This fall, I am continuing my master’s studies at UVIC and taking the course “Theory and Discourse on Distributed and Open Learning” while also teaching part-time at an online school in BC. A few weeks ago in class at UVIC, we discussed possibilities for blending asynchronous and synchronous instructional time as teachers and are practicing a suggested model in the course ourselves. The model we are trying, created by one of the professors, has a blend. We have three hours to work with in our course. One hour is spent as a whole class in a synchronous video class. The second hour is spent decentralized, but working in small synchronous pods of 3-4 students. The third hour is spent asynchronously, with each student working individually on their blog, reviewing videos from class, and more.

As a teacher in an online K-12 school, I think a model with a blend of asynchronous and synchronous instructional time would benefit students. Right now, it is common that most online schools focus on asynchronous instructional time, and this is for many reasons including the design of Brightspace (an LMS) and the high student-to-teacher ratios.

Synchronous, decentralized pods:

From observations at the online school where I work, additional synchronous instructional time is beneficial for students and teachers. Where I teach, there is a physical classroom where students can work in person and together two days a week. Time spent here is currently optional, but I have observed students self-forming pods and working together regularly here, often for 4+ hours at a time. Students are generally in a similar grade although not always the same grade. One change I could make as a teacher would be to assign students intentionally in pod groups and actively encourage them to meet and work together for at least 1 hour per week. The pods could meet online for those students who are geographically isolated. The modality in this case is not critical, but the important part is that the students are meeting synchronously. I can see how decentralized but asynchronous pods would benefit students and encourage the sharing of ideas, asking questions, and building relationships.

Synchronous video classes:

While some K-12 online schools have teachers lead synchronous classes online, this is not always the case. Especially in larger Provincial Online Schools, and in many District Online Schools, the focus continues to be asynchronous instructional time only. Students have access to the LMS and complete their courses at their own pace, submitting assignments and receiving feedback asynchronously. Students work in isolation and contact their teacher individually when questions arise or help is needed. As a teacher, it could save time and help build relationships with students by offering synchronous video classes. One immediate concern I have with this model is that many online teachers have a huge breadth of courses and grades any synchronous video classes would need to be open to many grades at a time. For example, a teacher might only have one student in a subject or grade. The teacher would need to give a lot of consideration to how a video class would be structured to meet the needs of the learners in the room. An idea could be to group similar grades or similar subjects broadly, but without making the video class “mandatory” I suspect that many students would choose not to attend. Therefore, the classes would need to be required, and the content valuable enough to engage the wide array of learners – a tricky balance indeed.

Asynchronous time:

One area in which K-12 online schools in BC do well is providing a structure for students to learn asynchronously. From my observations, all or most of the schools use an LMS that provides content and structure to students of all ages and in many subjects. The content is up to date and centrally provided, consistent, and requires little intervention on the part of the teacher. This allows students to join a class at any point during the year and pick up the content where and how they choose. Given the vast number of students and subjects that online teachers oversee, the system is necessary. There are many downsides to having a model like this, including the ability to personalize the experience for each learner and expectations put on teachers in terms of the number of students they can manage at any given time. There is currently no cap on the student-to-teacher ratio and in many cases, it is nearly impossible for teachers to build relationships with their students. In another post, I wrote about “online teacher as orderer,” and I can relate to how I often feel like a manager instead of a teacher.

I think that online teaching in a K-12 setting could benefit from more synchronous instructional time overall. While there are challenges to making this happen as I have mentioned, I think the blend of asynchronous and synchronous is better and is a model to consider.  

Photo by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash.