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Educators Voice

Vol 8, Issue 2
March 14, 2007

Bringing synchronicity back to your online courses

syn·chro·nic·i·ty
n. pl. syn·chro·nic·i·ties

• The state or fact of being synchronous or simultaneous; synchronism.
• Coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related, conceived in Jungian theory as an explanatory principle on the same order as causality. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Why use synchronous tools? Distance Ed comes full circle….

The history of distance education is driven by educators’ recognition of student needs. We left the traditional classroom and entered the US mail, the TV screen and finally the online classroom in order to help our students to have better access to the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in their chosen pursuits. Though we have covered a lot of ground in our attempts to service the distance student, one notices again and again a sort of reminiscing tone when instructors remember “how I did it in the classroom,” and perhaps a vague feeling that something was lost when teaching and learning went fully distance.

The popularity of the hybrid (blended) model of instruction underscores a desire for synchronous interaction in teaching and learning. The hybrid course allows for both physical classroom encounters and demonstrations and also for the often more structured, reflective, and autonomous environment of the online classroom.

Though the hybrid model works for many who feel a synchronous component is necessary for their course, we still have the original situation that largely drove the movement to online teaching, which is the distance student who can’t make it to a campus, even for a few face-to-face meetings. This need has led to the creation of robust synchronous tools ranging from the simple chat interface to a high-end, multifaceted classroom containing audio, video, a whiteboard, the opportunity for small group work and quizzing, math tools, and even application and desktop sharing. With a small investment in training time, today’s educator can add back some of the synchronicity that was lost (but never really abandoned) in the move to fully online classrooms.

A new and improved ClassLive

Though eCollege has long offered chat and whiteboard capabilities within our platform, we have recently collaborated with some great providers to outfit our courses with tools that enable a lot more synchronous excitement. One of these tools is ClassLive, powered by Elluminate. Elluminate is a leading provider of high end synchronous software. Though the company provides both corporate and academic solutions, its original aim was to fill this need in the academic setting, and so its Academic Edition is perfect as the basis for the reinvention of the eCollege ClassLive tool.

There are two levels of ClassLive available in eCollege. The basic ClassLive offering is standard for all eCollege Educational Partners. With ClassLive, you can plan to use a whiteboard with a wide range of editing tools and a customizable image library, a graphing calculator, text chat capabilities, the ability to close-caption your session, a polling feature, and you will get automatic archive of all sessions.

A campus-wide purchase of ClassLivePro gets you an even more robust tool, adding audio capabilities, video, multimedia, quizzing, the ability to create breakout sessions for small groups, application sharing on three levels, and facilitation of web-based field trips.

Some things to think about

Just as it took a while for all to understand that online teaching is different from the classroom in terms of presentation and interaction, we must now retool our lesson plans again to include synchronous events. Additionally, students need to be aware of any synchronous element in the online course, particularly if it is a required activity and a component of the grading structure. Since many students have come to expect online courses to be completely asynchronous, it is best to advise the student of a required synchronous component in the course catalog description prior to enrollment.

Scheduling is also a consideration for instructors. One thing we have come to love about teaching online, once we got used to its near-daily nature, is the flexibility we have when it comes to when we work. Once you schedule a synchronous event, of course, you have committed to “being there” on a certain day at a certain time. This may be no problem for some, as many already hold office hours through Chat, for instance. A 2005 study of some Syracuse University instructors, however, showed that some are loathe to relinquish even a little bit of their flexible teaching schedule, resulting in an “initial negative bias” towards a real-time session in an otherwise asynchronous course (Spector, 17). At first startling, this observation really brings home how we have come to embrace the asynchronous, the very thing against which many had an equally negative bias in the early days of online education!

As with a hybrid course, when we reintroduce synchronicity, we want to be sure we don’t create a separation of classroom spaces, as this may cause the student to feel that he or she is taking two different classes, or that she or he can pick between the two modes rather than engaging in both. Pan and Sullivan note that live communication is “always desired by online learners who expect immediate assistance, response, and recognition.” However, the quick back and forth of this live environment may not get at the higher level thinking capability you would like your students to achieve. Think about using your session archives as an opportunity to set-up a reflective learning activity such as a summary discussion that will provide students with the opportunity to fold the synchronous session back into the asynchronous to achieve a classroom continuum.

Vary the numbers you host in a synchronous event: “the amount of interactivity is generally most closely associated with the number of people in a class or event, rather than any particular tool” (Boettcher). It is intuitive that a small group will get more individualized attention than a large one, so you may find it more effective to use synchronous tools to work with single students or small groups than to “lecture” to the larger whole. One thing you can do to maximize the reach of your efforts is to note to the class in an Announcement that a synchronous session you just held with one student was an in-depth look at a particular concept or topic, and so anyone having questions about the same concept or topic would do well to view the archive of this session. We all know that if one person has a question about course content, it is likely others will have the same question.

Practical tips on getting started

If you intend to use the web and other electronic content to maximize your lesson’s impact, you are delivering more than a ‘whiteboard = chalkboard’ experience for your students. This will require practice!

• Before you initiate a synchronous session, learn the software (or at least the features of it you plan to use) and practice your skills on colleagues or family members. You can do this at side-by-side computers to see what the student sees as you present, and then at a distance to get used to presenting without a student in the room.
• Extensive documentation and demonstrations for ClassLive and ClassLive Pro are available at http://www.elluminate.com/support/docs/ELive_Moderators_Guide_6.5.pdf and http://www.elluminate.com/support/docs/learn_about_elluminate_6.5.jsp.
• If your first synchronous interactions will be with a large group, it is helpful to have a second moderator to monitor the text chat component while you present.
• As in any interaction, know and use your student’s names (Schullo, 13).
• Allow sufficient wait time for responses to questions and activities (Schullo, 13).
• Don’t just open the synchronous session for your students and walk away. A University of South Florida study found that this lowers student perceptions of the effectiveness of a synchronous event. It’s hardly surprising that “this [lowered student perception of session effectiveness] would lead one to believe that the instructor is still very important, even in strategies that require high learner autonomy” (Schullo, 30).
• Just like with any online lecture, see to it that your learner isn’t made to focus on your presentation for more than 5 – 7 minutes without opportunity for interaction. You can punctuate your content with frequent polling questions to make sure students are keeping up, or you could ask the students to summarize the main points of the previous lecture segment in the text chat. You can also ask for personal experiences relating to the content if that is applicable. Just try to “mix it up” so that the student doesn’t have the sense that they are listening to a “talking head” with no opportunity to assimilate and reinforce key points the instructor is making.

As with any new tool, once you’ve successfully accomplished a session, you will return to this mode with a more natural feel for its capabilities. Many instructors look to it to extend the classroom beyond its normal boundaries, and to provide the kind of communication that will help relieve students of frustrations they may experience when an immediate question gets an asynchronous answer. A good synchronous tool doesn’t only enhance your ability to communicate course content, it also helps to build the sense of community that brings students back to your subsequent courses, and keeps them on board as enthusiastic lifelong learners.

—Vicki Galloway Harsh, M.A.

(synchronicity. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the
     English Language, Fourth Edition.
     Retrieved February 15, 2007, from Dictionary.com website:
     http://dictionary. reference.com/browse/synchronicity)
Boettcher, J. (May, 2005). Designing for the virtual interactive classroom.
     Campus Technology, Retrieved January 31, 2007,
     from http://campustechnology.com.
Pan, C, & Sullivan, M (September, 2005). Promoting synchronous
     interaction in an eLearning environment. THE Journal,
     Retrieved January 31, 2007, from http://thejournal.com.
Schullo, S, Venable, M, Barron, A, Kromrey, J, Hilbelink, A, & Hohlfeld, T (2005).
      Enhancing online courses with
     synchronous software: An analysis of strategies and interactions.
     National Computing Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvannia,
     June 27 - 30, 2005, 1 - 32.
Spector, J. (May, 2005).Time demands in online instruction.
     Distance Education. 26, No. 1, 17.

TIP

Creating interactive items – everyone can do it!

Imagine... Your course has just ended. You thought that the term went better than originally expected. Students were actively participating and interacting with one another through the discussions, but in your end-of-course surveys you received numerous comments about the layout of the course content.

Some comments referred to how there should be more corresponding images that relate to the lectures. Some also mentioned how it would be helpful to have audio or video to enhance the material, as it would enable students with different learning styles to focus on the content as well. Perhaps there were other comments that really stood out since they all focused on the same topic. Quite a few of the comments mentioned that it would be useful to have some type of interactive activity within the course, through simulations, tutorials or just introductory banners. You think to yourself, I am not experienced with Flash -- what do I do?

Actually, there are a variety of applications out in today’s market that do not require Flash knowledge to create detailed, interactive items; one specifically is called SWiSH Max.

SWiSH Max’s interface has over 230 built-in effects that allow you select from the list, then begin building, drawing tools, and importing graphic and sound capabilities. It then exports file types (.swf and .html) that are supported within the eCollege system.

For additional information about SWiSH Max please visit: http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=products&product=max

—Theresa Turner, Instructor Support Coordinator