The Fall semester kicked off today as we started our first teaching session of the 20/21 academic year almost fully online (a handful of classes meet once a week to satisfy immigration requirements for new international students). In my new role as Online Program Manager, my motto for the coming months–shamelessly cribbed from a certain fellow Delawarean–is Build a Bit Better. One way we can do that is by exploiting the potential of blended synchronous/asynchronous instruction more fully.
One of the myths about asynchronous learning is that it’s a-teacher-ous:
Exactly. In fact asynchronous also doesn’t have to mean individual activity: it can also involve group work and lots of interaction among students and between students and the instructor. I think I’ve seen a nice diagram of online activities along two axes: individual/group and synchro/asynch, but I can’t find it, so I made my own on Padlet. Hope you find it useful:
What have I missed? Or does anyone know the diagram I’m looking for?!
In coronavirus news, there have been nearly 17,500 positive cases in Delaware, and numbers continue to rise, although deaths from COVID-19 have become very rare in the past few weeks. Most schools and universities will start the fall semester online, with limited in-person classes in some districts, parochial, and private K-12 schools.
Nigel Caplan 