 Hi, my name is Tracy D'Agama Spinoza and this is a video on synchronous online learning. What we'll be doing today is looking at the context of synchronous learning within all of education, some definitions, understanding those advantages and disadvantages to the use of synchronous learning activities and methodologies in order to decide exactly when is the most appropriate time to use that. And then in the second part of this course, we're going to be looking at how we follow certain basic steps in order to create your own choices for synchronous online learning. So as you might recall from the asynchronous video, synchronous basically is named after the Greek god of time, right? So this basically means when we talk about synchronous learning, this is what we do in real time. Now, I know we've all been doing that all of our lives as teachers. We've just sort of picked up this terminology recently as we've moved on to online contexts because online integrates and really tries to label very clearly what is asynchronous and synchronous in order to complement them for the best activities possible. So just remember, synchronous is just anything we do when we are in real time, not necessarily the same place, but in the same time as the students. So again, same time, not the same space, okay? So this means we could use things like the synchronous Zoom conferencing that we do or we can be on the telephone together or we can use online chats or instant messaging through WhatsApp. All of those things are considered live or synchronous learning moments. It's also really important to kind of summarize in your own head before you make these decisions about how you're going to structure your class. What are these advantages of synchronous learning and the advantages of asynchronous learning? How can you balance this? So if you think to yourself, well, my objective is that I have a real-time discussion, synchronous is the way to go. That would be great if we did this live in Zoom. We can either divide the group in half or we can create breakout rooms where they have these small group discussions and come back and have a larger group discussion. But synchronous would be wonderful for that, right? If we want real-time collaborative activities, if we want to say, you know, we've got this problem set and we're going to get together, I'd like you guys to go into your small breakout rooms and I'd like you to talk about different solutions to this and come back with at least two great solutions to this particular problem. Collaborative activities are wonderful for synchronous. It's really hard to tell students, you know, you and you and you are going to collaborate, go away for a week and come back and tell us the answer because part of the challenges that we're facing right now is that most students have to then figure that out for themselves. It's not that they can say, let's meet after school at Janies. That's not necessarily an option anymore. So you have to find ways that you've either created within your online classroom structure a space for those students, for example, Zoom room for students to meet all by themselves, which if you're allowed to that, some school districts aren't even allowing students to meet on their own for different security reasons, right? This means that one of the best ways to use your synchronous time has to do with collaborative activities. Another advantage of synchronous activities is that you can give immediate feedback. As a teacher or students to students, there's a greater immediacy of being able to give feedback when we are here live in a synchronous setting. You also see that the facilitator can gauge the understanding of concepts. It's much easier to put your finger on the pulse of a group when you are with them. And this means that you're going to have to be very, very observant. I'm not only of what students are saying to each other in the synchronous class, but you get to see all of their faces. You get to see if they're really taking it in. You're getting to see if they're following you or not, or if they seem totally lost. So you are able to, in a synchronous environment, really sense whether or not they're getting it or not, which is much harder in a synchronous setting, right? And we also know that there's a greater motivation to complete assignments. When you have this in-class kind of mini competition where people are together, they nudge each other forward and to get things done, especially when they're broken down into these smaller groups to work on things together. So we know that there are certain advantages to synchronous learning. Balance that out with the advantages of asynchronous learning, because there's total advantages to asynchronous learning as well. But you have to decide which things are most important to win and match those to certain activities that you're going to do as you create the instructional design for your class. As we plan synchronous learning, we have to remember to think, you know, backward design, understanding by design. Always remember or keep in mind this primary objective we have for the course. What is it that we're doing? What is the objective of the class? And is it best met by using a synchronous learning encounter? For example, if my objective is to see if students know how to collaborate well, it's really good to use synchronous learning as opposed to asynchronous things when I can't really see them, right? So depending on the objectives you have for learning, you'll select a synchronous activity. And this really gets to the point that one of the best ways to use your face-to-face time or your synchronous time when everybody's together is to do collaborative or group activities. We know that learning, you know, one plus one is three. We all learn from each other. So using the knowledge of the group is really powerful. But it's also very important with any online learning experiences that we've developed some kind of a guide that learners can use to stand track. Which activities do you have to do in real time? Which can you do on your own time asynchronously, right? So make sure that that's clear up front and transparent to the learners. And it's always helpful to have some kind of a presentation. For example, a PowerPoint or something that allows, you know, visual following. We know that the more modalities that you can trigger, you know, seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, well, you can't really taste very well online. But you can definitely support with additional visual information. That's just another neural track for memory so that you'll enhance your ability to remember what it is you have to do next. And this will really facilitate things for the students. Another thing we should really remember to do while we are together with students in synchronous time, as opposed to when we're out of sync, is to get their feedback, to hear from them what do they need. This is what Reggio Emilia calls the pedagogy of listening, you know, taking the time during those synchronous moments to really hear what it is that those students need. And link to that is just keeping really clear channels of communication, maybe regularly sending them something, an announcement, email, some kind of nudges that keep them on track to make sure that they do attend and fulfill their obligations as students. But don't send too many of these. Like if you send like, you know, it's kind of like saying breaking news every two seconds, people stop listening, right? So you have to choose your moments and choose the modalities that you're going to use. There's a lot of tools that you have available to you and you might want to watch the instructional design video for this, but you can use emails, you can use announcements, you can use the chat boards. There's all kinds of ways that we can communicate with our students, but let's make a plan about which tools will be used when and make sure that the students are really clear about that. But once we've set up that communication track, it's also now back on us, right, to be able to respond to the learners. So if we say, you know, go ahead, if you have any questions, send me an email and then you don't answer your emails for several days, that's not good, right? So make sure that you respond within a reasonable amount of time and that students can build up expectations around that timeframe. And probably from a mind-brain education perspective, one of the things that's most important to try to take advantage of is social contagion. We know that independent of online or face-to-face, we know that these synchronous moments are a chance for you to be contagious in your passion for what you do in your classroom. So make sure that you transmit that, that you're interested in it, that you're engaged, and that you too have an investment in them learning. Now, we're not going to go into too many of these really kind of deep tips here, but if you like, there's a hyperlink here in the presentation that you can look at. 144 tips on synchronous e-learning and strategies and the research that backs it. But I'd like to just summarize a handful of those things that kind of globally fit into three big categories, okay? So this will make this a little bit more manageable for us to think about. Globally, you really have to reconceptualize parts of your course. So if we've been used to, just go back and think about your regular classroom, the classroom that you had live before this whole pandemic broke out and the way you used to manage your classroom. So you had certain activities, you structured them in certain ways, you did certain things in groups, you did certain things independently. Not all of that has to change, but you do have to reconceptualize what parts of that could actually be done best synchronously in that hour or two or three or four or five that you might have during the week versus this other free time that the students are going to have, not really free because it's going to be full of activities, but in this asynchronous mode, you're asking them to be responsible for certain parts of their learning maybe in a bigger way that they were beforehand. So you have to reconceptualize this. And this means, for example, perhaps flipping some or even all of the course content. And if you look at the instructional design video, we give you a few hints about how to do that. But the main idea is to think about what are those things that you know there's going to be doubts about, that everybody should be on the same page as far as definitions, including certain core concepts or definitions or math formulas or certain grammatical rules or theories in science, whatever it is, things that you want to make sure are defined. Those are knowledge things. Those are things kids could, you know, look somewhere else, Google it and find it. But the main idea is that you told them, you've highlighted this is basic core knowledge. Without this, we can't, you know, build off of this. We can't build new skills. We're not going to shape our attitudes about things. So we need to know this knowledge. So you choose to flip some parts or all of the main content area of the course so that when you do come together in the synchronous meeting time, you can just pull that apart. You can say, so, Jenny, would you think of the video? What are two questions that you have about it? And what's one thing you liked about it? Tell me about that. And based on the students' questions, those can be the jumping off points for the synchronous meeting. Flipping basically means then that the things that you might have had them do as homework sort of reading up on definitions and things like that, they watch that beforehand. And then this rehearsal is what we actually do together in class. So that's why it's a flipped concept. So try to think about which parts of your class might be good to be flipped. Then that would give you much more time to have those really meaningful human face-to-face encounters when you do get that synchronous time together. This also means leveraging in certain platforms you have breakout rooms. That is amazing using small group work in this way because you're able to then personalize and make this much more authentic to the students. You can have three, four students hover around a certain question together, then come back to the large group, and then we can sort of talk about this as a group together. So think about how you might reconceptualize the way you structure classes. Some of you might find that these kind of breakout rooms are fantastic because it's much faster to do that online than it is in a face-to-face class where everybody shuffles around the chairs and drag their feet and finally gets off into their groups. You can do this in a split second in Zoom, right? So take advantage of some of these things to think about what ways you might change your typical classroom to better meet the needs of students. The second big idea here is never lose sight of the importance of building a learning community. This is really something we should take advantage of when you do have, for example, a teleconferencing structure. In online classes, you can see everybody's face. That's even better than in some real-life classes called face-to-face where really half the class is looking at each other's, you know, the back of their heads, right? In this way, when you're in the online teleconferencing, you can all see each other's faces and you can all see each other's names too. So take the opportunity that this provides to really build up that community, call people by names, purposely link different kinds of people together in those small breakout rooms so that they can really get to know one another. We really know that people who feel like they are part of a group, part of something bigger than themselves, actually invest a lot more and stay more engaged and they're more motivated. So we know this is a great way to lend itself towards student motivation and learning. And the third point is just to be prepared. It's really hard, but it's definitely gratifying to go online. The most challenging things that come up have to do with things that you might not have anticipated. Now, going online literally means you can't wing it really, because that face-to-face time is what you really have to take advantage of and you can't lose a minute of that by fumbling around and, oops, my speaker didn't work out, the battery, I have to plug it back in at that moment. No, no, no, you have to really be prepared to take advantage of every single minute that you have with those students in a synchronous form, because we know that we're offloading a lot of information to asynchronous periods and they really crave that face-to-face. Just to be connected to the group is really, really important, but this means we as teachers have to really script our structure. Go through, maybe use, definitely use, I would say, some kind of a PowerPoint to guide you to maybe, you know, these are going to be the five main slides for the live class. We're going to use these prompts as jumping off points that the students brought up in their discussion board, so that's always focused in on the students, right? Think about how you're going to restructure that so that you can take advantage and be prepared for things to go off. Plan. Plan to have a fully charged computer. Plan to have your headsets ready. Plan a PowerPoint that would help you gauge the time and make sure that you cover those main points that you want to do. But more than anything, great teachers have always been known for being able to, you know, adjust in the moment. What do those students really need? Let's say that they come to class and you're all ready to do this, you know, really high-tech chemistry class and then two of the kids have just been fighting and they come in all broken up and everybody in the class is taking sides and you have to put the chemistry to the side for a moment and manage that group and see how you can actually soothe those feelings and use that opportunity for another kind of lesson that might be more attitudinal, long-term things about building character or about understanding personal responsibility or being able to say, you're sorry and move on. There's a lot of things that you're going to have to deal with that happen in normal face-to-face classes, but online you don't have so many options like saying, okay, I'm going to send so-and-so out to the water fountain for a minute while I talk to the other kid. No, you're going to have to figure out how you manage that online and this means that you're going to have to think about multiple scenarios of things that could happen within your class and decide how you would manage that. I would definitely say don't fail to use students as assistants. It's a wonderful feeling to be a student in a class and have the teacher call on you and say, hey, listen, we're going to be going into two different rooms and I'd really like, hey, Jenny, would you mind taking notes and making sure we all get on task because we need to come back in about six minutes with some good answers to this. Put somebody else in charge of some other parts of the class if you don't have an assistant with you, but find some ways if you need to divide and conquer as far as the structure is concerned. Be prepared, though. Be prepared for all kinds of crazy to happen because that's life online. Somebody's internet might go out. Your internet might go out. What would be your options there? If you flipped, you actually have a fail-safe system because if you flipped, you can always send a message. Lightning just struck and I have no internet in my house, but I want you all to go into the bundles and find at least one extra resource and study on that and be prepared to come back and give a two-minute explanation to everybody else about what it is that you discovered about X topic while we were offline. Find some kind of a way to have plan B always ready. So with that, I just want to give you a sample structure of what you might think about doing that would mix synchronous and asynchronous tools. So basically you can have things like pre-unit quizzes. That helps test prior knowledge. It also gets a baseline for where students are at, but you can have low stakes testing and tell them you can take the test 10 times or 50 times, whatever you like. We just want you to get that vocabulary under your belt. So you can use pre-unit quizzes. Those are asynchronous. You can also have them watch the pre-class video, definitely an asynchronous thing. They do that on their own time. That just consolidates some core concepts so that they understand basic vocabulary when they come to class and you guys are able to have a better exchange based on that. Then again, asynchronous, you can have these bundles, activities, things that are readings or podcasts or extra videos on the topic or apps that reinforce the work or games or gamification tools that exist that might support your particular topic or rehearsal platforms like Khan Academy that will allow you to differentiate the homework that you give to those students. You can have discussion board answers where a student has to think asynchronously, post an idea and then reply to other people, right? That just really unpacks some difficult concepts, but also helps us build that community as people begin to exchange ideas. Then we have our synchronous meeting when we're face to face and this can be in our Zoom room or this can be in any other teleconferencing structure or it can be on FaceTime or we can say we're gonna be using WhatsApp but you have a live class structure and here we're able to have the synchronous chats where the teacher might be saying one thing and the students are saying, hey, did she really say the name of that person is whatever and you said, and somebody else will write but yes, definitely. And is it also true that the homework is due on Tuesday, not on Monday? Yes, that is. So you can have the synchronous chat in real time where you're allowing for clarifications of information. We can use these breakout rooms for small group activities and what you really need to take advantage of if it is a teleconferencing structure is calling people by names, calling people out, not letting people just hide behind cameras that are turned off but make sure that they're participating and we see each other's faces because social contagion goes so much faster when you can see other people's faces, okay? Then you can have them reply, make sure that they've replied back to their peers on that discussion board prompt to continue to build up that community and then they can retake the quiz if they want to in order to get a better grade. The key idea is low stakes testing is great for rehearsal and so when it comes down to actually having that bigger test, they've practiced that multiple times because they've gone back to get that perfect score. So this is just one way that you could do this. You should also be a model and say, hey, at the end of this week or these two weeks I want you to give me some feedback. What could I do to get better at this whole thing of teaching online? Is there something else that you guys want to share with me or teach me so that I can get better at doing this? So ask for that feedback at the end of the day. You'd be surprised at how many things students already know and some of their tips are amazing. They could really be a great help to us. So with that, I want you to think about this video. Think are there things that you didn't know before? Are there things that you find interesting? You want to pursue this? You want to define these ideas a little bit better? And is there one thing you might do to incorporate and to improve your synchronous online learning experiences? Thanks, and if you have any questions, don't forget to send us an email within the Moodle platform. I'm looking forward to seeing you soon.