will be plenty of fodder for their critique, and they can schedule their participation around that date.

Part of the value of this activity is the autonomy to choose the assignment to review (which can mean a wide selection of topics and areas of interest.) Students are often more engaged with an assignment when they have an element of choice. However, depending on your subject matter and class dynamic, it may make sense to assign students as partners. When the students know that they are accountable to one another, they will more likely complete their assignments on time so that their partner will have an assignment to work from. Again, this kind of camaraderie and accountability is more affective when effort was made to build classroom community.

Finally, if for some reason there is a student who does not receive a peer review, I may offer extra credit to students who review any remaining assignments that still need feedback, and I may contact individual students to ask them personally for their feedback. Some students may reluctantly turn me down due to time constraints, but generally, students are flattered that their teacher counts on them when help is needed and want to go the extra mile for that reason. Often times, this personal requests lead to even more commitment on the part of the student because s/he feels personally invested in the course and its success.

Can You Really Build Online Community?

It is possible to build community online, and in fact, I have a colleague who is moving to Texas to be with his girlfriend, whom he met in an online class. Of course, the facilitator’s effort to create online community influences the degree to which students feel online courses meet those intangible needs for social companionship and interaction. For kids and teens, Facebook has become a primary mode for social interaction, so the social needs or desires of this younger generation may be evolving differently than those of older generations. I've seen many teens get together just so they could surf Facebook together and look at each other's profiles. They will all sit together in the same room but all be looking at different computers.  Others make plans to meet online even though they live in walking distance from one another! So while Facebook will never (hopefully) replace face-to-face social interaction, it has certainly become a bigger part of the social experience for younger generations than I think anyone anticipated. Similarly, online community and camaraderie has greater potential than I think some of us teachers realize. However, it is up to us to facilitate and nurture safe, supportive and engaging community interactions.