The New Blend: Strategies for mixing asynchronous and synchronous, online and on-site

Concurrent Session 8

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

While pandemic teaching used many online tools, many instructors clung to the synchronous teaching modes they knew best. Now they drive a new instructional approach, one that crosses synchronous with asynchronous, on-site with online. Come discuss some strategies for moving course activities smoothly between all these modes.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Emily Ravenwood, University of Michigan

Emily Ravenwood manages several instructional support teams for the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Her instructional designers, media specialists, and student consultants help both faculty and students make the most of their instructional tools and learning spaces. Emily was teaching faculty, and a website designer on the side, for 10 years before making the career shift to instructional design and ed-tech management.

Additional Authors

Extended Abstract

Pandemic teaching required many previously in-person instructors to gain at least a basic familiarity with many online teaching tools–LMSs, videoconferencing tools, testing and assessment platforms, video creation and editing tools. Such instructors often cleaved to the teaching mode they and their students were most familiar with, though, and that mode was synchronous rather than the asynchronous experience most online students have been familiar with in the past. Now those instructors are returning to on-site rooms with new ideas about what “blended learning” could mean: online chat or Q&A during live lectures, videoconference meetings to expand the small-group capabilities of large courses that meet in lecture halls, and discussions that run for weeks online even after the in-class topic has moved on are just a few examples. A new approach to blended teaching and learning is on the rise, with activities that move freely between synchronous and asynchronous, that cross over on-site with online experiences.

In the first half, you can hear about some examples of this new approach, and the strategies that these courses employed to move smoothly between all the available modes. In the second half, planning templates will be provided, and attendees will have a chance to brainstorm together in groups what activities might best fit into which mode, or would best cross modes. You will come away with some concrete plans for how to blend your own or your faculty’s courses, and with some suggestions for the types of tools and platforms that will help.