Synchronous Online Teaching: The Promises, Challenges and Guidelines
Concurrent Session 6
Brief Abstract
Due to the COVID 19 outbreak, faculty and students were forced to pivot to online environment. The synchronous online teaching has been popular and yet still have many challenges in implementation. This session will focus on 3 areas: overview of online synchronous teaching, Gagne’s nine events as a framework for guiding the design of online synchronous teaching, and example sharing. Presenters will reflect on the synchronous online teaching practices and lessons learned with the session participants.
Presenters
Extended Abstract
With a sudden hit from the COVID 19 outbreak, faculty have to quickly transform their teaching online. Globally, 63 million teachers have been affected by this dramatic change and very few countries have provided training for virtual teaching (UNESCO, 2020). Many instructors have not received enough training on online teaching to develop online teaching competencies in the United States (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond, 2020). Those competencies include technical skills, willingness to learn, knowledge of “how to learn”, course design, and assess student learning (Martin, Budhrani, Kumar, & Ritzhaupt, 2019). It may be challenging for faculty teaching online for the first time, as they must learn new technologies, adjust pedagogy, and deal with limited institutional support and recognition in response to the emergent teaching situation. For instance, instructors may not clearly communicate online participation expectations: students are expected to be attentive and present in the course, expected to contribute to conversations and ask questions; actively participate in the learning activities through dialogue/discussion, group project, and assignment completion etc. This poor communication may cause frustration for both faculty and students. Faculty also experienced changes relating to the students’ attitudes and well-being after the abrupt change of remote learning due to the pandemic. The expressed needs from faculty to address those changes include working with students with mental health concerns, learning demands, and/or needing accommodations (Lischer, Safi, & Dickson, 2021).
In addition, with the concern of lacking real-time interactions in an online asynchronous course, many faculty turn to the video conferencing technology as it can offer real-time dynamic components in class, unfortunately, faculty often face disappointing results, including a lack of student engagement and participation during synchronous class meetings (Castelli & Sarvary, 2021).
One of the possible causes of this disappointment is that faculty may treat the online environment the same as the face to face delivery formats and do not realize that online and face to face are two very different delivery formats. With advanced video conferencing technologies such as Zoom or WebEx for example, do enable faculty to create certain interactions. However, there are challenges while incorporating the online synchronous components in online courses. Without proper design and planning, faculty and students may easily suffer from Zoom fatigue, feeling tired of the whole session (Wiederhold, 2020) or to show signs of student disengagement due to distractions or poor interaction and feedback (Serhan, 2020). All those challenges lead to more demands for exploring practical and effective ways to engage students in synchronous class sessions than any other time.
In this presentation session, the presenters will explore topics that are essential to synchronous online teaching (for example, synchronous online teaching environments vs. in-person teaching environments), video conferencing tool features, and additional tools that may benefit the synchronous online teaching, synchronous online class management, etc. Further, the presenters will introduce Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction which address nine critical mental conditions for learning. Gagne’s nine events of instruction can be used as guidelines in designing and planning the synchronous online teaching.
Session presenters will share examples as well. Participants will have opportunities to reflect on their synchronous online teaching design, observed issues and lessons learned.
The Takeaways
After attending this presentation session, participants will be able to
(1). Explain the differences between synchronous online teaching and in person teaching.
(2). Articulate the advantages and disadvantages of synchronous teaching
(3). Explain what Gagne’s nine events of instruction is
(4). Integrate aspects of Gagne’s nine events of instruction into a synchronous online teaching plan draft.
Reference
Besser, A., Lotem, S., and Zeigler-Hill, V. (2020). Psychological Stress and Vocal Symptoms Among University Professors in Israel: Implications of the Shift to Online Synchronous Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic. J. Voice Official J. Voice Foundat. S0892-1997, 30190–30199. doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2020.05.028
Cachón-Zagalaz, J., Sánchez-Zafra, M., Sanabrias-Moreno, D., González-Valero, G.,
Castelli, Frank & Sarvary, Mark. (2021). Why students do not turn on their video cameras during online classes and an equitable and inclusive plan to encourage them to do so. Ecology and Evolution. 10.1002/ece3.7123.
Hodges, C. B., Moore, S., Lockee, B. B., Trust, T., & Bond, M. A. (2020). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning.
Lara-Sánchez, A. J., and Zagalaz-Sánchez, M. L. (2020). Systematic review of the literature about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of school children. Front. Psychol. 11:2457. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.569348
Lischer, S., Safi, N. & Dickson, C. Remote learning and students’ mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic: A mixed-method enquiry. Prospects (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09530-w
Martin, F., Budhrani, K., Kumar, S., & Ritzhaupt, A. (2019). Award-winning faculty online teaching practices: Roles and competencies. Online Learning, 23(1), 184-205.
UNESCO (2020, March 27). Teacher Task Force calls to support 63 million teachers touched by the COVID-19 crisis. UNESCO. Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/news/teacher-task-force-calls-support-63-million-teachers-touched-covid-19-crisis
Serhan, D. (2020). Transitioning from face-to-face to remote learning: Students’ attitudes and perceptions of using Zoom during COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science, 4(4), 335-342.
Wiederhold, B. K. (2020). Connecting through technology during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic: Avoiding “Zoom Fatigue”. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 23(7), 437-438.